{"id":125953,"date":"2019-01-14T12:00:21","date_gmt":"2019-01-14T12:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=125953"},"modified":"2019-01-21T11:19:34","modified_gmt":"2019-01-21T11:19:34","slug":"study-u-s-newspapers-are-more-than-twice-as-likely-to-cite-israeli-sources-in-headlines-than-palestinian-ones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2019\/01\/study-u-s-newspapers-are-more-than-twice-as-likely-to-cite-israeli-sources-in-headlines-than-palestinian-ones\/","title":{"rendered":"Study: U.S. Newspapers Are More Than Twice as Likely to Cite Israeli Sources in Headlines than Palestinian Ones"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

A Palestinian girl seen with a flag during the clashes on the Gaza-Israel wall east of Khan Yunis on Jan. 4, 2019.
Photo: Yousef Masoud\/SOPA Images\/LightRocket\/Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

12 Jan 2019 – <\/em>At the height of the 2014\u00a0war between the Israeli military and Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip, the New York Times ran an article\u00a0headlined, \u201cIsrael Says That Hamas Uses Civilian Shields, Reviving Debate<\/a>.\u201d It was an apparent reference to the hundreds of Palestinian civilians who had been killed in Israeli attacks by that point in the war. There was no question about who had killed them, yet the language\u00a0shifted the\u00a0subject to a \u201cdebate\u201d about who was really responsible. A few weeks earlier, after an Israeli airstrike killed several Palestinian soccer fans, the Times ran the absurd title<\/a>, \u201cMissile at Beachside Gaza Cafe Finds Patrons Poised for World Cup,\u201d later amending the headline in the\u00a0face of widespread disgust\u00a0expressed on social media.<\/p>\n

Headlines matter. As\u00a0studies<\/a>\u00a0have repeatedly\u00a0shown, when it comes to\u00a0reaching the general public, the words at the top of the page might be as important, if not more, than the text of articles themselves \u2014 to the chagrin of many writers. In the case of the\u00a0Israel-Palestine conflict, inappropriate, misleading, and biased\u00a0headlines like\u00a0those that appeared in the New York Times during\u00a02014 Gaza War have been all too common.<\/p>\n

This is the conclusion of a\u00a0new study<\/a>\u00a0titled \u201c50 Years of Occupation\u201d published by 416Labs, a research and data analytics firm based in Canada. The firm analyzed nearly 100,000 news headlines about the conflict in the American press over the past five decades and found that the Israeli point of view was featured much more prominently than the Palestinian one, and that references to Palestinians\u2019 experiences of being \u201crefugees\u201d or living under \u201coccupation\u201d have steadily declined.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe findings demonstrate a persistent bias in coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian issue \u2014 one where Israeli narratives are privileged and where, despite the continued entrenchment of the occupation, the very topics germane to Palestinians\u2019 day-to-day reality have disappeared,\u201d Owais Zaheer, one of the study\u2019s authors, told The Intercept.\u00a0\u201cIt calls to attention the need to more critically evaluate the scope of coverage of the Israeli occupation and recognize that readers are getting, at best, a heavily filtered rendering of the issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

The study, released this week, analyzed 50 years of news headlines\u00a0on the Israel-Palestine conflict from five major American publications \u2014 the\u00a0Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal \u2014 employing Natural Language Processing, or NLP, techniques\u00a0to analyze the massive database of headlines published\u00a0over this period. NLP is\u00a0a\u00a0\u201cBig Data\u201d\u00a0analysis approach used to identify statistical trends and patterns in large caches of text. In this case, the researchers analyzed\u00a0nearly 100,000\u00a0headlines and\u00a0identified dozens of\u00a0frequently recurring\u00a0terms and word sequences in stories about Israel-Palestine. While studies of media coverage on Israel-Palestine have been conducted before, the 416Labs analysis is the largest and most comprehensive look at headline coverage since the conflict began.<\/p>\n

Words connoting violence, such as \u201cterror,\u201d appeared three times more than the word \u201coccupation.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The patterns identified\u00a0seem to show\u00a0a clear slant toward the Israeli perspective.\u00a0Headlines\u00a0like\u00a0the one from the 2014 New York Times story about\u00a0civilian deaths in Gaza \u2014\u00a0that used\u00a0the term \u201cIsrael says\u201d \u2014 were\u00a02 1\/2 times more\u00a0likely to appear than headlines citing Palestinian equivalents. Headlines centering Israel were published four times more than those centering Palestinians, and words connoting violence, such as \u201cterror,\u201d appeared three times more than the word \u201coccupation.\u201d Since 1967, the year that the Israeli military took control of the West Bank, there has been an 85 percent overall decrease in mention of the term \u201coccupation\u201d in headlines about Israel, despite the fact that the Israeli military\u2019s occupation of Palestinian territory has\u00a0in fact\u00a0intensified over this time.\u00a0Mention of the term \u201cPalestinian refugees,\u201d meanwhile, has declined a stunning 93 percent. While subtle, a consistent disproportion in article\u00a0headlines \u2014 which\u00a0by default gives a greater\u00a0airtime to one side or occludes certain key issues \u2014 can impact public perception.<\/p>\n

