Friday, January 9, 2009

Bias

This is an excellenct article about bias in Western media in the coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza. Once again Al Jazeera proves to have more substantive news and less propaganda than Fox...

Posted by Landon at 8:07 PM  

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2 comments:

Mark

While I agree with the author's premise, I think its worth pointing out his own bias. If it isn't already, media coverage of the Israel-Palestinian conflict should be taught in journalism school, as so little if any of the coverage on either side is "objective." Its not that the coverage is so bad, but because the nature of the conflict amplifies the innate ideologies present in any writing.

Here are some things I noticed in Habib Battah's article:

1) Battah compares the body counts: 350 to 3. However, he doesn't note that about 3/4 (from other estimates I've read) of the Palestinian dead were Hamas soldiers.
2) He is cherry picking biased reports form the U.S. media. I guess I can't speak for cable, but all the articles I read include the estimated Palestinian deaths, which he says are often not included.
3) He assumes that the Washington Post is reporting what it is to reflect the position of the U.S. government. Instead, they are reflecting the position of the U.S. public. This doesn't make it any better coverage, but I think its important to point out.
4) The author suggests that it is American bias that causes them to report the Israeli point of view. "Most US networks have reported exclusively from Israel," he says. However, it is not American press' fault that Israel won't allow any of them into Gaza to get the Palestinian's point of view. I think the U.S. press should, however, mention this explicitly.

Also, Hamas and some Palestinian reporters make a habit of setting up scenes of horrific carnage for photo-ops, so I'm not surprised if the Western press doesn't want to trust random stuff coming out of Gaza that they don't know the source of.
5) He says, "Unlike the US networks, which are often limited to one or two correspondents in Israel, major Arab television channels maintain correspondents and bureaus throughout the region." It would be nice if the press could afford this, but unlike Al Jazeera, the U.S. press doesn't broadcast to Gaza. Does Al Jazeera have a bureau in Denver or Portland? The U.S. press is usually based in Jerusalem, which happens to be both both an Israeli and Palestinian city. BBC World and CNN International have teams around the world because they broadcast around the world.

January 10, 2009 at 1:06 AM  
Landon

All good points. I think what is really key is to have multiple news sources, so you can piece together what is really going on.

In any case, I would prefer it if the cable channels paid more attention to the Gaza conflict than what Sasha and Malia Obama are eating for lunch at school this week (see Wednesday's Daily Show).

January 10, 2009 at 7:48 PM  

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