An Analysis of News Reporting and its Effects, Using IBIL Model: Lee Gardens Plaza and C.S. Pattani Hotels Cases

The purpose of this paper is to look into news reporting of two recent bombings at the two most popular hotels: Lee Gardens Plaza in Hatyai and C. S. Pattani in Pattani, Thailand and its tangible and intangible impacts, using a cause-effect “IBIL Model” with four catalysts: (1) Ideology of Media Organization (I), (2) Bad News Outsells Good One (B), (3) Influential Individuals as Major News Sources (I), and (4) Limitation of Time and Space (L). Content analysis of news reports and observation are used to collect data. The study reveals that as the “IBIL Model” suggests, news coverage on these two car bombings fall into all four factors, causing negative effects on both individuals and society. Four main findings are as follows: (1) regardless of paper classifications, almost all news items can be classified into “War Journalism” (WJ) category, with three WJ indicators of language use: emotive, demonizing and victimizing, (2) all papers place their emphasis on bad news, making sensational headlines to attract audience, (3) mass media rely heavily on influential individuals, high-ranking authorities in particular, as major news sources and therefore interpretations of government discourse to define problems are repeatedly re-produced, and (4) Due to limited time and space, media organizations do tend to give more time and space and pay more attention to more recent and daily events than to investigative news reporting.