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Abstract

The Rohingya are a Muslim minority community from Myanmar’s Rakhine State and are recognized as one of the most persecuted communities in the world. In the recent past, in August 2017, the Myanmar military launched an attack on the Rohingya, which led over 700,000 people to flee to Bangladesh. Since then, over one million Rohingya refugees have been living in Bangladesh. To help this population, international aid, especially from the US, plays an important role. According to the UN, of the total $852.4 million requirement for 2024, the US provided $301 million. However, the US administration’s decision to suspend or freeze US-funded projects starting in 2025 has significantly affected the community. In this study, we examine how the Bangladeshi popular press has covered the Rohingya issue since the US funding cuts. We qualitatively analyzed Rohingya-related news from three newspapers—the Daily Star, the New Nation, and the Daily Prothom Alo—using critical discourse analysis. The findings show that newspapers emphasized the victimhood of the Rohingya, framed the funding cut as an urgent humanitarian crisis, and criticized the donor communities for their financial withdrawal. The newspapers prioritized the voices of international actors as primary information sources, were heavily reliant on international news agencies for news outsourcing, and lacked original, in-depth reporting.

Journal Title

Iowa Journal of Communication

Volume

58

Issue

1

First Page

217

Last Page

233

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

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