Is much of the west's media biased against Israel?

Anyone who has read this blog for any length of time will know that I believe the answer is yes and I have shown the proof time and time again. Today I will just link you to this piece from The Journal of Applied Business Research – November/December 2011 Volume 27, Number 6, entitled Reuters: Principles Of Trust Or Propaganda? It's written by Henry I. Silverman of Roosevelt University, USA and is a must read, if rather long and detailed.

Here are some of the results:

'With respect to research questions 1-3: across the fifty articles in the data sample, ECA reveals 1,104 occurrences of reporting/ethical failures, i.e., propaganda devices, logical fallacies, and violations of the Reuters Handbook of Journalism, with a mean of 22.08 reporting/ethical failures per article. The propaganda device of asymmetrical definition occurs most frequently with a total of 129 instances followed by the propaganda device of card stacking with 94 occurrences. The logical fallacy occurring most frequently is appeal to pity and the Handbook violation occurring with the greatest frequency is that of a failure to uphold social responsibility.

...

In a particularly egregious example of card stacking and historical reconstruction reminiscent of the Lebanese doctored photo scandal discussed in the introduction to this paper, Reuters publishes a large captioned photo on May 31, 2010 depicting an injured Israeli commando being held down by passengers on board the Mavi Marmara during the violent incident discussed above. The original photo was taken by a passenger on the ship and published on the website of the Turkish Islamist group, İnsani Yardım Vakfı (IHH), which sponsored the Gaza flotilla. In a comparison between the original photo and that published by Reuters, one notes the Reuters version has been materially cropped, excising a serrated knife held by one of the passengers, a pool of blood, and another injured Israeli commando prostrate on the floor. A violation of the Reuters Handbook, the cropping removed contextually essential information, i.e., evidence of the weapons held and deployed by passengers against the Israelis, thus effectively censoring the facts revealed by the original photo. Reuters has since acknowledged the photo manipulation but insists that this had been ―normal editorial practice‖.20

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Over 500 Israeli civilians died in 140 Palestinian suicide bomb attacks from 2000 to 2007. More than 4,500 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in the same period.
Even here however, serious reporting failures occur. In an instance of card stacking, Perry includes all Palestinians killed by any means but willfully excludes Israeli security personnel and those Israelis killed by means other than suicide bomb attacks. When these groups are included, the number of Israelis killed rises to more than double Perry's appraisal.29 And note how Perry describes the Israelis as having (passively) "died" while Palestinians were (actively) "killed". The use of the word ―died‖ here reflects another euphemism, and the asymmetric distorting of the casualty figures represents the propaganda device of error of statistical inference as well as being a violation of the Reuters‘ Handbook admonition to its journalists to take no side, tell all sides.30

A particularly rich example of this reporting failure can be seen in a Reuters story published on June 1, 201034 about the Turkish flotilla bound for Gaza discussed earlier in this section. Although more than 85 percent of the story content consists of quotes from passengers promoting their version of the incident and no comments from Israeli officials or military personnel participating in the operation are provided (a violation of the Reuters Handbook35), Reuters headlines its story with the presumptive title ―Factbox‖. Following this, is an overt lie and non sequitur:
Israel has detained some 700 activists incommunicado, ensuring no contradiction of its version of events. [italics mine]
Reuters then proceeds to quote five of the passengers contradicting Israel‘s version of events[!]. The passenger comments are laden with emotional accounts of violations of international law, including alleged atrocities, by Israeli commandos. Passenger Mutlu Tiiryaki for example, asserts:
When we went up to the deck, they emerged from helicopters and military boats and attacked us. They approached our vessel with military ships after issuing a warning. We told them that we were unarmed. Our sole weapon was water.
In this instance of card stacking, Reuters fails to report that Tiryaki was not actually a passenger on the Mavi Marmara, the ship where passengers met and assaulted Israeli commandoes with knives and iron bars.36 Moreover, nowhere in the story does Reuters interview or provide alternative testimony from Israelis, several of whom were severely beaten, knifed and immobilized by passengers as documented by video footage and photographs taken by both Israeli military sources and the passengers themselves as noted earlier.37

