Visual dan Pemberitaan Perang Dalam Media di Malaysia

Visual plays an important role in trying to relay messages effectively in a world where facts are not always sufficient to convince audience. Through visuals, personal perceptions can be seen in different perspectives in order to make reasoned judgments. In war reporting, portrayals of visuals are often highlighted in various positive, negative or neutral forms. Relatively whatever forms portrayed, positive, negative or neutral, will register a certain interpretation in the mind of audiences. Thus this research aims to identify visuals used in war reporting in local media. Content analysis method was used to evaluate news on Israel – Palestinian war as highlighted in two mainstream newspapers, Utusan Malaysia and The New Straits Times. Research results revealed that Utusan Malaysia portrayed more visual graphics in reporting war compared to The New Straits Times. The visuals given were related to the news highlighted. Apart from that, both newspapers often used visual source from foreign agencies such as AP,AFP and Reuters. Visual reporting is able to relay convincing evidence as visuals will always portrays the truth