Media Bias in the Middle East Crisis in America

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One of the most long standing conflicts has been the Middle East Crisis. The misunderstanding between Palestine and Israel has been one of the most covered media article in all the media houses of the world. International news are full of news of rocket launching both on civilians and army, casualties being rushed to hospitals, homesteads reduced to rubbles etc. however, there has been instances of bias in the broadcasting of these news. Several organizations have accused the Western Media for being bias in its reporting. This essay will therefore highlight the ways by which one can identify instances of bias and show how these techniques have been used by the American media to report the news of the Middle East Crisis.

Stereotypical instances of coverage in the news form a technique of bias. When covering a crime, a certain group of people, race, ethnicity, gender, religion, etc should not be believed or stereotyped to be the criminals. The real issue should be covered according to the unfolding the events. A good example of this in the United States Media coverage of the Middle East crisis comes in terms of criminalizing the Israeli forces. Most of the Media houses stereotype the Israeli forces as aggressive and merciless people who take all advantage in ensuring that they oppress the harmless women and children of the Palestinians decent (Katz, 2009).

A good example of this was shown in the way a photo journalist of the Associated Press portrayed the photo of Tuvia Grossman that was spread in many media houses. In this photo, an Israeli soldier was captured standing over a battered Grossman drenched in Blood. And the caption read, “An Israeli policeman and a Palestinian on the Temple Mount.” Although this picture was used all over the world giving a picture of Israelis as the aggressors, the truth is that the bartered student was of an American Jewish who had been dragged from a taxi by Arabs in Jerusalem and beaten then stabbed. The misrepresentation, unfortunately, portrayed the perpetrators as the victims and the victims as the perpetrators. This shows the stereotypical belief that all people who are attacked are Palestinians and those who attack are Israeli soldiers (Katz, 2009).

Using double standards during reporting can be used as a tool of framing. This is used by the media to create a certain inclination by the public towards a given topic. Double standards come in terms of reporting the same form of event in kinder words on one side of the characters while using harsher words on the other side of the same event (Fair, 2000). A good example of this in the US media was the reporting of the riots on October 13, 2000 (Katz, 2009). According to Katz, courtesy of CAMERA, an organization made to check on the fairness of the American media in the reporting on the issue of the Middle East Crisis, the headlines read that what the Palestinians were doing was protesting while Israelis rampaged.

This is what we term as using double standards. While the activity was the same – an attack on the enemies, the Israelis were said to rampage while the Palestinians were said to be protesting or demonstrating. This is meant to portray Israelis as aggressors and oppressors while the Palestinians are portrayed as people trying to fight for their rights.

Diction plays an important role in shaping of people’s perception of an issue. For example, use of heavily loaded words will create a certain feeling towards the subject in question. For example, use of inflammatory words will create a feeling of hatred and revenge towards a perpetrator of a given crime. This technique provides a very dangerous weapon with which the media can develop bias. This can be done through the use of certain vocabularies which create either a feeling of sympathy or create a feeling for action (Fair 2009). This has been very evident in the American media when reporting on issues concerning the Middle East Crisis.

When president carter visited the Middle East and met with most of the Arab heads in 2007, Fox news Network used a heavy language to portray that Palestinians were a group of people that were to be avoided. In an interview at the fox news hosted by Sean Hanity and Allan Colmes, the words used when trying to inquire from Steve Berman who was the guest whether president carter was a supporter of Hamas, were very negative. They referred to Hamas as terrorists, Islamic extremists, and many other negative adjectives that made Hamas look like a killer group. The media therefore used heavy words like terrorists and extreme Islamists to create a sense of negative attitude towards Hamas by the public (Rashmawi et al, 2008).

When reading a news article, is the context well portrayed? If the answer is no, then the writer of the news article is trying to create bias. A good news article should provide other relevant information that led to the event in question in an appropriate manner. An incidence should not be reported in a hanging manner that does not show the events that led to the rise of the same event. For example, when reporting a case of a judge sentencing one to life sentence, one should also show the crimes committed so as the sentence is justified (Fair, 2009). American media has shown bias in this method in several occasions.

Agwaral (2004) shows that the American media has always portrayed the issue of the Middle East crisis with bias. This he attribute to the fact that media houses avoid repetition of news in order to avoid redundancy which can lead to losing of clients. But the repercussions are detrimental. The public is likely to form negative attitude towards either Palestinians or Israelis if they actually don’t understand the root cause of the conflict. In most cases, the events have always been reported without including the root cause which is the main context that will allow one to understand the reason for certain action. This forms the cases of lack of context.

Commercialism of news causes the reduction of the weight of this matter in the American media houses. Most of them concentrate on trivial issues that carry no much significance at the place of important news like the Middle East crisis. According to Harper and Yantek (2001), for two decades, television news coverage has been brought under criticism over their emphasizing on trivial events like horse racing and beauty contest at the expense of more important national issues. This placement of news has a great impact on its importance to the public. Fair (2009) cites prominence featuring of a news article as important in the influence of the public opinion. Only articles in the front pages of a news paper and those that appear in the editorial are given priority by the readers. The same applies to lead stories on television and radio.

These issues mentioned above – entertainment and sports, force the issue of Middle East crisis reporting to take a back stage role and thus offer little impact on the audience.

According to the democratic theory, the media is obligated to act to the interest of the common citizen. A highly influential segment of the population is not supposed to offer information under the influence of their power that favors them because this weakens the democracy of the society (Snider, 2003). This influential group can as well be the media owners themselves. This shows that media owners can create bias according to their perception of the issue. In addition, they can be influenced by other segments of the society to air the news inclining on their side as long as the owners know that they stand a chance of benefiting by winning favor of this segment. For example, a media owner who favors a certain political party will be likely to air the news inclining on the views of the political party in favor.

Finally, the reporting of the Palestine/Israeli affair has been marred by bias which results from self censorship. This results from intimidation caused by the Hamas on both the domestic and foreign journalists (Balint, 2001). She attributes this to the taking of power of by the Palestinian authority where several local media were muzzled. Balint then says that this does not only occur on local media but also foreign media. They are forced to practice self censorship so as to protect their journalists in Palestine.

In conclusion, the coverage of the Middle East crisis has been marred with bias on both side of the affair. This comes as a result of the political inclination of the media owners, influence from influential segment of the society, and as a result of commercialism of news. Therefore, it will take the relevant bodies a little bit more effort in ensuring that they correct this media malpractice.

References:

Balint J.l., “Media Frightened into Self Censorship.” WorldNet Daily. 2001. Web.

Fair. How to Detect Bias in News Media. 2009. Web.

Katz, L., “Goliath is Jewish.” CAMERA. 2009. Web.

Harper, J. and Yantek, T., Media, Profit and Politics. Kent State University: Kent, 2003.

Rashmawi, J., Calderon, N., Maddox, S., Long, C., Hobbs, A., and Phillips, P. “US Media Bias, Human Rights, and the Hamas Government in Gaza.” Project Censored. 2009. Web.

Snider J.H., and Benjamin, I. “Does Media Ownership Affect Media Standards?” Annual Meeting of Midwest Political Science Association. 2003. Web.

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Media Bias in the Middle East Crisis in America

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