This study investigates how the impact of media bias affects the news coverage of catastrophic events with regard to the Palestine/Israel conflict. Particularly, this study focuses on Operation Cast Lead, the 3-week Israeli military assault on the Gaza Strip that resulted in the death of nearly 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis. The Times manner of covering the conflict, characterized in previous research as manifesting media bias toward Israel, is examined within a context of media manipulation, misrepresentation, framing, slant, and linguistic determinism. This study provides insight into the role played by the mainstream media in distorting the facts of the Palestine/Israel conflict in order to present a picture that portrays Israel in a more favorable light.
Ninety-one articles were chosen from the New York Times news and editorial coverage of Operation Cast Lead, from December 27, 2008 to January 18, 2009, plus an additional week as to allow for corrections and further coverage. This study employs content analysis to determine how the New York Times presents their stories and how often they report Palestinian deaths and injuries incurred during the catastrophic period versus the number of Israeli deaths and injuries covered in the texts. BTselem, the Israeli human rights organization, provides data on the number of deaths and injuries during Operation Cast Lead, providing the quantitative base to which this studys results are compared. Although Palestinians died at a rate 106 times more than Israelis, the New York Times engaged in a practice of media bias that resulted in coverage of only 3% of Palestinian deaths in the headlines and first paragraphs. Upon analyzing the articles entireties, this study found that the New York Times covered 431% of Israeli deaths and only 17% of Palestinian deaths, a ratio of 25:1. Only 17% of Palestinian children deaths were covered in the full articles.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-04222010-112812 |
| Date | 21 December 2010 |
| Creators | Caballero, Jonas Xavier |
| Contributors | Dr. Mohammed A. Bamyeh, Dr. Hatem Bazian, Jennifer Saffron, Loubna El Abbadi |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-04222010-112812/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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