The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post skewed coverage toward Israeli narratives, according to a quantitative analysis.

The New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times’s coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza showed a consistent bias against Palestinians, according to an Intercept analysis of major media coverage.

The print media outlets, which play an influential role in shaping U.S. views of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, paid little attention to the unprecedented impact of Israel’s siege and bombing campaign on both children and journalists in the Gaza Strip.

Major U.S. newspapers disproportionately emphasized Israeli deaths in the conflict; used emotive language to describe the killings of Israelis, but not Palestinians; and offered lopsided coverage of antisemitic acts in the U.S., while largely ignoring anti-Muslim racism in the wake of October 7. Pro-Palestinian activists have accused major publications of pro-Israel bias, with the New York Times seeing protests Opens in a new tabat its headquarters in Manhattan for its coverage of Gaza –– an accusation supported by our analysis.

  • Arete@lemmy.worldEnglish
    49·
    10 months ago

    Consider how time works. Every article about bombings in Gaza also includes references back to October 7th in giving background information. Thousands of articles in the immediate aftermath of a 9/11 scale event didn’t mention a Palestinian death toll because there weren’t even numbers available.

    Some of the “quantitative” techniques used in this article are downright stupid. Dividing word counts for “Israel” and “Palestine” by the number of deaths in each region? Expecting no drop off in reporting over a six week period? Expecting article counts to scale linearly with reported death counts?

    They’ve measured interest, not bias.

    • Linkerbaan@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      105·
      10 months ago

      Not at all. This article confirms other research such as from three months ago by Holly Jackson:

      "

      The New York Times has consistently mentioned Israeli deaths more often than Palestinian deaths overall from 10/7 to 10/22. Israeli deaths have been mentioned the most on 10/12 and 10/13, even though Israeli deaths plateaued since 10/12 and Palestinian deaths have skyrocketed.

      Coverage of Israeli deaths increased as Palestinian deaths began to skyrocket.

      In addition to the bias in sheer volume of coverage, there was a huge difference in the language used. The word “slaughter” was used 53 times in these articles since 10/7 to describe the deaths of Israelis and zero times to describe the death of Palestinians. The word “massacre” shows up 24 times in reference to Israelis and once in reference to Palestinians in the tagged sentences.

      The articles rarely mention the names of Palestinians who die — instead using terms like “mourner”, “resident”, “assailant” or “militant”.

      In one article, a murdered Palestinian was simply referred to as the “bloodied corpse” of a presumed “terrorist”. This is still counted as a mention of a Palestinian death in the data despite the framing. Israelis who died were often mentioned individually and by name with reference to their families and professions which humanized them in comparison to anonymous Palestinians.

      "

      So not only is the reporting frequency different, the language use is also completely different depending on which party is being reported on.

      This combined with the fact that multiple reporters have now leaked that their articles have to pass the IDF and get edited by them before being allowed for publication, often softening the language towards israel.

      • Arete@lemmy.worldEnglish
        59·
        10 months ago

        Ok can you understand how words like “slaughter” and “massacre” may more aptly apply to the October 7th attack than to the subsequent invasion?

        On one side we have a mass terror attack involving 1000+ deaths. These were often done individually, with a single terrorist targeting and shooting a person in their home. Often these were accompanied by acts of torture, rape, mutilation, and desecration of corpses. In many cases children were shot in front of their parents. Oh and several hundred people were kidnapped. This invokes words like “slaughter”, “massacre”, “brutal”, “inhuman”, “sickening”, etc.

        On the other side we have a large scale counterattack with huge amounts of bombing, refugee camps, and urban warfare. This invokes words like “destruction”, “uninhabitable”, “aggressive”, “excessive”, etc.

        It’s completely unfair to call someone biased for using different diction to describe these events.

        • NevermindNoMind@lemmy.worldEnglish
          91·
          10 months ago

          The point your making is at best that journalists aren’t biased in favor of Israel as a country, they are biased in favor of nation-state sanctioned slaughter. When a “terrorist” attacks people in their homes, that is horrific. When a nation-state levels an entire neighborhood, that’s a “counterattack.” The most charitable version of your argument is that these publications don’t just devalue Palestinian lives, they simply devalue all civilian lives when a nation state uses indescriminate force. So long as the people doing the killing are flying a internationally recognized flag and doing that killing in an impersonal way, it is not “tragic” or “horrific” or a “slaughter.” The fact that the human suffering that results is on a far greater scale is of no consequence, if a nation state does it it’s fine. Your argument is arguably far worse.

          But that’s not what is happening here. If Russia or China had clustered two million minorities in a small walled area, and then bombed the ever living shit out of them, killing at least 10,000 women and children, displacing 90 percent of the population, cutting off food, water, and power for months at a time, do you think the NYT or WaPo would refrain from calling that a “massacre” or “slaughter” or “horrific”? Of course not, the bad guys killing civilians gets emotionally charged language. The “good guys” killing civilians is just the unavoidable consequence of a “counterattack” after a “horrific slaughter”, proportionality be damned.

          This article actually does a great job of quantitfying this bias, I encourage you to actually read it.

          In conclusion, take your head out of your ass.

        • Linkerbaan@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          86·
          10 months ago

          No bombing little kids with amputated legs inside a hospital is far worse. Hamas didn’t shoot a single child.

          What israel does is indiscriminate slaughter and Genocide.

          You seem to still be repeating false propaganda from said outlets. The rape was a made up lie that has been debunked already.

          October 7 was not an indiscriminate slaughter whatsoever. 1/3 of the casualties were military and that’s including a huge part of the civilians were killed by the IDF, who killed them to prevent hostages being taken.