Comparative Review of Mechanism of Using Soft News Case Study: News Programs of " 20:30" of IRIB Channel 2 and " 60 Minutes" of BBC Persian TV

This paper aims to review the mechanisms soft news has been used in the news programs of “20:30” of Channel 2 of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) and the “60 Minutes” of the BBC Persian Television. Soft news is a news genre that has a feature style nature and is mainly used to cover human-interest topics in the public sphere, which can be said in an informal language. This news genre has had by far a longer precedence in news reports of developed countries and in networks such as CNN, Deutsche Welle and Fox News. It is included in the agenda of majority of news networks. The methodology of this study is content analysis and inverse questionnaire has been used to collect data. The findings of the research indicate that although the lion’s share of the contents of both news programs dealt with “Iran”, BBC’s “60 Minutes” news program has used “soft news” more than IRIB’s “20:230” news program. Moreover, BBC’s “60 Minutes” news program has acted more successfully in terms of quantity (content analysis) in using news styles, news sources, neutral or impartial orientation and airing footages as well as in terms of quality (narrative journalism) compared to IRIB Channel 2’s “20:30” news program.