International Socialists

Study confirms media bias against Palestinians

Andrew Cooper

If you don’t understand the Middle East conflict it might be because you’re watching it on TV news. That’s the conclusion reached by researchers at Glasgow University’s Mass Media Group after a study of people’s perceptions of television news coverage of the recent Intifada or Palestinian uprising.

The study interviewed audience groups with a cross-section of ages and backgrounds, asking them a series of questions about the conflict and what they had understood from TV news. Another 300 young people filled in a questionnaire. News items on the conflict were analysed closely by researchers.

The results showed that the audience had overwhelmingly absorbed the main "message" of the news – of conflict, violence and tragedy, but few had gained any understanding of the reasons for the conflict and its origins. Explanations were rarely given on the news and when they were journalists tended to speak in a sort of shorthand.

The study group were asked where the Palestinian refugees had come from and how they had become refugees. Only eight percent knew that the refugees were displaced from their homes and land when Israel was established in 1948 in a military offensive to clear the interior of the future Israeli state.

Shortly later more Palestinians were forced to flee a second war between Israel and its Arab neighbours. Many of these refugees moved to Gaza and the West Bank of the Jordan River. In 1967 Israel fought another war against its neighbours during which it occupied Gaza and the West Bank, bringing the Palestinian refugees under its military control. East Jerusalem was later taken from Jordan as well.

Palestinians bitterly resisted these military occupations and the Israeli "settlements." These were far more than just houses. They were part of a strategy of military control over an occupied people.

For the images of suicide bombings and protests to make any real sense at least some of these very basic facts would need to be explained by mainstream journalists. They rarely are, and we are left with images without context.

Of 3,536 lines of text from TV news items on the Intifada analysed by the Glasgow study, only 17 attempted to provide any explanation of the conflict’s history. It was clear from the audience study that most people did not know that the Palestinians were subject to an Israeli military occupation and did not know who was "occupying" the Occupied Territories.

Only nine percent of those taking part knew that it was the Israelis who were occupying the territories and that the settlers were Israeli. Slightly more (11 percent) thought that the Palestinians were occupying the territories and that the settlers were Palestinian.

A lack of discussion on the news of the conflict’s origins clearly operates in favour of Israel. For example the Israeli settlement policy is widely regarded as illegal in International Law. Some newspaper coverage describes the settlements as "illegal" but this is rarely done on TV. Without any discussion of the origins of the conflict, the report points out, all we are left with are accounts of day-to-day events, in which it seems that things are only disrupted when the Palestinians riot or bomb.

The study found that the TV coverage tends to oscillate between this and the view that violence was perpetrated by both sides in a "cycle or revenge" or "tit for tat" killings.

From the Israeli government viewpoint the Palestinians are merely terrorists to whom they are "responding." The study found many examples of this viewpoint being actively promoted by journalists. Palestinian bombings were frequently reported as "starting" a series of events, which necessitated an Israeli "response." The degree to which journalists adopt the Israeli viewpoint can be seen if we reverse some of the common statements used. The study found no coverage where it was reported that "The Palestinian attacks were in retaliation for the murder of those resisting the illegal Israeli occupation."

Reports of Palestinian attacks were found to include extremely negative language like "savage cold-blooded killing," "murder," "atrocity" and "lynching." There was an unspoken assumption of Palestinian fault. On the other hand, reports of Israeli killings of Palestinians often went to great lengths to either explain the deaths as accidental or as being solely in response to Palestinian "violence."

Since the beginning of the present Intifada, around ten times the number of Palestinians have in fact been killed than Israelis.

The biased nature of news coverage had measurable effects on public understanding. As one 18 year old in the study commented: "You always think of the Palestinians as being really aggressive because of the stories you hear on the news. I always put the blame on them in my own head."