The World Cup is one of the most important and popular sporting events in sports history, and takes place every four years. In 2022, Qatar became the first Arab and Islamic country to host this major sports event since its inauguration in 1930. Qatar is also the smallest nation to host the World Cup in history (Jarvie, 2024). The development of Qatar towards its successful hosting included providing good hospitality and high-tech facilities for its visitors. For instance, the introduction of sensor-embedded smart balls, aids for visually impaired fans, air-conditioned stadiums (Lusweti & Odawa, 2023) and the building of the Doha Metro transport network with vehicle speeds of 100 km/h, making it one of the fastest metro networks in the world. In addition to technological improvements, advanced security and monitoring device technologies were implemented, along with the provision of high-speed Internet service (Lusweti & Odawa, 2023). Yet, Qatar received numerous negative criticisms from the Western media since the first day it was announced as host of the mega event. For instance, Western media focused on issues regarding the treatment of migrant workers and homosexuals to challenge Qatar’s hosting of the World Cup (Hendel, 2023). In addition, Western news misreporting incidents debunked by disinformation experts were not highlighted (Five False Claims on Qatar World Cup 2022 Analysed and Debunked, 2022; Sayegh, 2023)
In an opinion piece, Wenxin mentioned that the Western media is a product of the Western political system (Wenxin, 2021). The political systems of a nation in which the media operate influence the operations and outputs of the media, to a considerable degree. As much as news media strive to be apolitical and objective in their news reports as they stick to the core values of journalism on impartiality, the practice remains an ideal rather than reality. This study situates the Western narrative view of the Orientalist - on Qatar’s hosting through news framing and Orientalism, a concept popularized by Edward Said in 1979, which depicts Western scholarship on the East. Orientalism provides the interrelations between society, textuality, ideology, politics, and the logic of power of the West towards the East (Said, 1978). The concept of Orientalism explains the Western anomalous depiction of the Muslims and Arabs communities globally (Ranji, 2021). Orientalist discourse perpetuates views of Middle Eastern people (the Orient) as inferior and subservient (Hibri, 2023).
Mega events are at reputational risk if the host country is unprepared for intense international media scrutiny, which may result in adverse long-term effects for the host nation or city. News has to be fair and balanced. Yet, objectivity and balanced reporting are ideal concepts in journalism but difficult to achieve in a real-world setting. Every news organization exists with its agenda. The agenda of any news organization is influenced by both the values of the media organization (and/or the writers) and a desire to sell, either directly or indirectly, content to readers or viewers (Parry et al., 2021). Thus, the news is framed accordingly to fulfil its agenda. Orientalism suggests that media can influence, reshape, and have power over the Orient – the non-Western nations (Park & Wilkins, 2005).
The construction of news is inextricably connected to the cultural aspects that shape news produced. There is a correlative relationship between news framing and culture. Journalism influences culture and is also influenced by it (Hanusch, 2016). Orientalist writing and ideologies divide the world in which Western societies, cultures, religions, and languages are superior to non-Western ones (Merican, 2011). We seek to bridge the gap by exploring the socio-cultural dimensions of news media through the concept of Orientalism and its news representation through framing theory.
2022 Qatar World Cup
Qatar has a population of 2.71 million and 79.8% of its population is less than 45 years old (Kemp, 2023). Education, health, and welfare are given freely to all Qataris, and adult education classes are available throughout the country as part of the government’s effort to increase adult literacy (Crystal et al., 2021). Qatar’s involvement in the international sports arena by hosting mega events, such as the World Cup, and the acquisition of the soccer team Paris St Germain are examples of the soft power strategy of the nation towards the creation of an international image (Jarvie, 2024). Regionally, it is also one of the biggest spenders in advertisements, particularly on major projects such as the Qatar National Vision 2030 (Galal, 2021), a national vision to transform Qatar into an advanced nation. The Qatar National Vision 2030 is unique and guided by strong Islamic and family values as its moral and ethical compass (General Secretariat for Development Planning, 2008). This plan is driven by four main pillars – human, social, economic, and environmental development embodied by the Permanent Constitution of Qatar issued in 2004. Qatar spent about 230 billion USD on the construction of the mega sports event which aims to promote a modern image of the nation and increase its influence over international relations (Dalloul, 2022). The Permanent Constitution and the National Vision of Qatar 2030 holistically drive the country’s progress in many aspects of its development. The Constitution and the National Vision reflect Qatar’s coherence of justice, benevolence and equality.
