Post by POA on Jan 27, 2006 20:19:19 GMT -5
There were a lot of charts at the original article that were quite good as well; they didn't reproduce.
Off the Charts
Accuracy in Reporting of Israel/Palestine
ABC World News Tonight
CBS Evening News
NBC Nightly News
Study Periods:
September 29, 2000 - September 28, 2001
January 1, 2004 - December 31, 2004
In 2004, ABC, CBS, and NBC news reporting on Palestinian children’s deaths followed virtually the same line as Israeli children’s deaths, in stark contradiction to the reality, in which Palestinian children were being killed at a rate 22 times greater than Israeli children.
Abstract
This study consists of a statistical examination of ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, and NBC Nightly News coverage of the first year of the current Palestinian uprising, and of their coverage of that uprising in 2004. The categories examined are coverage of conflict deaths and, as a subcategory, children’s deaths. Our findings indicate significantly distorted coverage by all of these network news shows. In the first study period ABC, CBS, and NBC reported Israeli deaths at rates 3.1, 3.8, and 4.0 times higher than Palestinian deaths, respectively. In 2004 these rates increased or stayed constant, to 4.0, 3.8, and 4.4, widening still further, in the case of ABC and NBC, the disparity in coverage. An additional sub-study of deaths reported in introductions revealed a similar but even larger disparity. The networks’ coverage of children’s deaths was even more skewed. In the first year of the current uprising, ABC, CBS, and NBC reported Israeli children’s deaths at 13.8, 6.4, and 12.4 times the rate of Palestinian children’s deaths. In 2004 these large differentials were also present, although they decreased in two cases, with deaths of Israeli children covered at rates 9.0, 12.8, and 9.9 times greater than the deaths of Palestinian children by ABC, CBS, and NBC, respectively. Given that in 2004 22 times more Palestinian children were killed than Israeli children, this category holds particular importance. We could find no basis on which to justify this inequality in coverage.
Introduction
Beginning in 2003, If Americans Knew1 began issuing report cards to media across the country on their coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This study of ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, and NBC Nightly News (we will call them, collectively, the networks) covers the first year of the current uprising (September 29, 2000 through September 28, 2001). This period was selected for study because it set the context within which all subsequent reporting on the conflict is viewed. We also studied these networks’ coverage for 2004 to discover whether the patterns we found for the first year had continued, diminished, or increased.
Given that the media have a desire and a responsibility to cover this topic accurately, we provide these reports in the hope that our analyses can assist them in achieving this goal.
In addition, we are making these reports public, as a way to help viewers evaluate for themselves the reliability of their sources of information on this issue.
The goal of this report is to
* Establish clear standards for assessing accuracy in reporting.
* Provide, in a consistent format, an assessment of the media’s accuracy in reporting on the Israel/Palestine conflict.
Methodology
We recognize that reporting on Israel/Palestine has been an exceptionally controversial topic. Therefore, while there are many potential yardsticks for measuring accuracy, we chose criteria that would be widely acknowledged as significant, conducive to statistical analysis, and immune to subjective interpretation.
We chose to focus on the reporting of deaths, because this allows meaningful statistical analysis that would be impossible in a qualitative study. This unambiguous yardstick allows us to determine whether media demonstrate even-handed respect for human life, regardless of ethnic or religious background. Fortunately, accurate data for both populations is available from the widely respected Israeli human rights organization, B’Tselem2. We only included Israeli deaths directly caused by the actions of Palestinians, and vice versa. In addition, we did not examine the coverage of killings that took place outside Israel and Palestine.
As a subcategory, we investigated the coverage of children’s deaths, since children are illegitimate targets of violence. Each such death represents a universally recognized human tragedy, and we felt it would be important to study how the media are covering these events among both populations.
Another sub-category examined was deaths reported in introductions, since these bring added attention and emphasis to such reports.
Finally, we gathered data on the networks’ reporting of cumulative death counts. While such cumulative statistics are not equivalent to individual reports on the deaths, they can provide useful contextual information, particularly when appended to high-quality daily reporting.
For this study we used the LexisNexis database to access transcripts of all of the ABC, CBS, and NBC evening news programs broadcast during our study periods.
