Searching for Common Values in Reporting the Arab-Israeli Conflict


When the New York Times reported the killing of a 10 months old Israeli baby girl and a four months old Palestinian baby girl in two separate stories earlier this year, the Palestinian Media Watch used them as evidences of what it called the US media pro-Israeli coverage of the conflict.

The Palestinian Media Watch analysed the stories and found out the headline used for the Israeli victim’s story was straightforward, active voice, directly accusing the Palestinians (Palestinians Kill Baby Girl in West Bank), while the magazine used a circuitous headline accusing the Israeli guns, not Israelis of killing a Palestinian baby (Littlest Victim in the Mideast: Israeli Guns Kill 4-month-old).

A photo of the Israeli baby, Shalhevet Pass, in her parents’ arms was shown with the story while no such a photo of the Palestinian baby, Iman Hajjo, was shown. “Both stories did not include a single quote from a Palestinian official while generous quotes (highlighted in light blues) from the Israeli Prime Minster, Ariel Sharon, and other officials were provided,” the Palestinian Media Watch stated.

Such a way of reporting on the Arab-Israeli conflict might have reinforced Arabs’ beliefs that they are not fairly treated by the US media and prompted them to accuse it of being biased. If the American news media are really biased, why are they so and what should the Arabs do to gain better coverage of their news?

In an attempt to answer these questions, Al-Ahram Regional Press Institute in cooperation with the Religious News Service from the Arab World, RNSAW, invited two Western media experts to a session of a six-week workshop titled 'Comparing Western and Egyptian perspectives in covering current affairs'.

Ralph Berenger, Assistant Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication at the American University in Cairo and Arne Fjeldstad, an associate professor of communication at the University of Oxford’s Institute of Communication Excellence, focused their discussion on the framing theory as a possible explainer of the way the Arab-Israeli conflict in reported.

Framing, according to Berenger, is how people make up their minds about a given situation. It is trying to explain how people get pieces of information, accept them, and perceive them through the process of selective perception. In perceiving information, people are affected by two internal mechanisms: the core opinion frame and the peripheral opinion frame.

The core opinion refers to the individual’s strongly held values and attitudes that are difficult to change while the peripheral opinion refers to the individual’s world view and the things that interest him. When receiving new pieces of information, the peripheral opinion frame selects what should be perceived and what should not according to values and attitudes held in the core opinion frame, he said.

When reporting stories, media practitioners tend to frame the issues affected by their core and peripheral opinion frames. “Each reporter is first a citizen of his country of choice or of birth and his primary loyalties to it,” Berenger said. Reporters are affected by their loyalties and sometimes they add to the problems by slanting, choosing what to cover and ignoring some aspects that might, if reported, help smooth the situation, he added.

Some reporters even distort the facts to fit in pre-conceived actions. They pre-conceive the stories before doing it. They come with certain bias out of their core opinion frame, he said.

Berenger discussed an example of framed reporting. There were eleven pictures taken by the AFP of a Palestinian man while being stopped and shot by Israeli soldiers in a checkpoint. Excluding a picture of a dynamite belt the Palestinian man had around his body or in the car makes up a different story.

Let the Truth speaks out:

Though Berenger admitted the hardness of getting out the truth, he said professional media practitioners could overcome their biases in reporting through recognizing their own preconceived ideas about the stories before they cover. “A professional knows himself or herself and his or her biases. First step is to recognize them,” he said.

Journalists should also understand that their coverage contributes to “a spiral of silence” among their readers and viewers. Berenger stated that spiral of silence is a common phenomenon in our societies where “voices that differ from ours are stilled by overwhelming covering and the perception that their comments are unwelcome or could even draw a hostile response if they differ from the accepted line.”

The third solution he suggested was to encourage editors to select photographs and stories that tell the story without inflaming the public emotions. Most important of all, according to Berenger, is to search for common values.

“Try to identify your personal frames and how they fit with universal values. Then, try to analyze the opposition’s frames and how they fit with universal values,” he said. “These values define our ‘humaness’. Some universal values that cut across religious, ethnic, cultural and social boundaries are truth, love, loyalty, honesty, freedom, respect, pursuit of happiness and the desire to be safe.”

A view from Europe:

Though the accusation of being biased is not only directed for the US media, but extends to the European continent also, Arne Fjeldstad said there has been a noticeable shift in the European media coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The European media tend to be pro-Palestinians because of Europeans’ perception of the word ‘occupation’. “After years of suffering from the German occupation, the Europeans have understood the meaning of occupation,” he said.

Fjeldstad presented what he called ‘the Potter Box’, which attempts to explain how journalists should frame their reporting. “The Potter Box contains four steps. The first is the empirical definition, which is related to understanding the facts about the issue of concern, and the second is to identify the values, which involves outlining the values inherent in the decision. The third step is appeal to ethical principles and the four is choosing loyalty,” he said.

Though Fjeldstad’s view of media practitioners’ duty seemed far theoretical than Berenge’s, both highlighted the need for journalists who understand the problems they are reporting and who have the power and responsibility to go beyond their own loyalties for the sake of revealing the facts.

Instead of framing the stories in a way that serves the journalist’s own interests and loyalties, Fjeldstad said it is legitimate for the journalist to add his own description of the situation after presenting the facts, but he has to clearly tell his readers that these ideas are his.

Attention given to the coverage of Arab news, especially the Arab Israeli conflict, has been mounting since the September 11th attack on the US.

A month before Al-Ahram Regional Press Institute in cooperation with RNSAW, organised its six-week workshop, the World Association for Christian Communication, WACC’s, the North American Regional Association, NARA-WACC, and the U.S. National Council of Churches’ Communication Commission co-organized a conference titled “Megaphones and Muffled Voices: What Constitutes Full and Fair Media Coverage of Israeli-Palestinian Issues?”

More than more 80 journalists and academics of diverse affiliations participated in the conference and agreed on a code of practices.
According to Carol J. Fouke-Mpoyo, a media liaison at the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.SA, the code of practices they have reached include these points:
· “The best of journalists do not only report what they see, hear or are told by official sources. They dig beneath the surface. They strive to get the other side or sides of the story.
· Balance of coverage is not achieved only in providing equal space or time to each side. There is no balance when an articulate, moderate and charismatic person is asked to represent one side and an uncompromising, militant, fiery and inarticulate ideologist is offered as a representative of the other side.
· Headlines should reflect the content of the story. Photographs should give a fair and accurate image of an event and not exaggerate an incident simply because the photograph is exceptionally dramatic.
· As much as possible, journalists should understand the language, the history and the culture of the people they cover.
· Covering such a sensitive, nuance-ridden subject as the Arab-Israeli conflict, journalists should be careful in using such loaded words and clichés as “terrorists,” “gunmen,” “Islamic bombers” and “fatalistic Muslims”.


Yomna Kamel