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Middle East Conflict: U.S. Media Under Political Pressure
U.S. newspapers catching flak for Mideast war coverage Media caught in the cross fire as both sides complain of bias
American newsrooms are feeling the heat from the Middle East conflict as they confront increasing accusations of biased coverage from readers.
The media are under attack from both sides across the nation, from a pro- Palestinian press conference in Berkeley last week denouncing "inflammatory coverage" to Jewish protesters in front of the Chicago Tribune.
A full-page ad on April 2 in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune signed by many Jewish and political leaders, including Gov. Jesse Ventura and Democratic Sens.
Mark Dayton and Paul Wellstone, criticized that paper's reluctance to use the word "terrorist."
Newspapers have been "drawn into the intense cross fire," wrote Lillian Swanson, ombudsman for the Philadelphia Inquirer. "Each side, pro-Palestinian and proIsraeli, is convinced the newspaper is favoring the other."
The ombudsman for National Public Radio, Jeffrey Dvorkin, complained in a recent column that pressure on NPR from advocacy groups "can constitute a form of journalistic McCarthyism."
He said the network has been targeted by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, which ran a full-page New York Times ad calling NPR's coverage "false" and "skewed" against Israel. The advertisement also urged NPR's financial backers to stop supporting the network.
At the same time, Dvorkin said, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting is attacking what it sees as NPR's pro-Israel bias.
Many editors and reader representatives seem to be taking the charges seriously, for the press is only as good as its credibility.
"As a hard news subject, (Middle East coverage) is probably the No. 1 issue that's consistently coming up across the country," said Mike Clark, reader advocate for the Florida Times-Union and Web editor for the Organization of News Ombudsmen, which represents the reader representatives and advocates who are on the front line of public response.
Some reader reps are taking extra measures to re-examine their coverage, and many are shaking their heads at the paradox posed by opposing claims of bias.
For example, Chronicle readers' representative Dick Rogers said he received on the same day a letter complaining of "extreme pro-Palestinian bias" and an e-mail accusing the paper of being "exceedingly pro-Israel."
Sometimes the conflicting views will center on the same article or photograph, he said.
Rogers asked five readers who had no particular stake in the issue to rate 79 photos from the conflict that were published in The Chronicle the first three months of this year.
One reader found that a much larger number were pro-Palestinian, while another found the opposite. With each of the 79 photos getting judged by five readers, the totals showed 130 identified as pro-Palestinian, 126 identified as pro-Israeli and 139 identified as neutral.
Any given headline, photo, article or story selection may put one side in a more sympathetic light than the other, said Jamie Gold, readers' representative at the Los Angeles Times. "Overall, it's evenhanded," she said of the Times' coverage.
The Chronicle's executive foreign/national editor, Andrew S. Ross, said the paper's editors engage in "constant healthy debates, discussions and suggestions" about stories and photos and "present what I sincerely believe is a truly balanced report."
The prevailing view among newspaper editors and ombudsmen around the country seems to be that their coverage, on the whole, is fair.
At the Arizona Daily Star, reader advocate Debbie Kornmiller is planning a public panel to review its Middle East coverage, following her analysis of 200 photos and 190 stories that appeared in the paper last year.
She found many instances where one side or the other was cast in a negative light or where stories lacked context or were overplayed. But overall, she said, "I was really pleased with our photo coverage, and I think that we did a generally good job with our stories."
It is difficult to find recent impartial studies of American news coverage of the Middle East, but past content analyses by scholars "generally conclude that the media coverage tends to favor Israel over Palestine," said David Demers, executive director of the Center for Global Media Studies at Washington State University, where he is also a communications professor.
"It's not a conspiracy by any means," Demers said, "but what it boils down to is they depend on government officials. And those government officials represent the administration, which tends to be pro-Israel."
The allegations of pro-Israeli bias include the use of words such as "retaliation" for Israeli attacks without using similar terms for Palestinian attacks, the use of "terrorists" or "gunmen" for Palestinians, and more prominent attention devoted to Israeli deaths and suffering than to Palestinian casualties.
Those who see a pro-Palestinian bias say, among other things, that the press features more photos of Palestinian children, paints violent assaults by Palestinians as mere "protests" and gives greater attention to pro-Palestinian spokesmen and Palestinians as victims.
Newspapers contacted for this article said the complaints they receive either run about equal for each side or tilt toward allegations of anti- Israeli bias.
A larger volume of charges of anti-Israeli coverage may reflect in part the larger sympathy for Israel in U.S. public opinion polls and the greater experience and organization of Jewish groups seeking to influence public opinion, some scholars say.
In addition, readers accustomed to seeing the Israeli side of things may be taken aback by the recent surge in coverage of Palestinian perspectives, said Aly Colon, an ethics expert at the Poynter Institute, a media education center in Florida.
Charges of unfair coverage aren't new, but they've intensified with the recent increase in bloodletting caused by Israel's military incursions and Palestinian suicide-bombings. Demers said volatile issues can evoke that kind of response.
"The two sides in a conflict will always see the mainstream media as biased on the other side," he said. "When the conflict flares up, and especially when violence increases, both sides become more vociferous in their criticism of the mass media."
Printed: Sunday, April 14, 2002
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle.
The media are under attack from both sides across the nation, from a pro- Palestinian press conference in Berkeley last week denouncing "inflammatory coverage" to Jewish protesters in front of the Chicago Tribune.
A full-page ad on April 2 in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune signed by many Jewish and political leaders, including Gov. Jesse Ventura and Democratic Sens.
Mark Dayton and Paul Wellstone, criticized that paper's reluctance to use the word "terrorist."
