Constitution making in post-Saddam Iraq: Reporting the Drafting and Ratification of the Iraqi Constitution in the Australian and Middle Eastern print media

Abstract

This paper analyses in detail the coverage of two milestones in Iraq's shift towards democracy: the drafting and approval of the constitution by Iraq's interim government (August 2005) and the ratification of this constitution via the Iraqi polls (October 2005). Aside from some rudimentary quantitative analysis, a critical discourse analysis method is utilised to compare and contrast the discursive practices used in three of Australia's leading daily newspapers (The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age) with three Middle Eastern English-language papers (The Daily Star, Anadolu Agency and The Jordan Times). In essence, this paper finds that the Australian print media continues the neo-Orientalist tradition of media coverage of Middle Eastern democracy, while the Middle Eastern press eschews these discourses in favour of a more open, varied debate on Iraq's constitution and the future of democracy across the region.