To explore the relationship between translation and editing in media discourse for the purpose of a news translation class, a comparative analysis was carried out on three press releases from the ICC, UN and BBC, and their translated versions in Arabic on the same event: the 27th June ICC arrest warrant against Libyan officials. From a qualitative angle, the comparative examination at the micro-level was aimed at describing differences in communication styles in terms of lexical choices in English news texts, then between English texts and their Arabic translated versions issued by the same institutions (ICC, UN and BBC). Results show that the English texts are well-marked by their selective choice of lexical items, and translated versions obey this line.