Aligned with its National Vision 2030, the event has introduced advanced technological innovations through its hosting. The construction of the World Cup 2022 infrastructure involved lavish spending, with a focus on creating an environmentally friendly event (Dalloul, 2022). The Khalifa International Stadium was equipped with a 360-degree virtual reality tour and the Internet of Things (IoT) technology connected sensors across the country to facilitate fans traveling to World Cup matches by providing real-time traffic updates and public transportation (Oxford Business Group, 2023).
Qatar was given the right to host the mega event of the FIFA World Cup on December 2, 2010 and has since received mixed views from the media, with negative framing represented more by Western media. Many critics and observers noticed that the Western media did not focus mainly on the World Cup event as much as it focused on political and social issues related to Qatar (Doger, 2022). For instance, Qatari football players were shown as seven bearded men, some covered with balaclavas, playing football and carrying machetes, guns, rocket launchers and explosives on the cover of the French satirical publication Le Canard Enchaîné (Al Jazeera Staff, 2022). Further, an English daily described the Qataris as unaccustomed to seeing women dressed in Western-style apparel (Iftikhar, 2022). As part of reporting about 2022 Qatar World Cup, the Western media published stereotypical images of Islam and Arabs as terrorists, raised accusations of corruption and bribery to the rights to host the event, as well as highlighted the exploitation and abuse of migrant workers, which were compared to modern-day slavery; they scrutinized laws about the criminalization of LGBTQ+, inequality for women, and many other aspects of Qatar were also presented. These negative issues overshadowed the positive developments and achievement made by Qatar as the first Islamic, smallest nation to host the mega sports event while equipping hi-tech facilities to comfort players, fans, and visitors.
Conceptual Framework
Framing is the selection of some aspects of a perceived reality that is then made salient through text or images to promote an issue, definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item described. Framing encourages those perceiving and thinking about events to develop particular understandings of them (Entman, 1991) and is argued to be part of agenda-setting (Scheufele, 1999). The media frames its content around a variety of values and practices and constructs its coverage of a given event relating to specific themes and messages (Parry et al., 2021).
As cited by Elmasry and el-Nawawy (2022), De Vreese (2005) and Pan and Kosicki (1993) argue that a news frame has distinguishable, identifiable, observable, and recognizable elements or framing devices, such as headlines, phrases, images, keywords, sourcing, leads, and metaphors wherein the lexical choices of words or labels influence audience interpretation. A corpus of words and phrases informed our derivation and understanding of either positive or negative characterisations of Islam (Ahmad, 2022). Thus, news bias considerably impacts public opinion (Entman, 1991). A biased news frame leads to negative representation formation.
The cultural clash between the West and the Muslim world is not new since Islam and Muslims have historically been slighted by the West since the decline of the Ottoman Empire (Nurullah, 2010). As a consequence, negative portrayals of Islam and Arabs in Western media are expansive. For instance, Muslims are frequently blamed for crimes and terrorist attacks carried out by other believers in the faith (Munnik, 2018). The language used by Western media to express anti-Muslim prejudice is widespread (West & Lloyd, 2017). A headline-based study of how Muslims are portrayed in the British and American press suggested that understanding and analyzing the tone of articles associated with minority groups can contribute to societal discussions on the extent of racism and xenophobia (Nisar & Bleich, 2020). The news, which operates as a media apparatus, can be seen as a product, a form, a medium, or a technology, mediating between humans and their extended environment (Merican, 2011). Repeated exposure to an issue has an impact on readers, particularly when being exposed to negative news frames (Lecheler et al., 2015). The media can cultivate the opinions of most viewers in the West towards disliking Muslims based on the media portrayal of the group (i.e., Muslims) as terrorists or bad people (Nurullah, 2010).
