Zionist voice drowns out Palestinians

international | anti-war / imperialism | news report Wednesday June 23, 2004 18:58 by kokomero

So much for Zionist claims that they are losing the media war to the Palestinians

A study by researchers in scotland has found Israelis were quoted more than twice as often as Palestinians in reports on British news media.

The research shows that UK television news coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is confusing viewers and favouring the Israeli position.

The confusion seems due to lack of historical background to the conflict being provided and leads to many viewers not being sure who was "occupying" whose territory.

They research found that, in addition to "a preponderance of official Israeli perspectives", US politicians who support Israel were "very strongly featured" in news programmes, appearing more than politicians from any other country and twice as much as those from Britain.

They highlighted the fact that the media present the problem as "starting" with Palestinian action, while Israelis were seen to be "responding" with actions that were explained and contextualised, with no discussion of the fact that the Palestinians are under military occupation.

Researchers also found that Israeli casualties were perceived as being higher than Palestinians despite the contrary being true.

They also found that the language used by journalists tended to be emotive with words such as 'atrocity', 'brutal murder', 'mass murder', 'savage cold blooded killing', 'lynching' and 'slaughter' being used exclusively to describe Israeli deaths but not Palestinians who were often described as terrorists.

The chief researcher said there was no evidence that the BBC had been "cowed" into being pro-Israeli, although Orla Guerin for one was the subject of attacks over her factual style in reporting Israeli behaviour.