Findings:
I. Coverage of All Deaths: First Year of the Uprising
During the first year of the current uprising, 165 Israelis were killed by Palestinians and at least 549 Palestinians were killed by Israelis.3 The majority of those killed among both populations were civilians.
Examining this first year of news coverage, we found a significant disparity in the likelihood of a death being reported based on the ethnicity of the person killed.
This disparity was compounded by the fact that while the networks periodically reported on deaths more than once, through follow-up stories and mentions in later news reports, such repetitions were found to be more frequent in reporting on Israeli deaths than in reporting on Palestinian deaths. In fact, such repetitions caused the networks in some cases to report on Israeli deaths in greater rates than they had actually occurred. Palestinian deaths, on the other hand, were significantly under-reported by all three networks.
In its first year of coverage, we found that ABC reported on 305 Israeli deaths and 327 Palestinian deaths – 185% of Israeli deaths and 60% of Palestinian deaths.
CBS reported on 344 Israeli deaths and 296 Palestinian deaths – 202% of Israeli deaths and 54% of Palestinian deaths.
NBC reported on 227 Israeli deaths and 190 Palestinian deaths – 138% of Israeli deaths and 35% of Palestinian deaths.
In other words, ABC reported Israeli deaths at a rate 3.1 times greater than Palestinian deaths, CBS reported Israeli deaths at a rate 3.8 times greater than Palestinian deaths, and NBC reported Israeli deaths at a rate 4.0 times greater than Palestinian deaths.
On average, the networks reported Israeli deaths at a rate 3.5 times greater than Palestinian deaths (175% of Israeli deaths and 49% of Palestinian deaths).
II. Coverage of Children’s Deaths: First Year of the Uprising
In the first year of the current uprising, 28 Israeli children and at least 131 Palestinian children were killed.4 (Children are defined by international law as those who are 17 and younger.)
Thus, Palestinian children were killed at a rate 4.7 times greater than Israeli children. 825 of these Palestinian children were killed in the first three-and-a-half months of the conflict, before any Israeli children had been killed.
During the conflict Palestinian children have consistently made up a disproportionately large number of Palestinian deaths. In this first year children’s deaths accounted for 24% of the Palestinians killed, while children’s deaths accounted for 17% of Israelis killed.
During this time, ABC reported on 56 Israeli children’s deaths (including repetitions in later newscasts) and 19 Palestinian children’s deaths – 200% of Israeli children and 15% of Palestinian children, a ratio of 13.8 to 1.
CBS reported on 37 Israeli children’s deaths (including repetitions) and 27 Palestinian children’s deaths – 132% of Israeli children’s deaths and 21% of Palestinian children’s deaths, a ratio of 6.4 to 1.
NBC reported on 45 Israeli children’s deaths (including repetitions) and 17 Palestinian children’s deaths – 161% of Israeli children and 13% of Palestinian children’s deaths, a ratio of 12.4 to 1.
Collectively, the networks reported on an average of 46 Israeli children’s deaths – 164% of the Israeli children killed – and 21 Palestinian children’s deaths – 16% of the Palestinian children killed. In other words, the networks reported on Israeli children’s deaths at a rate 10.2 times greater than Palestinian children’s deaths.
To understand the pattern of network news coverage of children’s deaths, it is useful to compare the number of deaths reported to the actual number that took place. While repeated coverage of Israeli children’s deaths creates an impression of a higher number of Israeli victims than there actually were, omissions of the majority of Palestinian children’s deaths considerably under-represents the number of Palestinian child victims.
Comparing the day-by-day reporting of children’s deaths to the actual daily death toll reveals an additional dimension of the distortion. In this comparison, we discover that the reports on Palestinian children’s deaths followed the curve for Israeli children’s deaths, rather than the much steeper curve of their actual death count.
This finding underscores the tendency by all three networks to report a fictional situation in which Israeli and Palestinian deaths occur at more or less the same rate, and illustrates the substantial gap between the reality of Palestinian fatalities and the coverage of them. It suggests that the desire to appear ‘balanced’ is too often prioritized above the need for accuracy.
Chronological Running Totals of Children’s Deaths – Reported and Actual
First Year of Uprising (9/29/2000 – 9/28/2001)