Sports, with their global appeal, are an immensely influential social institution that can influence the views of a global mass audience (Parry et al., 2021). The influence comes from news reported and the negative or positive portrayal from the perspective of the journalists reporting and the news organization they belong to. News constructs and deconstructs reality (Merican, 2011), which makes the coverage of the 2022 Qatar World Cup as important as other news. We analyze several interconnectivity factors between Qatar, as the host of the World Cup 2022, and its role as an Arab, Muslim, and non-Western nation and the image reported by the West. Our study expands the literature on media representation and framing of non-Western communities and nations. Through the conceptualization of Orientalism and building on the framing theory, our study seeks to analyze the Western media coverage, the coverage of the BBC and CNN in particular, of Qatar’s hosting from three aspects, which are the themes framed, sources included, and tones applied in news reports. It aims to answer the following question: How was Qatar’s hosting of the World Cup represented by the BBC and CNN?
Methodology
To reiterate, Orientalism provides the interrelations between society, politics, and the logic of power of the West towards the East (Said, 1978). We contend that Western news coverage on the hosting of the Qatar World Cup has its socio- and geo-political influences. The 2022 Qatar World Cup not only highlighted the complex relations between East and West but served as a canvas for broadcasting geopolitical concerns to a global audience (Galeeva, 2022). While previous study analyzed the framing of Qatar’s hosting from a journalism and media studies perspective, this study expands on scholarly works through the adoption of a critical paradigm and situates the concept of Orientalism and its relations to news discourse. The Semetko and Valkenburg framework is well-suited and described as:
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Conflict: emphasizes conflict and disagreement between individuals, groups, parties, or institutions as a means of capturing audience interest; dichotomizes or labels the good and bad;
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Consequences: reports an event, issue, or problem in terms of the consequences it has on individuals, groups, parties, institutions, or the country;
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Responsibility: presents an event, issue, or problem in such a way as to attribute responsibility for its cause or solution to either the government or an individual, group, party, or institution;
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Morality: puts the event, issue or problem in the context of religious tenets or moral prescriptions;
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Human interest: refers to an effort to personalize, dramatize, or emotionalize the news to capture and retain audience interest (Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000).
The BBC and CNN are chosen due to their status as globally popular news. The bbc.com and the cnn.com are among the top three most visited websites globally (Press Gazette, 2024). Our selection of BBC and CNN expands the justification that networks such as the BBC are significant contributors to global media coverage of sporting events (Abdul Rehman & Jebril, 2023). Since the World Cup began on November 20, 2022, the sample for this study was from October 19, 2022 to December 19, 2022, because of the likelihood of the event being popularly reported nearer to its launch and gradually subside after event completion. Articles were selected from the www.bbc.com and www.cnn.com using the keywords “Qatar” and “World Cup 2022.” A total of 39 articles were identified and examined. Coding and categorization of themes were conducted separately between two researchers and discrepancies were discussed after completion to ensure consensus.
Since news is a social construct, source selection is important in shaping the news narrative of a given story. This study further analyzed sources in selected articles by grouping the sources into the following: CNN or BBC journalists, writers, or correspondents who publish the news reports; sports experts; news agencies, such as AP and Reuters; independent writers for the news organization; and official sources, such as FIFA officials. There are several tones of news in the newspapers, which are positive, negative, and neutral, and each carries specific meaning (Lyytimäki et al., 2021). The tone of the news is categorized as positive, negative, or neutral, as adopted by Al-Hindawi and Ali (2018) in their studies.
Findings
A total of 35 reports were found related to the subject of the study; 14 articles were derived from the BBC and 21 articles from CNN. These include text-based articles and text with visuals (i.e., videos as supporting reports). Video reporting includes descriptive texts to provide further explanation and context to readers on websites and is suitable to be included in this study. The findings are explained in three aspects: the themes framed, the sources adopted, and the tone applied.
Themes
Findings suggest for the BBC, most of the news reports were in the frame of morality and human interest. For example, the BBC published a report under the frame of morality on November 3, 2022 titled “Beth Mead: England forward says holding World Cup in Qatar is ‘disappointing.’” It was reported that Qatar is not considered a suitable place to host the World Cup since homosexuality is considered immoral and illegal in the country. Another example of a report within the frame of morality dated November 8, 2022 entitled “World Cup 2022: Lotte Wubben-Moy ‘won’t be watching’ tournament with Qatar hosting.” The report referred to the words of an English player for the women’s national team that discrepancies occurred in the moral values practiced between the English team compared to Qatar as a nation that imposes penalty on homosexuals in the country. The human-interest frame was also popular among news reports from the BBC. The frame consists of any soft news which includes culture, fashion and lifestyle. One reported how fashion has influenced the event as fans from across the globe took on the traditional Arab dress (i.e., thobe) and modified the dress to their favorite teams. Another one titled “World Cup 2022: Inside a World Cup fan park in Qatar - scorching heat & £12 pints” focused on the surroundings of the event from the infrastructure built, the weather, and the price of alcoholic drinks.