The study also found that media\u00a0attention\u00a0to the Israel-Palestine conflict in the United States\u00a0has tended to peak during periods of heightened violence. In a sense, this dynamic reflects how international news is generally covered in the United States. The key difference, however, is that the U.S. government is a vital player in helping maintain the status quo in Israel-Palestine through its provision of massive military aid and diplomatic support to the Israeli government.<\/p>\n

Despite this ongoing American involvement, the total volume of U.S. media coverage\u00a0about the conflict has been in overall decline since the time of the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords \u2014 a negotiated agreement between then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and then-Israeli\u00a0Prime Minister\u00a0Yitzhak Rabin intended to\u00a0establish conditions for peace in the region.\u00a0That decline says little about conditions on the ground. The hopes briefly raised by the Oslo Accords effectively\u00a0died in 1995 after\u00a0an Israeli extremist assassinated Rabin, and a wave of terrorist attacks by the then-obscure militant group Hamas\u00a0killed\u00a0large numbers\u00a0of\u00a0Israeli civilians. Riding a wave of disillusionment,\u00a0a new hard-line Israeli leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, took power in 1996. Since then, the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank\u00a0has expanded, with new settlements eating away at the remaining areas of Palestinian control, even while global media attention has declined.<\/p>\n

Since taking office, the Trump administration has taken a hard line in favor of the Israeli government, slashing humanitarian aid to Palestinian refugees and unilaterally recognizing the city of Jerusalem as Israel\u2019s capital. These measures have been taken over the objections of Palestinian leaders, but also some senior Israeli military officials<\/a> who have warned that they could destabilize the region. Peace talks between the Palestinians and Israelis meanwhile show no signs of reviving, despite repeated promises<\/a> by Donald Trump\u2019s son-in-law Jared Kushner of an \u201cultimate deal\u201d that will resolve the conflict.<\/p>\n

Despite this grim political reality, there\u00a0have been significant changes in U.S. media coverage of the conflict, driven in part by popular pressure coming from\u00a0social media<\/a>. There\u00a0are also signs that Israel is becoming a partisan issue\u00a0dividing liberals and conservatives in the United States, with polls showing that\u00a0growing numbers<\/a>\u00a0of\u00a0Americans\u00a0would like\u00a0their government to take a more evenhanded stance on the conflict. U.S. government policy has yet to reflect these shifts in public sentiment, with the Trump\u00a0administration falling over itself to project an unprecedentedly\u00a0hostile\u00a0and uncompromising stance toward Palestinian claims. Hard-line supporters of the Israeli government have\u00a0seemingly shifted their approach from winning \u201chearts and minds\u201d to punishing opponents: publishing\u00a0blacklists of Palestinian activists<\/a>, censoring public figures\u00a0vocal about the conflict<\/a>, and advocating for laws\u00a0to restrict boycotts of\u00a0Israeli\u00a0goods<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, people who have followed\u00a0U.S. debate\u00a0on the conflict for decades say that there are\u00a0serious tectonic changes occurring at the level of the American public, both in media and popular sentiment.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough news coverage is not evenhanded and is still generally skewed towards the Israeli perspective, there has been a\u00a0massive\u00a0shift\u00a0over the past five years in how this issue is both reported and discussed in the United States,\u201d said Phyllis Bennis, director\u00a0of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, a D.C.-based progressive think tank. \u201cWe are seeing a shift in the types of stories that are being covered by major outlets, as well as the stances that\u00a0public figures are willing to take.\u00a0There are still huge problems, but things are changing. The discourse on Israel-Palestine is nothing like it was in decades past.\u201d<\/p>\n

____________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Murtaza Hussain<\/a> – murtaza.hussain@\u200btheintercept.com<\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 theintercept.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

12 Jan 2019 – The study analyzed 50 years of news headlines on the Israel-Palestine conflict and found an overwhelming slant toward the Israeli point of view.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":125955,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65,62,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america","category-media","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125953\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}