الملخص الإنجليزي
This study seeks to examine the characteristics of local news in the Omani
Arabic dailies; Al-Watan, Oman, Al-Shabiba, and Al-Ru'ya. The study used
the survey method, to analyze the content of local news in a constructed
random sample during the period from October 1 to December 31, 2021. The
study also used unstructured interviews with a sample of journalists in charge
of local news in the newspapers.
The study revealed that most of the local news published in the Omani
dailies focus on the national news in the first place, considering that; they are
national newspapers that cover the entire Sultanate of Oman.
News of the governorates and states/wilayates came in second place, with
Oman newspaper outperforming on this type of news. This is due to the large
number of correspondents it has in the various governorates.
The large number of pages in Oman newspaper allocated to local news
compared since it is a governmental newspaper seeking to indicate its
emphasis and highlight of the government's achievements in the development
of the governorates.
The study concludes that the Omani Arabic daily newspapers depend
primarily on government institutions as sources of local news. This result
seems consistent with the existing media system in the Sultanate, in which
newspapers and media serve as platforms for publishing government and
official news, the government institutions provide newspapers with the news
and sometimes force newspapers to publish them. Government officials came
in second place in the list of sources making local news in Omani daily
newspapers, then private sector officials, followed by military and security
source.
With regard to journalists responsible for the production of local news in
the Omani newspapers, the results confirmed the impact of self-censorship
of the journalist, editor and editorial managers in general on the process of
news selection. The respondents emphasized that, the Ministry of
Information did not interfere in the production and dissemination of local
news.
The study recommended that the Omani daily newspapers should take into
account the attribution of information in local news to its sources explicitly
and to avoid anonymous sources, in order to preserve the right of the reader
to know the sources of published information. The study recommended also
the necessity of conducting more studies on local news in Omani newspapers.