Meanwhile, an article on December 12, 2022 titled *“*Qatar Makes World Cup Debut in a Controversial Tournament of Firsts,” outlines various aspects of the mega event’s “many firsts,” such as the first Winter World Cup, the first Islamic nation to host, the first carbon neutral World Cup, and the first to have female referees officiate a men’s World Cup event. It also describes the nation’s low population as the smallest country hosting the mega event. The headline and topic presented makes the article attractive to read, especially for curious readers with limited knowledge about Qatar. For content to be considered important, news has to be relevant or able to generate audience interest (Lee & Chyi, 2014). News with a human-interest frame is likely to be shared among news consumers (Lee & Chyi, 2014; Trilling et al., 2017). Therefore, the morality and human-interest themes are equally salient for the BBC’s reporting.
The largest percentage of stories on CNN were framed under the responsibility or morality category. For example, a report published under the frame of responsibility on November 1, 2022 titled “Let’s Call Out the Qatar World Cup for What It Is” held Qatar responsible for issues on workers’ rights and the LGBTQ+ community. The report further claimed Qatar manipulated its way to obtain the right to host the World Cup and attributed the responsibility to FIFA because it cooperated with Qatar and allowed it to host the tournament. An article from December 18, 2022, titled “Fresh Criticism for Qatar and FIFA as World Cup Ends on International Migrants Day,” held Qatar responsible for the ill treatment of workers who worked in the construction of stadiums and infrastructure for the World Cup. Ironically, there was no mention that many of the biggest construction firms working on the World Cup in Qatar were Western-based (Helal, 2022). We classified a CNN report published on November 22, 2022 with the title “What fans can’t do in Qatar,” which portrayed Qatar’s laws negatively into the theme of morality. The article highlighted issues such as the disallowance of revealing clothes in public places and the prevention of the sale of alcohol around the stadiums. This suggests that the article is negatively highlighting the moral values held by Qatar.
For the BBC, most of the news reports were in the frames of morality or human interest, and for CNN, the responsibility and morality frames were the most frequently used. Therefore, the most salient frame for both BBC and CNN was morality. The morality factor guided by Semetko and Valkenburg’s theoretical framework describes morality as news that puts the event, issue or problem in the context of religious tenets or moral prescriptions. Meanwhile, as mentioned previously, the concept of Orientalism provides the logic of power of the West towards the East (Said, 1978). One previous study argues that moral framing makes an explicit distinction between good and evil and justifies a moral cause for action (Torwel, 2015). Within its 2030 Vision, Qatar aims to preserve its national heritage and enhance Arab and Islamic values and identity (General Secretariat for Development Planning, 2008). This indicates that Qatar has its own approach to create an advanced society rooted in its Eastern morals and values. However, the logic of power of the West towards the East is highlighted in this finding whereas the Western media is seen to suggest moral values of the West to non-Western contexts as the logical and universal practice. The saliency of this frame suggests journalistic biases through the Orientalist narrative because of moral value differences between the host country and Western-based journalists and their news organizations.
Sources
Our findings about the sources used suggest both channels relied on their sources and reporters to publish news about Qatar’s hosting. For example, 9 out of 14 BBC reports came from journalists working for the BBC. Similarly, CNN relied heavily on its sources to deal with reports regarding Qatar’s hosting of the World Cup, with 17 of the 21 reports reported by CNN journalists. The second most popular sources for the BBC are from sports experts with a total of 4 out of 14 BBC reports. Meanwhile, one article was used in each of the other sources (i.e., sports experts, news agencies, freelance writer’s articles, and official sources) in CNN.
Trust in a source that offers insight, perception, and truthful analysis are important (Boyle, 2013). The BBC and CNN have international correspondents who report from around the world in large numbers, including in the Middle East. Our findings indicate that the BBC and CNN rely on and trust their sources within their own organizations. Journalists from the West perceive their roles and values differently to their non-Western counterparts (Augustyniak, 2019). Therefore, the findings from this section suggest that Western journalists rely on their own sources more than other types of sources due to values practiced, which differ from the non-Western journalists. These values, such as the preservation of social harmony and respect for leadership, differ from the egalitarian, individualistic, and liberal traditions of the West (Augustyniak, 2019) and are skewed with an Orientalist perspective, which affects the framing of news reported.