Newspapers have been "drawn into the intense cross fire," wrote Lillian Swanson, ombudsman for the Philadelphia Inquirer. "Each side, pro-Palestinian and proIsraeli, is convinced the newspaper is favoring the other."
The ombudsman for National Public Radio, Jeffrey Dvorkin, complained in a recent column that pressure on NPR from advocacy groups "can constitute a form of journalistic McCarthyism."
He said the network has been targeted by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, which ran a full-page New York Times ad calling NPR's coverage "false" and "skewed" against Israel. The advertisement also urged NPR's financial backers to stop supporting the network.
At the same time, Dvorkin said, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting is attacking what it sees as NPR's pro-Israel bias.
Many editors and reader representatives seem to be taking the charges seriously, for the press is only as good as its credibility.
"As a hard news subject, (Middle East coverage) is probably the No. 1 issue that's consistently coming up across the country," said Mike Clark, reader advocate for the Florida Times-Union and Web editor for the Organization of News Ombudsmen, which represents the reader representatives and advocates who are on the front line of public response.
Some reader reps are taking extra measures to re-examine their coverage, and many are shaking their heads at the paradox posed by opposing claims of bias.
For example, Chronicle readers' representative Dick Rogers said he received on the same day a letter complaining of "extreme pro-Palestinian bias" and an e-mail accusing the paper of being "exceedingly pro-Israel."
Sometimes the conflicting views will center on the same article or photograph, he said.
Rogers asked five readers who had no particular stake in the issue to rate 79 photos from the conflict that were published in The Chronicle the first three months of this year.
One reader found that a much larger number were pro-Palestinian, while another found the opposite. With each of the 79 photos getting judged by five readers, the totals showed 130 identified as pro-Palestinian, 126 identified as pro-Israeli and 139 identified as neutral.
Any given headline, photo, article or story selection may put one side in a more sympathetic light than the other, said Jamie Gold, readers' representative at the Los Angeles Times. "Overall, it's evenhanded," she said of the Times' coverage.
The Chronicle's executive foreign/national editor, Andrew S. Ross, said the paper's editors engage in "constant healthy debates, discussions and suggestions" about stories and photos and "present what I sincerely believe is a truly balanced report."
The prevailing view among newspaper editors and ombudsmen around the country seems to be that their coverage, on the whole, is fair.
At the Arizona Daily Star, reader advocate Debbie Kornmiller is planning a public panel to review its Middle East coverage, following her analysis of 200 photos and 190 stories that appeared in the paper last year.
She found many instances where one side or the other was cast in a negative light or where stories lacked context or were overplayed. But overall, she said, "I was really pleased with our photo coverage, and I think that we did a generally good job with our stories."
It is difficult to find recent impartial studies of American news coverage of the Middle East, but past content analyses by scholars "generally conclude that the media coverage tends to favor Israel over Palestine," said David Demers, executive director of the Center for Global Media Studies at Washington State University, where he is also a communications professor.
"It's not a conspiracy by any means," Demers said, "but what it boils down to is they depend on government officials. And those government officials represent the administration, which tends to be pro-Israel."
The allegations of pro-Israeli bias include the use of words such as "retaliation" for Israeli attacks without using similar terms for Palestinian attacks, the use of "terrorists" or "gunmen" for Palestinians, and more prominent attention devoted to Israeli deaths and suffering than to Palestinian casualties.
Those who see a pro-Palestinian bias say, among other things, that the press features more photos of Palestinian children, paints violent assaults by Palestinians as mere "protests" and gives greater attention to pro-Palestinian spokesmen and Palestinians as victims.
Newspapers contacted for this article said the complaints they receive either run about equal for each side or tilt toward allegations of anti- Israeli bias.
A larger volume of charges of anti-Israeli coverage may reflect in part the larger sympathy for Israel in U.S. public opinion polls and the greater experience and organization of Jewish groups seeking to influence public opinion, some scholars say.
In addition, readers accustomed to seeing the Israeli side of things may be taken aback by the recent surge in coverage of Palestinian perspectives, said Aly Colon, an ethics expert at the Poynter Institute, a media education center in Florida.
Charges of unfair coverage aren't new, but they've intensified with the recent increase in bloodletting caused by Israel's military incursions and Palestinian suicide-bombings. Demers said volatile issues can evoke that kind of response.
"The two sides in a conflict will always see the mainstream media as biased on the other side," he said. "When the conflict flares up, and especially when violence increases, both sides become more vociferous in their criticism of the mass media."
Printed: Sunday, April 14, 2002
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle.
For more information:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...
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Do you think, that they just might be a tad..... biased??? True, there are Jews that are not pro-Israel, but they don't have much luck holding onto their jobs if they don't toe the pro-Israel line, such as Henry Norr of the SF Chron who was dumped for his political views, just a few months after writing a great expose about a plant Intel was building on disputed Palestinian land, which was amazingly thorough, accurate and hence sympathetic to the tragedy that has been visited upon the Palestinians with the arrival of Zionist Jews.
Face it! Zionist Jews would prefer that the ONLY news about Palestinians that gets in the US mainstream media is coverage of the Palestinian suicide bombing attacks. Like they just happen out of the blue for no reason at all. They don't want Americans to know about The Apartheid Wall, the Jews-only roads to Jews-only settlements on stolen Palestinian land. They don't want Americans to know about checkpoints, roadblocks, the home demolitions, the extrajudicial killings of suspected terrorists which kill many civilians as well-- all these crimes against humanity that Israel does against the Palestinians. They don't want Americans to know that Israel receives billions of US tax dollars a year, that are never paid back for a racist, anti-democratic, apartheid country that is guilty of ethnic cleansing.
Except for the suicide bombers, the Zionists want Americans to just forget completely about the plight of the Palestinians, and not to worry about what Israel is doing with American tax dollars.