guardian.co.uk
Missing In Action
New research suggests that television news fails to
inform young people about what's going on in the
Occupied Territories, or why. Greg Philo explains
Greg Philo
Guardian
Tuesday April 16, 2002
If you don't understand the Middle East crisis it might be
because you are watching it on TV news. This scores high on
images of fighting, violence and drama, but low on explanation.
A new study by the Glasgow University Media Group shows the
effect of this on public understanding. The group interviewed 12
small audience groups (a total of 85 people) with a cross-section
of ages and backgrounds. They were asked a series of
questions about the conflict and what they had understood from
TV news. The same questions were then put to 300 young
people (aged between 17 and 22).
We asked all of these people what came to their mind when
they heard the words "Israeli/Palestinian conflict" and what its
source was. A small number of people had direct experience
(two individuals) and listed accounts from relatives as what had
come to their minds. But most (82%) listed TV news as their
source and to a lesser extent newspapers were also named.
The replies showed that they had absorbed the "main" message
of the news, of conflict, violence and tragedy.
But the research also showed that many people had little
understanding of the reasons for the conflict and its origins. It
was apparent that this lack of understanding (and indeed
misunderstanding) was compounded by the news reports.
Explanations were rarely given on the news and when they were,
journalists often spoke obliquely, almost in a form of shorthand.
For example, in a news bulletin that featured the progress of
peace talks, an ITN journalist made a series of very brief
comments on the issues which underpinned the conflict: "The
basic raw disagreements remain - the future, for example, of this
city Jerusalem, the future of Jewish settlements and the
returning refugees. For all that, together with the anger and
bitterness felt out in the West Bank, then I think it's clear this
crisis is not about to abate."
There are several elements in this statement that require some
background knowledge. "Refugees", for example, are cited as a
key issue. The main audience sample of 300 young people were
asked where the Palestinian refugees had come from and how
they had become refugees. Eighty per cent replied that they did
not know.
To understand the journalist's comments, the audience would
need to have the information that Palestinian refugees were
displaced from their homes and land when Israel was
established in 1948. Shortly after, in May 1948, a major war
broke out between Israel and its Arab neighbours, which
occasioned more people to flee. Many of the refugees moved to
Gaza (which came under the control of Egypt) and to the West
Bank of the Jordan river (under Jordanian control).
In 1967 Israel fought a further war with its Arab neighbours and
in the process occupied Gaza and the West Bank, thus bringing
the Palestinian refugees under its military control. East
Jerusalem, which has great religious and cultural significance for
both Israelis and Palestinians, was also occupied (taken from
Jordan). These military occupations were bitterly resisted by the
Palestinians, not least because Israel built "settlements" all
across the militarily occupied territories.
As Avi Shlaim suggests, the settlements were part of a policy of
exerting strategic and military control, by for example
"surrounding the huge greater Jerusalem area with two
concentric circles of settlements with access roads and military
positions".
The settlements were also built so that they could exploit the
crucial resource of water in the occupied territories. It would not
have taken long on the news to say that much of the Palestinian
economy depended on water and that each Israeli now
consumed three times as much water as a Palestinian. Our
interviewees knew very little of such matters.
The group analysed TV news coverage of the major intifada (or
uprising) by the Palestinians, which began in September 2000.
We focused on the lunchtime, early evening and late night news
on BBC1 and ITN, since these attract very large audiences. The
bulletins from September 28 until October 16 2000 (a total of 89
bulletins) were transcribed and the number of lines of text that
were devoted to different themes were counted. Of 3,536 lines of
text, only 17 explained the history of the conflict. The key issue
of water was barely mentioned. It was apparent that many
people did not understand that the Palestinians were subject to
a military occupation and did not know who was "occupying" the
occupied territories.
On TV news, journalists sometimes used the word "occupied"
but did not explain that the Israelis were involved in a military
occupation. It is perhaps not surprising then that many in the
audience did not understand the nature of the "occupation". In
the sample of 300 young people, 71% did not know that it was
the Israelis who were occupying the territories. Only 9% knew
that it was the Israelis and that the settlers were Israeli. There
were actually more people (11%) who believed that the
Palestinians were occupying the territories and that the settlers
were Palestinian.
So why does the news not give proper explanations of the
history and context of events? One reason is that the news,
along with the rest of television, exists in a very commercial and
competitive market and is concerned about audience ratings. In
this respect it is better to have great pictures of being in the
middle of a riot with journalists ducking stones than to explain
what the conflict is about.