On August 3, 2010, an Israeli military maintenance crew was paring tree branches on the Israeli side of the ―Blue Line‖, the official United Nations border demarcation between Israel and Lebanon to its north, when Lebanese troops opened fire on the crew and security positions on the Israeli side of the border killing an Israeli officer and seriously wounding another. Israeli forces immediately retaliated, killing a Lebanese army sergeant. The following day, Reuters published a captioned photo of the daughter of the dead Lebanese soldier, crying at his funeral. In this example of the logical fallacy of appeal to pity, the propaganda technique of card stacking, and the Handbook violation of take no side/tell all sides, Reuters elicits sympathy for the Lebanese soldier and his family while providing no balancing depiction of Israeli familial losses, despite the fact that the Lebanese military initiated the violence resulting in the fatalities.

As demonstrated by 75 occurrences across the data sample, Reuters regularly violates this policy in its Middle East reporting. In a story published on its website on July 7, 201039 ―Palestinians wary of direct peace talks with Israel‖, correspondents Ali Sawafta and Douglas Hamilton refer to the last unallocated portion of the Palestine Mandate as the ―West Bank‖ seven times. The appellation ―West Bank‖ was assigned to the territory in 1949 by the Arabs of Jordan (then ―Transjordan‖) following their invasion, conquest, and illegal occupation of the land and associated ethnic cleansing of Jewish communities from the area.40 The acknowledged Israeli-Judeo name for the disputed territory is Judea and Samaria, any reference to which is notably absent from Sawafta and Hamilton‘s story. This asymmetric handling falsely suggests Jordanian or Arab sovereignty of the land, underscores Reuters‘ Arab ethnocentric vantage point, and thus, the agency‘s support for the Arab side of the conflict.
Similarly, Sawafta and Hamilton cite Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas‘ aide Nabil Abu Rdainah:
In talks mediated by former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice the Israelis acknowledged that occupied land means the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Arab East Jerusalem, the Dead Sea and the Jordan Valley, [Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ aide] Abu Rdainah said.
In violation of the Reuters Handbook, Sawafta and Hamilton parrot the term ―West Bank‖ and the loaded expression ―Arab East Jerusalem‖, again revealing a distinctly Arab ethnocentric vantage point. Moreover, no Israeli source is cited that might otherwise contravene Abu Rdainah‘s assertion that Israel had acknowledged these areas as ―occupied‖, a violation of the fairness doctrine of Reuters Handbook41. Indeed, as Israel claims all of Jerusalem under its sovereignty, it is highly unlikely any Israeli official would refer to the eastern portion of Jerusalem as ―Arab East Jerusalem‖, the reference to which also reflects a historical reconstruction.'

Do read the whole paper, there are many more examples.


The report also analyses how the anti-Israel bias affects the reader/viewer, here are some examples that show why this sort of bias is practiced by media outlets such as Reuters and why it is so dangerous:

'With respect to research question 4, on average, subjects take a largely neutral view of the belligerents going into the study (untransformed mean 3.18) but substantially shift their view in favor of the Arabs/Palestinians over the course of the readings (untransformed mean 2.17). Similarly, with respect to research question 5, prior to the readings subjects are nearly dead neutral on whether they feel motivated to take supportive action on behalf of one or the other belligerent parties (untransformed mean 3.12) but over the course of the readings, subjects feel significantly more motivated to take supportive action on behalf of the Arabs/Palestinians (untransformed mean 2.35).

