News coverage of the Iraqi brain drain issue: an analytical study of the news bulletins of Al Iraqiya TV channel during the period from January 1, 2022, to December 31, 2022

Abstract

The public today navigates a vast landscape of hundreds of satellite channels offering diverse intellectual discourse. Amidst this multitude, Al-Iraqiya Satellite Channel, the official Iraqi state broadcaster, consistently claims the top spot in viewership and engagement according to local opinion polls. The channel grapples with various issues relevant to the Iraqi public, and prominent among them is the critical phenomenon of Iraqi talent migration. It is this issue's prominence in Al-Iraqiya's news programming that drew the researcher's attention, leading to a detailed analysis of broadcast content focused on brain drain during the year 2022. This research seeks to answer the following question: How did news bulletins on Al-Iraqiya Satellite Channel address the issue of Iraqi talent migration? Employing a descriptive research approach, the researcher utilized a survey method and defined the research population as all news bulletins aired by the channel in 2022. To ensure comprehensiveness, a complete inventory sample of all bulletins addressing the brain drain phenomenon within the specified timeframe was adopted . This analysis yielded several key findings: • News coverage of Iraqi talent migration occupied a substantial portion of total news bulletin airtime, amounting to 70 minutes out of a total 540 minutes. • The majority of the televised content addressing brain drain took the form of news segments, followed by reports, interviews, analyses, and commentaries, respectively.

Keywords

• Brain drain; newscasts; Iraqi channel.