There is a second, perhaps more crucial reason why the TV
newsrooms do not dwell on the history and origins of the
Israeli/Palestinian conflict. This is that to explain these or to
refer to them as underlying the violence could be very
controversial. Israel is closely allied to the United States and
there are very strong pro-Israel lobbies in the US and to some
extent in Britain. It is clear that a lack of discussion of the
origins of the conflict and of the controversial aspects of the
occupation would operate in favour of Israel.
Without the discussion of origins and causes, we are left with
accounts on the news of day-to-day events, in which it can
appear that the "normal" world is disrupted only when the
Palestinians riot or bomb. This is of course the view of the Israeli
government and the news tended to oscillate between this and
the view that violence was perpetrated by both sides in a "cycle"
of "tit-for-tat" killings. The Palestinians believe that they are
resisting an illegal and violent occupation.
There were many examples of the Israeli viewpoint being
adopted by journalists. Palestinian bombings were frequently
presented as "starting" a sequence of events which involved an
Israeli "response". On Radio 4 it was reported that "Five
Palestinians have been killed when the Israeli army launched
new attacks on the Gaza Strip in retaliation for recent acts of
terrorism".
In another exchange on BBC Radio 4, David Wiltshire MP was
asked "What can the Egyptians do to stop the suicide bombers
- because that in the end is what is cranking up the violence at
present?" He replies, "Well that is one view, the Israeli view... ".
On Channel 4 News a journalist reports that: "the Israelis had
carried out this demolition in retaliation for the murder of four
soldiers".
The extent to which some journalism assumes the Israeli
perspective can be seen if the statements are "reversed" and
presented as Palestinian actions. The group did not find any
reports stating that "The Palestinian attacks were in retaliation
for the murder of those resisting the illegal Israeli occupation." A
news journalism which seeks neutrality should not in fact
endorse any point of view, but there were many departures from
this principle.
The analysis found words such as "murder", "atrocity",
"lynching" and "savage cold-blooded killing" were used only to
describe Israeli deaths. Terrible fates befell both Israelis and
Palestinians but there was a clear difference in the language
used to describe them.
For example, on October 10 2000 it was reported that Arab
residents of Tel Aviv had been chased and stabbed. This was
described on ITN as "angry Jews looking for Arab victims". In the
Guardian these events were described as a pogrom. The reports
on television news were extremely brief but two days later when
two Israeli soldiers were killed by a crowd of Palestinians there
was very extensive coverage and the words "lynching" and
"lynch mob" were very widely used. This difference in the use of
language is noteworthy. This is especially so since in this
period, at the beginning of the intifada, nearly 10 times as many
Palestinians had been killed as Israelis.
The news, on the occasions when it did give figures, stated that
more Palestinians had died than Israelis, but only 30% of our
sample of 300 young people believed this to be so. The same
number believed either that the Israelis had the most casualties
or that casualties were equal for both sides. Israelis spoke twice
as much on television news as Palestinians and there were
three times as many headlines that expressed the Israeli view
as that of the Palestinians.
The TV news did feature some criticism of Israel, particularly for
using "excessive force", but it was clear from our work that such
criticism was sometimes muted; for example, a lethal attack by
a helicopter gunship was described using the phrase "Israel
wielded a big stick". More severe criticism emerged from Israel
itself, when Shimon Perez, the Israeli foreign minister, was
reported in October 2001 as trying to "rein in" the Israeli army,
which was accused of deliberately seeking to wreck a cease-fire
by opening fire on protesters.
The notion that there are powerful forces within Israel who do not
wish there to be any peace settlement was rarely explored on
television news. Connections back to how the present intifada
began, when Ariel Sharon walked through the most holy Muslim
sights, producing widespread protests, were rarely explored. On
the first day four Palestinians were reported as shot dead and
150 wounded.
In our research in October 2000, we found that some television
news did report that Israeli soldiers were "showing absolutely no
restraint, firing live ammunition into crowds from twenty metres",
but it was not suggested at this time that the actions of the
army might be linked to a political agenda (ie to stop the peace
process). In contrast, the view put forward by the Israeli
government at the time - that Yasser Arafat was encouraging
violence for political ends - was widely reported and discussed
on TV news.
The lack of explanation on the news about the origins of the
conflict plus the differences in the manner in which both "sides"
had measurable effects on some public understanding. As one
18-year-old in a focus group commented: "You always think of
the Palestinians as being really aggressive because of the
stories you hear on the news. I always put the blame on them in
my own head."
· Professor Greg Philo is research director of the Glasgow
University Media Group. His research will appear in
Developments in Sociology, published next month by Causeway
Press. |
