Gaza Conflict: A Media Analysis
Executive summary
- The BBC failed to make a crucial distinction between opinion and fact in their coverage of the conflict
- The BBC’s Middle East Editor’s Gaza diary on the BBC website contained highly partial and often emotional commentary but was not identifi ed as opinion
- The Middle East Editor demonstrated a preoccupation with humanizing Palestinian perspectives, impacting negatively on the impartiality of his coverage. Not one of his TV reports contained the personal story of an Israeli
- The BBC did not sufficiently differentiate between civilian and Hamas casualties. Only 11% of monitored radio broadcasts and 10% of monitored TV broadcasts made this distinction. However, 40% of broadsheet press articles made the distinction
- 75% of the Financial Times’ editorials and 71% of The Guardian’s editorials were ‘less favourable’ towards Israel’s operation. Neither paper published a ‘favourable’ editorial. The Times was the daily broadsheet that published the greatest proportion of ‘neutral’ editorials – 50% of their editorials on the conflict
- The Guardian and The Independent published five times as many opinion pieces critical of Israel’s occupation than supportive
- Hamas was also under-represented in cartoons about the conflict. The group was only featured in one quarter of all cartoons. More than 75% depicted Israel as the primary aggressor
- Israeli officials constituted the largest proportion of quoted individuals within the coverage as a whole - representing 30% of total quotations for press, 16% for radio and 42% for TV. This represented more than three times as many press quotations as Hamas officials. The Guardian featured twice as many quotations from Hamas as The Times, Daily Telegraph and Financial Times
- In their editorial pieces, the press demonstrated an even balance of perspectives throughout the conflict. Of all broadsheet editorials, 34% were classified as ‘neutral’ about Israel’s operation in Gaza, 32% took a ‘less favourable’ stance and 34% were ‘more favourable’
- The UK media significantly under-represented the nature of Hamas and its policies towards Israel, particularly its use of violence and rejection of Israel’s right to exist. In the first week of the conflict, only 5% of broadsheet news articles, 6% of monitored radio reports and 10% of monitored TV reports mentioned any aspects of Hamas’ stance towards Israel
- There was an absence of imagery depicting Hamas’ militancy throughout coverage of the conflict. Only 4% of broadsheet photographs in the first week depicted Hamas’ militancy. Only one photograph appeared of a Palestinian firing a rocket towards Israel. However, BBC TV did feature frequent footage of rocket attacks into Israel
- Two crucial aspects of the recent confl ict between Israel and Hamas were widely under-reported: that Hamas had been attacking areas of southern Israel since 2001 - mentioned in no monitored BBC TV reports and in only 10% of all broadsheet news articles - and that Israel unilaterally disengaged from Gaza in 2005 – not mentioned in any BBC TV reports and just 8% of all broadsheet news articles
- Considerable attention was placed on Israel’s restriction on media access to Gaza. However, there was a widespread failure to acknowledge Hamas’ influence on the media environment inside Gaza and its impact on sources and statistics from the territory
- There were more than three times as many press quotations from Palestinian civilians as Israeli civilians
- Opinion pieces in the broadsheets were twice as likely to be ‘less favourable’ than ‘favourable’ towards Israel’s operation
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