Introduction
The nineties have been a typical fin de siècle decade in at least one important respect: The realm of media is on the brink of a profound transformation. In present twenty-first century, this transformation claims a new global media to bring together the world as a small village. Together, the deregulation of media ownership, the privatization of television in lucrative European and Asian markets, and new communications technologies have made it possible for media giants to establish powerful distribution and production networks within and among nations in an attempt to control the world’s public opinions (Matthew Schwartz, 2008); who benefits from all that but the media owners--making business out of manipulated news-- and their governments--to justify and market their own political agendas.
We currently live in an era that can only be described as the most volatile in contemporary history; a time when phosphoric missiles are shot casually on civilians, mass destruction weapons are available in the hands of the powerful to threaten the powerless; when human rights violation and political polarization are rampant, and when respect for the international law that protects state sovereignty is systematically corroding, and mainstream media is increasingly betraying the very objective that inspired the founding fathers to have “freedom of press” prominently enshrined in the US constitution. All those unpredictable and unacceptable acts are delivered to people through media via certain “interpretive frames” that legalize war crimes (Bennett, 1990). [interpretive frame].
While the main stream media is gaining more power arrogating to spread international mindedness around the world and to narrow the gap among global citizens for a better understanding; yet, the media is abusing this power by broadcasting misleading truths serving these institutions’ political interests (Ethan Bronner, 2009). Gadi Wolfsfeld (1997), argues “the authorities’ level of control over the political environment is one of the key variables that determine the role of the news media in political conflicts.” Wolfsfeld metaphorically describes political conflicts as the antagonists‘ moves and counter-moves in an attempt to control the course of events by dominating political discourse and mobilizing as many supporters of the cause as possible. Hence, governments and irresponsible mainstream media are playing that role of blind folding the world community in an attempt to dictate a certain public opinion to serve their political agendas.
Perhaps now more than any other time in human history, objective media is desperately needed—media to inform the masses; to provide voice to the voiceless; and to function as the objective counterweight that scrutinizes the powers that be.
Just as we were hoping for an integral media, we got struck with the reality of its recent biases and misleading coverage of the current Palestinian uprising. Zooming closer onto these medias’ powers and their roles in the political and social arena, we will be focusing on the situation of the Middle East, particularly in Palestine and the war waged on Gaza on December 26, 2008. It is the heaviest aggression against the Gaza Strip since the 1967; Six Day War is taking an enormous toll on the territory's civilians (children mostly). The Israeli offensive has now killed nearly 1,000 Palestinians, wounded more than 4,000 and inflicted incalculable damage on Gaza Strip. Since the Israeli bombing and invasion began, a reported 10 Israeli soldiers and 4 civilians have been killed (ANSWER coalition, 2009). Yet most of the mainstream media gives equal or greater time to the casualties and views of the Israeli side. The same media relentlessly misrepresents the cause of the crisis, invariably blaming the Palestinian side while ignoring years of lethal blockade, air strikes and “targeted assassinations” carried out by Israel against the people in Gaza. Tracing media coverage on this matter, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we will find that speaking about an unprejudiced, transparent, and just media is irrelevant.
A study conducted by the If American Knew organization (2004) indicates significantly distorted coverage by The New York Times of these topics. In the first period of the study, The Times reported Israeli deaths at a rate of 2.8 times higher than Palestinian deaths, and in 2004 this rate increased by almost 30%. The Times’ coverage of children’s deaths was even more skewed. In the first year of the current uprising, Israeli children’s deaths were reported at 6.8 times the rate of Palestinian children’s deaths. In 2004 this differential also increased, with deaths of Israeli children covered at a rate 7.3 times greater than the deaths of Palestinian children. Given that in 2004, 22 times more Palestinian children were killed than Israeli children, this category holds particular importance to justify this inequality in coverage.
According to Abukar Arman (2009), while media around the world are gradually reaching new heights in promoting unprecedented political openness, including Middle Eastern media, the quality of news coverage of the American mainstream media is losing its credibility; hence, is on a declining trend of a misleading propaganda. Media biases manifests itself the most when we listen to the distorted and single-minded realities reported on the equivocal Israeli/Palestinian presentation.
Patrick O’Connor and Rachel Roberts (2006), in their study of The New York Times biased coverages of the conflict, they assure this media source’s “propaganda.” In their analysis of one of the paper’s articles “A Question of Security: Violence Against Palestinian Women,” they argue that the article claims investigating human rights proclamation for Palestinian women. Unfortunately, if the same article, viewed in the context of The New York Times’ reporting on Israel/Palestine over the last six years, it would provide a powerful example of typical US mainstream media bias against Palestinians. Research shows clearly that The New York Times pays little attention to human rights in Israel/Palestine, downplays the larger context in which violence against Palestinian women occurs and generally silences Palestinian women’s voices. By omitting crucial details and emphasizing certain others, The New York Times, one of the US’ most respected and powerful media outlets, has turned a valuable piece of human rights reporting into a tool that can be used to reinforce a Western agenda that has cynically exploited “saving Muslim women” as an excuse for dominating and abusing the rights of people from other cultures.
Aljazeera (2009), published thatat least 10,000 peoplegathered in a parkin Washington DC to voice their solidarity for the Palestinian people. The protesters descended on the White House, chanting "free Palestine." They then led a march passing in front of the headquarters ofThe Washington Post newspaper to protest "its hard pro-Israeliline."
According to ANSWER coalition (2009),
“On the day after 10,000 people marched and rallied in San Francisco on January 10 to demand “Let Gaza Live,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported the demonstration to have been just “more than 1,000 people.” In their January 10 edition, on the morning of the protest, the Chronicle publicized the pro-Israeli war counter-protest on the steps of City Hall, but failed to mention the “Let Gaza Live” anti-war demonstration.”
