genieyclo

Right, so last Thursday was ‘Blog About Palestine Day’ and I was supposed to:

….and I didn’t..

Soooo…I’ll do so now and try to make it up with a huge list of stats on the conflict.

Nota Bene: These statistics are from July 2006…so they’re a bit dated..but I think that they still give a good picture in the great bias that goes into the reporting of the numbers of both sides.

Who’s Killing Who?

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the world’s major sources of instability. Americans are directly connected to this conflict, and increasingly imperiled by its devastation.

It is the goal of this post to provide full and accurate information about who is getting killed in this conflict, and how that contradicts with how it is being reported.

Below are charts of nine little-known statistics.
Please click on any statistic for the source and more information.
Last Updated: July 17, 2006

Israeli and Palestinian Children Killed Since September 29, 2000		121 Israeli children have been killed by Palestinians and 734 Palestinian children have been killed by Israelis since September 29, 2000.

Israelis and Palestinians Killed Since September 29, 2000			1,084 Israelis and 4,064 Palestinians have been killed since September 29, 2000.

Israelis and Palestinians Injured Since September 29, 2000		7,633 Israelis and 30,376 Palestinians have been injured since September 29, 2000.

Daily U.S. Assistance to Israel and the Palestinians			The U.S. gives $15,139,178 per day to the Israeli government and military and $232,290 per day to Palestinian NGO’s.

UN Resolutions Targeting Israel and the Palestinians		Israel has been targeted by at least 65 UN resolutions and the Palestinians have been targeted by none.

Political Prisoners and Detainees			1 Israeli is being held prisoner by Palestinians, while 9,599 Palestinians are currently imprisoned by Israel.

Demolitions of Israeli and Palestinian Homes		0 Israeli homes have been demolished by Palestinians and 4,170 Palestinian homes have been demolished by Israel since September 29, 2000.

Israeli and Palestinian Unemployment Rates			The Israeli unemployment rate is 8.9%, while the Palestinian unemployment is estimated at 25-31%.

New Settlements Built (March 2001 - July 2003)		60+ new Jewish-only settlements have been built on confiscated Palestinian land between March 2001 and July 11, 2003. There have been 0 cases of Palestinians confiscating Israeli land and building settlements.

Media Coverage of All Deaths

We found a significant correlation between the likelihood of a death receiving coverage and the nationality of the person killed.

In 2004, there were 141 reports in AP headlines or first paragraphs of Israeli deaths. During this time, there had actually been 108 Israelis killed (the discrepancy is due to the fact that a number of Israeli deaths were reported multiple times).

During the same period, 543 Palestinian deaths were reported in headlines or first paragraphs. During this time, 821 Palestinians had actually been killed.⁴

In other words, 131% of Israeli deaths and 66% of Palestinian deaths were reported in AP headlines or first paragraphs.

That is, AP reported prominently on Israeli deaths at a rate 2.0 times greater than Palestinian deaths.

In reality, 7.6 times more Palestinians were killed than Israelis in 2004.

II. Coverage of Children’s Deaths

9 Israeli children’s deaths were reported in the headlines or first paragraphs of AP articles on the Israel/Palestine conflict in 2004, when 8 had actually occurred. During the same period only 27 out of 179 Palestinian children’s deaths were reported. (Children are defined by international law as those who are 17 and younger.)Additionally, Palestinian children made up a disproportionately large number of Palestinian deaths in general. Children’s deaths accounted for 21.8% of the Palestinians killed, while children’s deaths accounted for only 7.4% of Israelis killed during this period.

22 times more Palestinian children were killed than Israeli children.AP reported on 113% of Israeli children’s deaths in headlines or first paragraphs, while reporting on only 15% of Palestinian children’s deaths.That is, Israeli children’s deaths were reported at a rate 7.5 times greater than Palestinian children’s deaths.

Comparing running totals for actual deaths and reported deaths once again reveals that while AP’s reporting on Israeli children’s deaths closely tracks the reality, the reporting on Palestinian children’s deaths lags far behind the actual number, following a path similar to Israeli children’s deaths. This is in stark contradiction to the reality, in which Palestinian children were being killed at a rate over 22 times greater than Israeli children.

In order to discover the impact of repetitions on the study, we examined AP’s coverage of children’s deaths without counting repetitions. We found that AP repeated two Israeli children’s deaths once, and one Palestinian child’s death three times. Hence, not counting repetitions, AP covered 88% of Israeli children’s deaths – a rate of coverage 6.5 times greater than their coverage of Palestinian children’s deaths (of which AP covered 13%.)

III. “Clashes” – A Case Study of AP’s Diction

Many qualitative observations may be made about bias in news coverage. One interesting aspect is the terminology used by a news source in reporting on this conflict. We examined AP’s usage of the words “clash” and “clashes”. Of all the conflict deaths AP reported in 2004, 47 deaths were stated to have taken place during a clash. Every one of those 47 was a Palestinian death, which suggests a more unilateral violence than the word is commonly understood to convey.

