A Discursive Analysis of News Values in Reporting the Onset of the Twelve-Day War: A Study of IRNA’s News Coverage during the First Six Hours

Media coverage of wartime events, particularly during the initial hours following the outbreak of conflict, is of special significance from the perspectives of media linguistics and discourse analysis, as this period plays a decisive role in shaping primary interpretive frameworks and stabilizing dominant modes of representation. This study examines the discursive construction of news values in the coverage of the onset of the twelve-day war through an analysis of news reports published on the website of the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) within the first six hours of the conflict. The study adopts an integrated theoretical framework that combines the classical theory of news values proposed by Galtung and Ruge and its later revisions—most notably Harcup and O’Neill’s model—with a linguistically oriented approach to news discourse and Grice’s Cooperative Principle. Methodologically, the research is qualitative and follows a descriptive–analytical design. The corpus consists of ten news reports purposively selected from the specified time frame. The units of analysis include headlines, leads, and full news texts, with particular attention to the realization of news values, patterns of information organization, and strategic linguistic choices. The findings indicate that IRNA’s coverage of the war’s onset follows a coherent and staged pattern conceptualized as a discursive arc of war onset. Within this arc, key news values are dynamically activated and mutually reinforcing. In addition, linguistically grounded strategies informed by Grice’s Cooperative Principle, especially the controlled management of informational quantity and quality, play role in regulating newsworthiness, maintaining institutional credibility, and managing crisis discourse.