Abstract: The subject of the research in the article is the image of the First and Second Chechen Wars, created by journalists of The New York Times newspaper in the 1990s and reflecting the views of the American democratic public. The subject of the study is the headlines of articles related to this topic in the American daily newspaper The New York Times. At the end of the 20th century, the periodical press continued to play a significant role in public life, including shaping the news agenda and creating the image of certain events. Often, journalists sought to impose their vision of Russian politics on the reader. Reputable publications, avoiding the techniques of the "yellow press", used more subtle and unobvious manipulative forms. Such manipulations include the newspaper's choice of lexical units with a certain connotation and the frequency of their use. In this study, the author attempts to explicate the hidden information that is embedded in the headlines of The New York Times. To analyze the information identified by the author in the headlines of The New York Times newspaper, the article used methods such as historical, comparative and quantitative content analysis. The novelty of the study lies in the fact that the headlines of The New York Times newspaper of this period were first considered as a source of analysis of the transforming view of the American democratic press on the events of the First and Second Chechen Wars.
According to the results of the study, the following conclusions were drawn: the image of the Chechen conflict of the 1990s in the American press has undergone significant changes. If the First Chechen War in The New York Times appears as a legitimate struggle of the Russian authorities against the separatist movement in Chechnya, albeit with a number of critical remarks, then the image of the Second Chechen War is radically different from the previous campaign. The newspaper presents the events of the Second Chechen Campaign as a new colonial war, while the emphasis was shifted towards criticizing the Russian leadership for violating human rights and freedoms in the Chechen Republic, as well as a direct impact on destabilization in the North Caucasus region.