Tone
Both BBC and CNN published reports related to Qatar’s hosting of the World Cup with negative tones. Among the 14 reports analyzed from the BBC website, 10 reports had a negative tone, 1 a positive tone, and 3 had a neutral tone. Meanwhile, of the 21 reports published on the CNN website, 12 reports carried a negative tone, 3 reports carried a positive tone, and 6 reports were neutral. The BBC published an interview on November 8, 2022 days before the start of the World Cup, entitled “Awarding Qatar the tournament was a mistake, says former FIFA President Sepp Blatter.” Blatter was the president of FIFA in 2010 when Qatar’s victory in hosting the 2022 World Cup was announced. The news report expresses the dissatisfaction of Blatter with Qatar’s hosting and highlights his preference for the United States to host instead. The negative representation of Qatar through headlines, news reports, and selection of dramatic and sensationalized topics on its hosting could lead to negative perceptions of the nation. Sensationalized and dramatized topics which are strategically and episodically framed with personal experiences of ordinary people highlighted have the probability to evoke negative perception (Boukes et al., 2015).
Headlines can affect readers’ beliefs about certain issues (Al-Hindawi & Hmood Ali, 2018). In every paragraph, the news report carried a negative tone toward the state of Qatar. Blatter said in the report that Qatar is a very small country and that the World Cup is too big to be awarded to the nation. Qatar is a rich and small nation with an estimated population of about 3 million in 2022, one of the lowest in the Middle East (World Economics, 2022). The basis for the success of the tournament does not depend on the country’s size and population as much as it depends on its financial capabilities and good preparation. One example of negative reporting by the BBC was titled “Why are some people unhappy about Qatar hosting?” The article negatively portrayed Qatar for the nation’s treatment of LQBTQ+ people and women in addition to reports of protests during tournament matches by some football teams. From this video-supported news report, Qatar is accused of committing misconduct, and as an Islamic country, it does not grant its residents the freedom to live. Ironically, journalists’ measurement of freedom is gauged from the Western sociological perspective. This aligns with a previous study that contends media representation of Islam has been measured against the criteria of timeliness, currency, novelty, and the ‘nowness’ in relation to the geographical, cultural, and the political (Merican, 2011).
Meanwhile, CNN’s “Let’s Call Out the Qatar World Cup for What It Is” news article listed various negative aspects of Qatar as a national host for the 2022 World Cup. First, negatively-linked words such as slavery were used to describe Qatar’s treatment of foreign workers. Other negative aspects reported included freedom of the press, the challenges journalists face in reporting mistreatments, and accusations of fraud in Qatar’s winning bid for hosting the World Cup. To further strengthen the negative framing, the article highlighted the weather in Qatar as unsuitable for players due to high temperature, although the 2022 World Cup was held at the end of the year to avoid the summer heat. It can be concluded that the report was directing accusations and had a negative tone, despite its lack of many references that confirm the validity of its information. Qatar’s decision to prohibit alcohol in the stadium was also reported negatively with words such as “disappointing” and “frustrating” to describe the public’s dissatisfaction on the matter. Another example is a headline on November 9, 2022, “Qatar World Cup ‘is a mistake,’ says former FIFA President Sepp Blatter.” To include the word “mistake” in reference to the hosting nation shows that the news organization is putting negative emphasis on their report. This could result in subtle negative public opinion of Qatar, particularly among those who only glance through headlines instead of reading the whole article. This is congruent with previous studies that suggest that, because headlines are formulated by non-specialist editors with non-specialist readers in mind, they are more likely to reflect prevailing societal beliefs (Bleich et al., 2015). Such depictions reflect on the Orientalist narrative in news reporting as framed by both news organizations.
Discussion
We considered that news audiences can think and evaluate – that they are not passive news consumers. Nevertheless, a version of reality is also built from interpreted selections of the mass media (Scheufele, 1999) and thus long-term negative exposure, such as through negative framing of any community, will lead to a negative perception of that community. Increased negative representation of the Arab and global Muslim community and its practices by the media is likely to contribute to the cultivation of negative opinion on the community, especially among publics that are not exposed or accustomed to other cultures.