January 10th witnessed the biggest protest in the U.S. against the violence of the Israeli assault against Gaza. However, corporate media, like daily newspapers and televised newsrooms and programs, either completely ignored or vastly underestimated the protests.
Health minister Ben Bradshaw (2009), a former BBC journalist, states a protest held outside the BBC's London HQ over its refusal to broadcast a charity appeal for Gaza. The BBC says it cannot show the appeal by the Disasters Emergency Committee because it does not want to compromise its commitment to impartiality. But he said it was "an inexplicable decision" and that the reasons given were "completely feeble."
Rationale
It is the aim of this chapter to identify the portrayed reality that each of the investigated news sources presents to their public on the situation and the conflict on the Israeli and the Palestinian territories. This chapter attempts to shed the lights on media framing, narrative theory, news decontextualization, and dramatization --through the analysis of headlines and first paragraphs of chosen media sources-- in order to explain how and in what ways the world public opinion, in general, and the American perception, in specific, is shaped and altered.
The power of media lexicon, in constructing readers and viewers’ knowledge about the world, for incident beyond their experiential perception, is well documented (see Lederman, 1992; Cohen, Adoni, & Bantz, 1990). This chapter is most concerned with the difference among mainstream media in portraying “the truth” on the situation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The findings and discussion should show how the media coverage differs from one side of the conflict to the other side and the ultimate goal is to influence their audiences’ opinions especially in the US.
The governments use mainstream media as their strong tool to manipulate and divert public opinion to their sides. To this end, an examination of some of the most popular news sources: The Washington Post; The New York Times; and The Egyptian Gazette, which will allow us to analyze each of their portrayed realities singularly and then in relation to one another. The categories examined are coverage in headlines or first paragraphs of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, deaths, and particularly children’s deaths. We will be designing a graph of the lexicon used in each one and we will take into consideration the political roles of these media resources and their overall stance towards the conflict.
The analysis will enable us to answer certain questions about these different media sources. The main questions of interest in this study are:
1. What type of ‘realities’ or news presented by each of the selected news sources on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
Are there biases in US new coverages?
What is the solution?
In order to tackle these questions, we first have to study the theoretical framework and the ideology behind this media position. In doing so, the chapter will discuss; first, Edward Said’s work on colonialism and post-colonialism theories and the portrayal of “ the other” in his work of “Orientalism.”Second, we will analyze Herman and Chomsky’s (1988) work on the five filters of the controversial Propaganda Model. In elaboration, “Manufacturing Consent” (1988; and updated in Herman 1996), by Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky, claim that because media is firmly imbedded in the market system, it reflects the class values and concerns of its owners and advertisers. According to Herman and Chomsky, the media maintains a corporate class bias through five systemic filters: concentrated private ownership; a strict bottom-line profit orientation; over-reliance on governmental and corporate sources for news; a primary tendency to avoid offending the powerful; and an almost religious worship of the market economy, strongly opposing alternative beliefs. These filters limit what will become news in society and set parameters on acceptable coverage of daily events (Peter Phillips, 2008). A third framework the chapter will focus on is the theory of critical discourse analysis (CDA). The theory argues “the mode in which an action is presented, either as transitive or as non-transitive, is not a matter of truth or of reality but rather a matter of the way in which that particular action is integrated into the ideological system of the speaker, and the manner in which such an action is therefore articulated in a specific discourse." (Ruth Wodak, 1989). In other words, de-contextualizing events from its actual situations distorts realities; the choice of lexical items can change form on place and one context to another to cause an absolute change of meaning. Integrating these three frameworks to the study, will enable us to develop an up-to-date model that will reflect the present structures and influences in the media and the political arena.
Then, the chapter will move on to the analysis of media biases through a methodological section based on the theory of CDA; for example, media diction, leaving out information, lack of accuracy, decontextualization, falsification and exaggeration, and journalists prejudice; we will show how do all these factors occur and how they play the role in twisting realities and in implying a biased perception to the Public.
At the end of the chapter, we will discuss the reasons and political basis that compel these media policies from the unraveling of Truths.
The Role of Media in Middle East Conflicts
As we have discussed earlier, media coverages have a great role in not only shaping the public opinion regarding international conflicts, but also in serving the governments’ political agendas. International media sources such as the BBC, CNN, al Arabiya, and al Jazeera have global reach, and as such have an "agenda-setting effect." This effect, as Steven Livingston (2007) explained, revolves around the ideological components of political disagreements, and more specifically the way key actors in conflict seek to manipulate public perceptions of the disagreement. That is, actors in any conflict will seek to either minimize or exaggerate the conflict, depending upon their relative position of power. In other words, those who are weak will seek to draw media coverage to the conflict while those who in power will seek to minimize the extent of the problems.
Edward Said (2001) talks about media propaganda as “never have the media been so influential in determining the course of war as during the Al-Aqsa Intifada, which, as far as the Western media are concerned, has essentially become a battle over images and ideas.” Israel has already poured hundreds of millions of dollars into funding for producing information marketed to the outside world (hence, propaganda). Israel's has used them in the US so effectively and for so long. Said called this kind of misinformation a double standard propaganda: the intention to cover criminal actions, especially killing people unjustly, with a veneer of justification and reason and calling “war against terror.” What makes this propaganda campaign efficacious is the sustained well illustrated and planted--by Zionists--Western’s sense of guilt for anti-Semitism said, 2001). What could be more efficient than to displace that guilt onto another people, the Arabs, and thereby feel not only justified but also relieved from this hunting picture of the Holocaust; hence, Westerns are not only in peace with “Israelis” but most importantly they are their allies.