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Media Bias and News Coverage of the Middle East

© lawhawk

It seems that every time there are regular news articles in the paper or on TV reporting that some terrorist group has blown up a bus or taken hostages or some other act of violence has occurred. When talking about Israel, it seems that the media has already determined that it is among the most dangerous places in the world to visit, and that terrorists are going around blowing things up. Or that the Israeli Military goes and blows up houses of terrorists indiscriminately in retaliation. However, this could not be further from the reality.

During the intifada, where Palestinian youths took to the streets and threw rocks and molotov cocktails at the Israeli Military, it was known throughout Israel that whenever there was a conveniently placed camera crew in the West Bank or Gaza Strip that the youths should begin stoning the nearest group of soldiers, taking advantage of the cameras being there to record the 'excessive use of force' that the Israeli military used. Needless to say, this was a very productive technique for the Palestinians. They were able to portray Israelis as heavy handed and cruel in their treatment of the Palestinians and would make it appear that the Palestinians would be better off with an independent state to call their own.

Whenever these incidents occurred in the West Bank, they were almost immediately spread along the wire news services and CNN, broadcasting the violence around the world. In Israel, these same incidents were not given this headline status. This isn't to say that the Israeli news was purposely reducing its coverage or acting in a biased manner, but the importance they attached to the news stories were different. Bias in the news is very common when dealing with the Middle East.

News coverage in the region is generally strictly regulated by the governments and rarely does a story escape government censorship. During the Gulf War, it was evident that the Coalition Forces controlled the pictures and stories that were coming from the battlefield in order to keep the coalition together and in support of the war. By showing the technological side of the war, with its clean pictures of bombs hitting air conditioning vents, and bridges blown up by laser guided bombs, the general public was spared the true picture of war. Thousands of Iraqi soldiers were killed during the ground war. We were able to see only one side of the issue.

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