To understand the language of journalism in relation to the moments of why and how news is differently structured and patterned, English online stories tackling the Israeli--Palestinian conflict, issued by the BBC, CNN and Al-Jazeera, were critically analysed following Fowler and Fairclough's seminal texts. The results of the findings were discussed in interviews with the editors of the three international networks in order to see what links these linguistic features have with the interviewees' social assumptions, ideologies and economic conditions. The article finds first that the discourse within the news pyramid is composed of four major layers: quoting, paraphrasing, background and comment. Second, it demonstrates that there are marked differences in the discourse structures and layers that the three networks employ in the production of the news stories they issue in English. Third, Al-Jazeera English exhibits marked differences in the discursive features and their social implications at the four layers of discourse to report the conflict when compared with both the BBC and CNN. Fourth, the article shows that the differences in linguistic patterns largely reflect and respond to each network's social and political assumptions and practices as well as economic conditions.