I found an article in The Telegraph(London) which claims that Iran is growing more dangerous evey day while producing nuclear power. The article uses quotes from David Cameron, the Conservative Leader who strongly believes the country is producing nuclear weapons. The article carries a negative undertone and the use of quotes allows the newspaper to paint quite a negative picture of Iran.

“Every week, every month that goes by brings Iran closer to possessing a nuclear weapon,” said Mr Cameron. “We have to recognise that the next Government of this country could face continuing violence in Iraq and Afghanistan and the prospect of a nuclear armed Iran.” Mr Cameron declined to rule out supporting military action against Teheran’s nuclear facilities. But he stressed the drawbacks, saying that “Iran having a nuclear weapon would be calamity but military action could be calamitous”.

 ”Make no mistake, the threat is growing, the scale and urgency of our response needs to match it,” he said.

Iran is defying three United Nations resolutions by continuing to enrich uranium at its nuclear plant in Natanz. This highly sensitive process could be used to manufacture weapons-grade uranium. Once it has enough of this essential material, Iran could build a nuclear bomb.

But the measures suggested by Mr Cameron would take years to impose real costs on Iran. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s regime plans to complete its nuclear facility in Natanz by the end of this month. If successful, Iran would then have 3,000 operational centrifuges, the machines used for enrichment. Under these conditions, a briefing released by Mr Cameron said: “Iran would need approximately six to 12 months to produce enough highly enriched uranium for its first nuclear weapon.”

I wondered whether any other news organisations had also picked up on Cameron’s comments and made them into a story? I found a article on the BBC (23 May) which features Cameron attacking the Blair government

The leader of the Conservative Party David Cameron, and the foreign affairs spokesman William Hague, have said that the UK should admit that sanctions imposed on Iran because of its nuclear programme have not been successful.

Cameron and Hague have accused the Blair government of not pushing Britain’s EU partners towards a firmer position on Iran, and of not pressuring the US to offer greater incentives to Iran.

They called for a change of policy on Iran as soon as possible

The Associated Press Newswires took the same stance as The Daily Telegraph, focusing on Cameron’s attack on Blair

Current sanctions are “too weak to bring about a change in behavior” and incentives to halt the program — such as the prospect of better relations with the West — have been damaged by a lack of commitment by the United States, Cameron said.

i looked at Australian papers to see what their perceptive on the matter was, i was hoping that they would have a more objective stance since they are not an close to the subjects as English papers are.  Sure enough The Sydney Morning Herald(23 May) provided reasons for Cameron’s attacks on the govt and didn’t just regurgitate his quotes resulting in a bias article. The article explains that a recent security investigation reveals that Iran is planning to attack some parts of Europe.

Iran is attempting to draw up plans to strike targets in Europe and has reconnoitered European nuclear power stations, a security analyst told a meeting at Britain’s parliament.

Claude Moniquet, president of the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Centre said, “We have serious signals that something is under preparation in Europe…Iranian intelligence is working extremely hard to prepare its people and to prepare actions.”

I found it interesting about how different the SMH talked about Cameron, in the article it says

Opposition Conservative party leader David Cameron also urged Britain and the United States, in an earlier speech, to strengthen measures against Iran and called on Washington to speed up plans for talks with Iranian officials.

He ‘urged’?? UK papers hardly give the impression that Cameron was urging anything, but rather demanding something happen! The articles also didn’t say anything about Blair and Cameron having a war of words about the matter.

The news values present in these articles are

impact/ consequence- the articles raise the issue of further trouble in Iran due to nuclear energy being produced, i think the Daily Tele actually believes terrorism acts will occur from the nuclear energy in the way they wrote the article, it carried a tone that not only suggest terrorism but reinforces it with quotes. So impact and consequence in the future is relevant here

conflict - conflict has been caused between Blair and Cameron, and as always conflict between Iran and the west.  

timeliness- not so relevant here i don’t think because the main issue here is a political debate, which can be stretched over numerous weeks. however, the recent security investigation is a time issue and it was surprising that i didn’t find more articles on that report.

proximity - for the Daily Telegraph proximity is a dominant value as the article features British politicians. This is not so relevant for Aus newspapers like SMH, hence why there was less coverage on what Cameron has been saying and the drama unfolding with him and Blair

Prominence - major value as the debate includes Blair and Cameron, two British politicians

currency -the Iran debate has been occurring for months so currency is definitely a value.