The media plays a central role in shaping how the public understands international justice. This thesis explores how three leading U.S. newspapers the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal framed the International Criminal Court's (ICC) investigations into alleged war crimes in Ukraine and Palestine. Drawing on Entman's framing theory and Grossman et al.'s dimensions of justice, democracy, and performance, it employs a systematic qualitative content analysis of ninety news articles published between 2014 and 2024. Indicators for problem definition, causal attribution, moral evaluation, and treatment recommendation were drawn both deductively from existing scholarship and inductively during a pilot coding phase; intercoder reliability checks ensured the validity and replicability of the process.

Analysis shows that coverage of the ICC's probe into alleged Russian atrocities in Ukraine is overwhelmingly positive: articles emphasize the court's legitimacy, procedural rigor, and potential to deter future crimes. Headlines and leading paragraphs frequently highlight Ukraine's victimhood and the ICC's role as an impartial arbiter. By contrast, reporting on the ICC inquiry into alleged Israeli actions in Palestine is far more ambivalent. Journalists question the court's jurisdiction, raise concerns about political bias, and frame the ICC as constrained by U.S. foreign-policy interests. Moral evaluations in this context focus more on diplomatic fallout and strategic risk than on accountability.

These contrasting frames reveal that U.S. media do not consistently treat the ICC as a neutral institution; instead, legitimacy is mediated by geopolitical alliances and established narratives of victimhood. By comparing these two cases over a ten-year span, this study contributes to framing theory by showing how media outlets negotiate norms of international justice in line with national policy preferences and underscores the importance of transparency in qualitative analysis to grasp the power of news narratives.