Additional Notes: Context

While gathering the data for this study, our analysts looked at hundreds of articles that AP published on topics relating to the Israel/Palestine issue, and noted a number of additional patterns that merit further examination. (The daily reports from the International Middle East Media Center, imemc.org, are useful in evaluating AP’s coverage.)

1. There appeared to be differentiation in the amount and type of contextual information provided regarding the people killed and the circumstances of their deaths. While Israeli deaths were often depicted as innocent victims of Palestinian aggression, Palestinian deaths seemed more often to be portrayed as a necessary result of conflict.
2. We noticed that several pertinent subject areas had been minimally covered by AP. For example:
   • Palestinian prisoners. Torture in Israeli prisons is listed as a concern in the first paragraph of Amnesty International’s report on Israel covering the year 2004.⁵ It was first exposed by the London Times in 1977 and is continually noted by the US State Department, numerous human rights organizations and others.⁶ Over 9,000 Palestinians are currently incarcerated by Israel (over 4,000 have not had a trial),⁷ with the number of Palestinian political prisoners per capita among the highest in the world.⁸ Torture of Americans of Palestinian descent was detailed by Foreign Service Journal in 2002.⁹

   Yet, apart from four stories on a prisoner hunger strike, we could find only two stories that described Israeli prison conditions for Palestinians. Only one AP headline from the area mentioned torture – and this one was about Lebanese, not Palestinian, prisoners.

   • Israeli Refusers. During 2004 numerous Israelis refused to serve in the Israeli armed forces in the occupied territories.¹⁰ By year’s end there were 1,392 such “refuseniks” and 37 had gone to prison. This movement was a topic of increasing discussion in Israel and the subject of numerous news reports. Yet AP had only one story on this.
   • Nonviolence movement. Palestinian resistance efforts have included numerous nonviolent marches and other activities, many joined by international participants, Israeli citizens, and faith-based groups. This nonviolence movement has been an important topic in the Palestinian territories, with growing numbers of people taking part – in 2004 the Palestinian News Network reported on 79 major demonstrations that were exclusively nonviolent. Yet, we did not find any reports in which AP had described a Palestinian demonstration or other activity as nonviolent or utilizing nonviolence.
3. We noticed significant stories that, perplexingly, were sent only on the Worldstream wire, disseminated internationally, but that were not sent to U.S. editors. For example, on May 11, an AP story reported: “The Geneva-based Defense for Children International and Save the Children, based in Sweden, said that as of May 2004, 373 Palestinians under 18 were being held in Israeli detention centers and prisons. At least three of the detainees are under 14…The groups charged that the treatment of Palestinian child prisoners by Israeli authorities amounts to a pattern of violence that has gone unchecked for years…” This story was not sent to U.S. newspapers.

It is unclear to us why this story would be considered newsworthy for readers in other parts of the world but not for readers in the U.S., Israel’s primary ally. A study comparing AP reports sent to U.S. papers to AP reports sent to international papers might be of interest.

Previous studies have shown newspaper coverage often to be significantly more distorted than the pattern we have found for AP,¹¹ and we wonder if AP’s system for alerting newspapers to the top stories of the day may play a role in this differential. We urge newspapers and AP itself to examine this system. We hypothesize that such an investigation would reveal increased distortion.

Conclusions

We are concerned about the results of this study. As the primary newswire, newspapers across the country rely on AP. Since most newspapers cannot afford to send their own correspondents abroad, AP is often one of only a few sources of international news. We believe the readers of these papers, as well as all Americans, are entitled to full and accurate reporting on all issues, including the topic of Israel/Palestine.

Given that AP had ample coverage of this issue (over 700 news stories on deaths alone), it is troubling that so much critical information for American readers was omitted. Further, our findings suggest a pattern of distortion in AP coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict inconsistent with normal journalistic standards. Such a pattern of distortion, in which readers were given the impression that the Israeli death rate was greater than it was, and that the Palestinian death rate was considerably smaller than its reality, may serve to misinform readers rather than inform them.

In particular, our study shows immense distortion in the coverage of children’s deaths. By covering such a large proportion of Israeli children’s deaths in headlines or first paragraphs and such a low proportion of Palestinian children’s deaths, AP’s coverage obfuscated the fact that in actuality over 22 times more Palestinian children were killed than Israeli children.

Now that AP has been alerted to the distortions in its Israel/Palestine coverage, we encourage it to undertake whatever changes are necessary to provide accurate news coverage of this vital issue.

It would be valuable to examine AP’s structure of reporting from the region, its editorial direction from the international desk in New York, and the specific mechanisms AP has in place, if any, to ensure that bias does not intrude on its reporting on this issue.

Finally, in the interest of full and accurate reporting, we urge AP to inform its readers of the findings of this study. In addition, we encourage AP to report the strategies it intends to use in remedying the significant flaws this study has discovered in its coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Summary of Data

Source:Luv4Buddha’s Blog