This research examines the modality and ideological framing in the news reporting of selected news outlets, regarding the Gaza conflict. A corpus of 1.5 million words is created, encompassing the news reports from October 2023 to July 2024. The study corpus is examined pertaining to the modality approach of Downing and Locke (2006) utilizing a self-curated Python script. The findings indicate that BBC employed a lower use of epistemic modality than CNN, and a lower use of deontic modality than DAWN to exhibit neutrality and a balanced institutional perspective. On the contrary, CNN integrates a higher use of epistemic and deontic modality than BBC and DAWN portraying its ideological strategy to emphasize humanitarian concerns and obligations based on societal expectations. Conversely, DAWN news reporting demonstrates a higher use of deontic modality than BBC, and CNN, which signifies its moral and political perspective of advocating the clear ideology in favor of the Palestinian cause. The findings conclude that the ideological implications of these modality patterns underline BBC’s cautious impartiality pertaining to institutional policy, CNN’s concern towards humanitarian issues of the war pertaining to social expectations and DAWN’s advocacy for moral, political and social change. The research supports the significance of corpus based analysis and also contributes to the knowledge that modality has the potential to construct ideological narratives within news media discourse.
