Indicting Israel: New York Times Coverage of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict

The New York Times remains one of the most influential newspapers in the world. Its print and Web versions are read and relied upon by millions, including highly-educated news consumers and opinion-shapers in America and around the globe. Dubbed the newspaper of record, The Times sets the topic and the tone for many other print and electronic media outlets. Its editorial decisions what it deems most newsworthy, what it chooses to ignore or consign to back pages and how it frames the stories it covers substantially shape the news landscape and, in turn, public perception of events. Given this, its presentation of the complex Palestinian-Israeli conflict is obviously of great importance and any pattern of bias must be taken seriously.

CAMERA's investigation of New York Times coverage between July 1 and Dec. 31, 2011 reveals empirically that there is real cause for concern. The dominant finding of the study is a disproportionate, continuous, embedded indictment of Israel that dominates both news and commentary sections. Israeli views are downplayed while Palestinian perspectives, especially criticism of Israel, are amplified and even promoted. The net effect is an overarching message, woven into the fabric of the coverage, of Israeli fault and responsibility for the conflict.

The study examines all news and editorial content in the print edition of the newspaper directly relating to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. As has been its habit over many years, The New York Times made the Palestinian-Israeli conflict a central focus of its foreign coverage during the six months studied. This was not a period of extraordinary crisis and turmoil in Israel, yet nearly 200 news stories dealt with Palestinian-Israeli strife. There were 20 opinion pieces over a period of nine months regarding the conflict.

Criticism of Israel is found to be a pervasive motif, continuously woven into the reportage. The Jewish state is criticized more than twice as often as the Palestinians. Of 275 passages in the news pages classified as criticism according to the study's stringent criteria (detailed in Appendix I), 187 were critical of Israel; fewer than half as many 88 were critical of the Palestinians. Some of these criticisms were expressed in the voices of the journalists themselves, often in violation of professional norms against editorializing in news reporting. Journalists weighed in 21 times with hostile views of Israel, and only 9 times with criticism of the Palestinians.

But the broader numerical discrepancy in criticism does not by itself tell the entire story. The study, therefore, zooms in on specific topics within the newspaper's coverage of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to reveal a consistent double standard in the Times rendering of events.

Among the topics frequently discussed on the news pages and analyzed in the study during the second half of 2011 were:
-The Peace Process and Palestinian Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI)
-The Mavi Marmara
-The Gaza Siege
-Violence
-Incitement
-The Opinion Pages

Indicting Israel aims to set the record straight on the newspaper s partisan, unprofessional coverage of the Jewish state. It provides detailed evidence that allows readers convincingly to challenge the newspaper's biased journalism and to ask, If The New York Times doesn't take its own reputation for journalistic integrity seriously, why should we?