Shifted focus: newspaper coverage of female military personnel as casualties of war

This article examines newspaper coverage of the capture of a team of British sailors and marines on March 23, 2007 by Iranian Revolutionary guards in a disputed waterway that separates Iran and Iraq. The 15 service personnel were on a UN-authorised anti-smuggling patrol when they were seized and accused of incursion into Iranian territorial water. The article focuses on the coverage of the incident in British newspapers by using media representation of Faye Turney as a case study. It argues that the newspaper discursive practice used was based on the notion of gendered mediation. By focusing on media representation of Leading Seaman Faye Turney in British newspapers, this article attempts to illustrate how conventional news frames used to report military conflict, and which are stereotypical masculine, tend to shift when women are subjects and focus of stories. It will show how gendered mediation helps to conflate issues of gender and social roles in public discourse.