This study is mainly conducted on the portrayal of the Oromo and Ethiopian Somali Peoples’ conflict by the three Ethiopian newspapers namely, Addis Admas, Reporter (Amharic) and Addis Zemen. The thesis also aims to reveal the existence of possible ideological reasons behind the representation of the conflict in a certain way. Six news stories (two from each) were taken as the sample of the study through purposive sampling. The samples were taken based on their depth of reporting and appropriateness to meet the objectives of the study. The period when the samples were taken covers the time between the beginnings of September 2017 to the end of November 2017 for the rationale that the three newspapers made the issue one of their top agendas during those times. The study is a qualitative research that mainly employed Fairclough‘s critical discourse analysis model both as theory and method. Besides, Halliday‘s systematic functional grammar is also used as additional theoretical framework. The findings of the analysis indicate that privately and state owned newspapers have portrayed the conflict differently. The first, i.e. Addis Admas and Reporter represented it negatively while the later, i.e. Addis Zemen’s portrayal was positive. The privately owned newspapers tried to sensationalize the conflict and the state owned is observed to be on the opposite side for it tried to soften the conflict. And hence, it is also determined that the portrayal of the conflict by the three newspapers is found to be different because of the difference in control and ownership. The researcher has also recommended that both the state owned and privately owned media need to report based on the news values criteria since privately owned media were fueling the conflict and blaming the officials while the state owned was smoothing the conflict and building the images of the government. The researcher also invites other researchers to study the rationales behind the different representation of an issue by the three newspapers. V