Journalists have always been important cultural intermediaries between sports and society (Boyle, 2013). Negative tones and different frames highlighted in this study may suggest the influential role of a news organization’s media agenda in shaping public discourse on a nation or group. This study suggests that the hosting of the World Cup in Qatar has had more negative than positive tones, with morality being the most salient frame shared among journalists from both news organizations. CNN exports its American culture to the world (Atad, 2017) while the BBC reports issues from the British perspective to the world. In pursuit of informing the world what is deemed newsworthy, these news organizations frame issues reported from their view of morality, a perspective shared between Western nations but dissimilar to the nations in the East, particularly Qatar in our study. Negative comments by political leaders and Western-based media outlets on Qatar’s ethical and moral values are seen as one-sided hypocrisy (Xiao, 2022). For instance, there were many reports highlighting Qatar’s lack of tolerance towards the LQBTQ+ community. Yet, in the United States for instance, over 200 anti-trans bills have been introduced (Burns, 2022). Similarly, hate crimes towards members of the community drastically rose by 50% in the West from 2019 to 2021 (Robinson, 2022).
These findings suggest negative tones and salient frames presented to followers or readers of the BBC and CNN could become a mediating factor in shaping the negative image and perception of Qatar as a nation or the Muslim community and its practices. The numerous positive aspects of Qatar’s hosting were either silenced (unreported) or underplayed by the Western media, adding to ongoing literature on the framing of news media, particularly on Western media bias in covering events in the Arab and Islamic nations. For example, Qatar’s enactment of the most significant labor rights reforms in the Arab world (Mednicoff, 2022) was downplayed as compared to the heightened reports of migrant workers’ mistreatment, an issue that is not unique to Qatar, but to many nations across the world, including the Western nations (Mohyeldin, 2022). This signifies that the Western media coverage of mega events in the Global South countries is likely negative and often Orientalist (Jones, 2022) and is exemplified through Western double standards coverage of Qatar’s World Cup (Mednicoff, 2022; Mohyeldin, 2022; Sayegh, 2023). Most news reports were framed based on differences in moral values imposed on Qatar, as a non-Western nation compared to the West and its values. This study highlights that framing shows selective views by newsmakers subject to different interpretations of reality confined to the values adhered to and practiced by journalists and news organizations. This study suggests that heavy reliance on internal journalists with limited knowledge of the non-Western culture strengthens the argument that these two news organizations have an Orientalist narrative. With an Orientalist mindset, reports produced are negatively toned with Western morality gauged as blanket moral standards.
Conclusion
The negative characterization of Islam, the Arabs, and Muslims as a whole remains dominant among Western media. As much as humans are not passive information receivers, continuous negative media representation, especially by renowned news organizations viewed as credible, may foster the echo chamber effect on public opinion formation. Journalists and media organizations carry their biases which can materialize through headlines, selection of words, and chosen sources. These biases may influence public perception and the formation of ideas and future policies. The Orientalist-dominated perspective framed by Western media during the World Cup in Qatar is a matter of public opinion because it could lead to the formation of future policies that impact a nation or a community’s image (i.e., the Muslims and Arabs) in the eyes of many. For instance, the perception of “the Orient,” a term that Said (1978) used to describe the stereotyped and often patronizing Western portrayal of Eastern societies, as inherently inferior and alien can lead to biased treatment, including the belief that a country like Qatar should not be given hosting rights and/or be should be subjected to a double standard when compared to the West. Indeed, Orientalist perceptions are still prevalent and continue to justify contemporary foreign and domestic policies (Hibri, 2023) which can be unjust and detrimental.
News narratives can form public opinion, and, thus, a just perspective is vital in news reporting. As an advocate to society, the media needs to be just in narratives imposed on Islam and the Muslim communities especially in contemporary times where this community tends to be subjected negatively worldwide (Ahmad, 2022). The findings of our study conclude that the representation of the Arabs, the Muslims, and their cultures are presented in the Orientalist narrative wherein the West is seen as morally ideal and accepted compared to the East. The Western media in this study has failed to objectively contextualize some issues to provide its news consumers with a more nuanced representation of Qatar. This study contributes to scholarly work on media representation and framing theory through a critical lens of Orientalism. Future research may expand the current literature by analyzing Western media coverage of the 2034 World Cup by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.