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TV news biased against Palestinians, says study
Saffiyah
04/17/02 at 15:53:55
Finally someone has actually picked up on it!!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,685042,00.html
TV news biased against Palestinians, says study

Matt Wells, media correspondent
Tuesday April 16, 2002
The Guardian

British television news is routinely biased towards the Israeli view of the conflict, according to academic research.
As a result of lobbying by the Israeli government's public relations machine and the difficulties of explaining a complex story in ratings-driven bulletins, few people can understand the roots of the story, the Glasgow Media Group suggest.

Young people in particular are unaware of key elements of the conflict. In a sample of 300 questioned by the researchers, only 9% knew that Israel was the occupying force.

When the intifada began in 2000, a team led by Professor Greg Philo of Glasgow University examined 3,536 lines of text transcribed from 89 news bulletins. Only 17 lines were devoted to the conflict's history.

Consequently, he said, the Israeli side was favoured, because attacks were portrayed as responses to Palestinian acts.

Writing in today's Guardian, he adds: "A news journalism which seeks neutrality should not endorse any point of view, but there were many departures from this principle."

The broadcasters deny bias. Roger Mosey, BBC head of television news, said: "I don't believe there's any institutional bias towards one side or other in the Middle East conflict."

ITN said: "We've been covering this conflict fairly and impartially for more than half a century. We are not in the business of providing a daily history lesson."

Re: TV news biased against Palestinians, says stud
Anonymous
04/23/02 at 15:43:07
http://reese.king-online.com/Reese_20020415/index.php
                Language Of The Middle East

                Many Americans are confused and misled about the facts of the Middle East because they
                don't understand the language of Israeli propaganda.

                A terrorist is any Palestinian who wants to end the Israeli occupation. A militant is
                anyone the Israelis kill. If they shoot you, you are, by definition, a militant, even if
                you're only 6 months old or 10 years old or 80 years old. The Israelis never kill anybody
                but militants, so all of the more than 70 Palestinian children 15 and younger shot dead by
                Israeli soldiers are militants. Most civilized countries don't think militancy is a
                capital offense.

                Unfortunately, members of the press often adopt the language of propaganda. They report
                that the Israelis have killed 20 militants. In fact, they don't know that. They themselves
                have never seen the 20 dead people. For all they know, they might be Palestinian nuns or
                pacifists. A good reporter will just report what he knows: The Israelis say they have
                killed 20 Palestinians.

                Recently, one of the Fox Network's foxy blondes belligerently demanded of a Palestinian
                spokesman why Yasser Arafat had not made a speech in Arabic demanding an end to terror.
                When the Palestinian finally got a chance to talk, he told her what everybody who follows
                the Middle East already knows: Arafat has condemned terrorism in speeches made in Arabic.
                The spokesman even gave the blond cutie two specific dates and occasions.

                But what's important to us, as consumers of this bilge on television, is this: I think it
                is a most safe assumption that the lady, ordinarily quite pleasant and giggly, does not
                speak Arabic, does not understand spoken Arabic and does not monitor radio and television
                broadcasts in Arabic. So the question is, how would she know whether Arafat had ever made
                a speech in Arabic on any subject? The answer is that she doesn't, yet she adamantly and
                obnoxiously asserted that he had not condemned suicide bombings in Arabic. Where did she
                get that information? From Israeli propaganda.

                It could be that these younger folks who are in-studio types are just naive. Perhaps I
                can help them. All governments lie. Some governments lie on some occasions, some lie on
                many occasions, and some lie on all occasions. The Israeli government is a world-class liar.
                You can count on almost anything it says as being all false, or partly true and partly
                false, or true but out of context.

                The members of the Israeli government are also the most self-centered people on earth. To
                them it is unacceptable for any Israeli to die, but perfectly OK if any number of
                Palestinians die. How little value they place on Palestinian life is illustrated by a sentence
                an Israeli court gave a Jewish settler. His sentence was a fine and community service.
                What was his crime? He had knocked down a 10-year-old Palestinian boy, put his booted foot
                on the child's neck and beaten him to death with the butt of his military pistol. But as
                one of the right-wing rabbis is now saying openly, a Jewish life is more valuable than a
                gentile life.

                President Bush, perhaps the most naive American, wants everyone to call suicide bombers
                murderers. I won't. They are martyrs. Those young Palestinians have done exactly the same
                thing so many young Americans have done - willingly sacrificed their lives for their
                country's freedom. If they are murderers because they kill civilians during a war, then Mr.
                Bush's own father is a mass murderer. His war and his embargo have murdered tens of
                thousands of innocent men, women and children in Iraq. Young Bush is apparently planning to
                murder more.To paraphrase the killer in the movie "Unforgiven," "We are all murderers, kid."

                The irony is that while Bush keeps yapping at Arafat to stop the violence, Bush himself
                refuses to stop the much greater violence inflicted on the Palestinian people by Israel.
                In case he hasn't noticed, there are, to use his favorite phrase, innocent men, women and
                children dying in the occupied territories because of Israeli state terrorism practically
                every day.

                Instead of playing self-righteous semantic games, Bush should devote his energy to
                stopping the killing by everybody, including us. He should strongly support freedom for the
                Palestinians. That's the only way the Israelis will ever have security. And he should
                abandon the idea that the way to stop killing is to kill.


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