There is a highly significant and negative association between propaganda (Falsehoods, Omissions, Distortions) appearing in the sample stories and reader responses to each of the survey questions. Specifically, as the frequency of atrocity propaganda increases, subject responses shift toward the lower end of the scale, i.e., become increasingly favorable/sympathetic toward the Arabs/Palestinians. Similarly, an increase in atrocity propaganda motivates subjects to take supportive action on behalf of the Arabs/Palestinians. These results strongly suggest that when atrocity propaganda is employed by Reuters (32 occurrences across the sample), it is typically arrayed against the Israelis, i.e., the Israelis are portrayed as the offending party committing atrocities against the Arabs/Palestinians.'

Do read the whole paper there are many more examples.


Now Reuters is not alone in its bias against Israel and that is why the next extract from the article needs to be read with the BBC in mind:

'Although Reuters is not a recognized belligerent in the Middle East conflict, the agency‘s use of (one-sided) atrocity propaganda to influence its audience may be viewed as a form of psychological warfare as defined by Lineberger (1954) in that it is successfully driving attitude changes and motivating its readership to take direct action to support one of the belligerents, the Arabs/Palestinians, in response to stories of ―inhuman acts‖ allegedly perpetrated by the Israelis. This is akin to the purpose, content, and success of atrocity propaganda circulated by both the Allies and Germany during the first world war (Jowett and O‘Donnell, 1999).


The final question for study asks what can be inferred about the ideology and purpose of Reuters Middle East reporting from the data. With its much vaunted Trust Principles and Handbook of Journalism, Reuters would have us believe that its reporting on the Arab/Israeli conflict is consistent with the agency‘s commitment to ―integrity, independence, and freedom from bias‖54 and that its correspondents and editors in this area are making all efforts ―to search for and report the truth, fairly, honestly, and unfailingly‖55, i.e., to adhere to the highest ethical standards of professional journalism.
Yet, the findings reveal a radically different journalistic approach and product and suggest a very different set of objectives for the agency. The enormous number of reporting/ethical failures in the form of propaganda devices, logical fallacies, and violations of the Reuters Handbook seen in the story sample, the largely asymmetric nature of these failures, and the demonstrated ability to powerfully shape reader attitudes and motivate direct action via the deployment of atrocity propaganda, appeals to pity and appeals to poverty, provide strong evidence of an ideology which is heavily partisan, i.e., supportive of the Arabs/Palestinians, and an explicit purpose to systematically disseminate that ideology and manipulate audiences to adopt the same. This would be a clear violation of Reuters‘ ethical charter, the Trust Principles, as well as the ethical and professional guidelines set out in the Reuters Handbook.

Conclusion
This paper examines a sample of fifty news-oriented articles related to the Middle East conflict published on the Reuters proprietary websites across a three month study window. A combination of Ethnographic Content Analysis and primary survey data are employed to identify, code and validate reporting/ethical failures in the articles, i.e., propaganda, logical fallacies, and violations of the Reuters Handbook. Tests are run to measure for 1) shifts in audience attitudes and support for the primary belligerent parties in the Middle East conflict following readings of the sample and, 2) associations between the reporting/ethical failures and audience attitudes/support. Over 1,100 occurrences of reporting/ethical failures across forty-one categories are identified and a significant shift in audience attitudes and support following article readings is observed. Significant associations are found between 1) the use of atrocity propaganda and audience favorability/sympathy toward the Arabs/Palestinians; 2) the use of the appeal to pity fallacy and audience favorability/sympathy toward the Arabs/Palestinians; and 3) the use of atrocity propaganda, appeal to pity and appeal to poverty fallacies, and audience motivation to take supportive action on behalf of the Arabs/Palestinians. It is inferred from the evidence that Reuters engages in systematically biased storytelling in favor of the Arabs/Palestinians and is able to influence audience affective behavior and motivate direct action along the same trajectory. This reflects a fundamental failure to uphold the Reuters corporate governance charter and ethical guiding principles.'

I wonder if anyone has the time to carry out a similar study on another non recognised belligerent in the Middle East conflict whose use of (one-sided) atrocity propaganda to influence its audience may be viewed as a form of psychological warfare - the BBC...