Media bias is studied in the New York Times’s coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Intifada. New reports reviewed occurred between September 2000 and June 2001 and explores potential bias in various journalistic features. This conflict has generated a multitude of competing evaluations regarding the journalistic tone, focus, perspective and scope. It is not surprising given the multifaceted and complex nature of the conflict, which inspires both Palestinian and Jewish lobbyists, and presents rival interests on the national arena, international stage and the global stage. Both conflicting parties have made considerable claims of partisan reportage and bias, thus inspiring pertinent questions on journalism role in shaping public opinion on this conflict. Given the bias accusations emerging from both sides of the conflict, examining New York Times’s role in molding public opinion is critical in understanding media bias. In particular, since this newspaper covered this conflict via both text and graphics, its content is evaluated for subjectivity, emergence of bias and the impact on readers. Also, there is an examination of the paper’s funding interests and how they could lead to biased news reporting.
During this 30-day coverage period, this paper’s textual coverage employed particularly problematic terminology which favored the Israelis. In particular, the New York Times applied a problematic language to only one party in the conflict without admitting sensitivities pertaining its usage. Journalists found themselves in this quagmire thanks to the impossibility of explaining actors and agents, actions, settings and effects without employing the language in question. It meant that the journalists’ content would appear biased while framing events. For instance, starting October 5 2000, the New York Times christened this conflict “the renewed Intifada,” a Palestinian label, which was foreshadowed by the initial Intifada conflict which took place between 1987 and 1993 (Zelizer et al., 2002). However, in many other instances, the paper’s reporting language aligned itself with the Israeli’s perspective of the conflict. For example, the newspaper labelled all individuals that meted violence against Israel as “suicide bombers” or “terrorists” rather than the Palestinian preferred term “martyrs.” Additionally, the conflict victims were described as “caught in the crossfire” a phrase that tried to soften Israel’s culpability in public’s eye (Fisk, 2002). Additionally, controversial words like “occupation” disappeared from the paper, with “occupied lands” becoming “disputed lands” while “Israeli settlements” being termed as “Israeli neighborhoods”. The subjective language did not end here. Often, after intense events, there was a proliferation of adjectival use. For example, the bombing of Tel Aviv disco was described as “a deadly suicide bomb attack” in a city with “well-kept beaches and energetic nightlife” and “tearful Israelis”. Unsurprisingly, the civilian Israelis were also called “peaceniks” or “dovish” but these words were scarcely used to describe the Palestinians. Overall, such word choices demonstrate how the paper sided with the Israel’s method of framing events.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
The New York Times is a publicly traded company. Its primary funding channels are subscription fees and advertising (Crunchbase, 2021). Although the paper’s funding has mostly been through the aforementioned avenues, there have been claims where financial backing has attempted to influence the paper’s reporting. In particular, according to Estevez (2018), at the height of the 2008 global financial crisis, one Carlos Slim Helu, a Mexican telecommunications mogul, handed out a $250 million loan to the New York Times. This loan was cleared three years later in 2011, and later in 2017, this mogul sold out a shareholding in the same company worth $10 million. Such funding attracted its fair share of criticism. For instance, according to Bloomberg (2017), the former US president Donald Trump accused the telecom mogul’s stake in New York Times to affect the paper’s adverse reporting of him. However, both the paper and Slim’s representative vehemently denied this claim. As such, a paper’s funding is highly likely to influence its reporting operations, typically trying to favor its benefactors, though this may not always turn out the case. Therefore, newspapers should reveal their funding sources to the public as an accountability measure, to paint the appropriate picture regarding the drivers of its operations.
In conclusion, this analysis reveals that media objectivity though attainable is almost met by inescapable bias and subjective news reports due to suspect funding sources will likely damage the media’s trust in the public eye. In other words, bias is a complex and embedded dimension in print journalism which often plays out in textual reporting during the mere act of coverage. This is not a surprising since its popular belief that different people will always perceive the same event uniquely. Therefore, as the continued public demand for objective news betrays a naivety which keeps springing up the debate over media bias. This means that there remains lingering questions over the impact of such debates and how they affect the public’s perception regarding news coverage. Also, this analysis shows that the New York Times news presentation had a unique set of preferences, thus its unbalanced coverage of the event. This newspaper demonstrated a distinctive position that was ingrained in discrete presentation aspects like agency in the headlines, a viewpoint which was primarily more critical of the Palestinians than the Israelis. Thus, in this sense, although the New York Times strived to uphold objectivity in its own view, it was caught in a web of pro-Israeli news reporting, a position which has inspired longstanding criticism against American news outlets. On the hand, the paper’s funding source demonstrates that protecting public trust requires transparency in the funding channels.
References
Bloomberg. (2017). Carlos Slim Plans to Slash New York Times Holdings . Bloomberg.com. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-19/biggest-new-york-times-investor-slim-hatches-deal-to-slash-stake .
Crunchbase. (2021). https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/newyorktimes .
Estevez, D. (2018). Mexican Billionaire Carlos Slim Sells Part Of His New York Times Stock . Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/doliaestevez/2017/08/01/mexican-billionaire-carlos-slim-sells-part-of-his-new-york-times-stock/ .
Fisk, R. (2002). Fear and Learning in America. The Independent , 17 , 35.
Zelizer, B., Park, D., & Gudelunas, D. (2002). How bias shapes the news: Challenging The New York Times' status as a newspaper of record on the Middle East. Journalism , 3 (3), 283-307.
