Study: NY Times‘ Israel Obsession Half a Century Old
Omri Ceren flags an academic study which finds that the New York Times’ Israel obsession is nothing new — it dates back at least five decades. He writes:
There’s an article coming out in the next issue of Communication Research that tries to untangle how and why foreign countries get covered by U.S. news outlets in general, and by NBC and the New York Times in particular. The peer-reviewed piece is a collaboration between researchers spread across Washington state and two Dutch universities, and – like all good academic work – has a soporific title, Foreign Nation Visibility in U.S. News Coverage: A Longitudinal Analysis (1950-2006).
The long timeline means that even regional wars get pushed down the list by Cold War and global diplomacy coverage. So the USSR, China, Britain, and France are all prominent because they’re nuclear powers on the Security Council. Germany and Japan show up a lot because we had just finished fighting them and had troops on their territory.
And then there’s one other distant country with which the U.S. press seems to be preoccupied, above and beyond any country except the USSR:
The first step in our analysis was to examine which countries were most visible during each of the four geopolitical eras analyzed. Table 1 lists the top ten most mentioned foreign nations in the NYT and on NBC during the early Cold War era (1950-1973), the late Cold War era (1974-1991), the post–Cold War era (1992-2001), and the post-9/11 era (2002-2006). Notably, nine countries were among the top ten most mentioned countries in at least four of the eight series analyzed. Specifically, Russia (USSR) and Israel received the most consistent news coverage—followed closely by Britain, China, France, Japan, Germany, Iraq, and Mexico.
More from SNAPSHOTS
Haaretz Editorial Repeats Inaccuracy About East Jerusalem Arabs
April 17, 2018
Despite the fact that just last month Haaretz corrected a news story which erred on the status of east Jerusalem Arabs, an April 10 editorial again misrepresents about the rights of this population, stating: Palestinians [...]
AP and Times of Israel Correct,
Haaretz Retains“Explosive Bullets” ChargeApril 13, 2018
Update: To its credit, Haaretz has also corrected its piece. After intervention by CAMERA, the Associated Press and Times of Israel have commendably corrected stories relaying the outlandish claim that gunshot injuries with exit wounds [...]
‘Moderate’ Fatah Names Children’s Summer Camp After Murderer
April 12, 2018
Khalil al-Wazir and Yasser Arafat, Abbas' predecessor Fatah, the movement that dominates the West Bank-ruling Palestinian Authority (PA), has named a children’s summer camp after a terrorist. Major media outlets routinely describe both Fatah and [...]
Top Palestinian Official: Hamas is Using Human Shields in Gaza for Media Coverage
April 9, 2018
Mahmoud al-Habbash. Image courtesy of Palestinian Media Watch A high-ranking Palestinian Authority (PA) official, Mahmoud al-Habbash, has said that Hamas is sending civilians to die in violent demonstrations along the Israel-Gaza border in order to [...]
Where’s the Coverage? Syria Violates Demilitarized Buffer Zone with Israel
April 8, 2018
Bashar al-Assad The Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad has placed tanks and heavy artillery inside a demilitarized border zone with Israel. Although Assad’s move violates a “decades-old agreement,” it was widely ignored by major U.S. [...]