Are the U.K. Media Partial Toward Israel?

LONDON, Jan. 30, 2009 — -- Shipra Dingare is an adviser to Arab Media Watch , an independent, nonprofit watchdog set up in 2000 to strive for objective coverage of Arab issues in the British media. She is the author of the group's new study entitled "The British Media & 'Retaliation' in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict."

The current row over the refusal by the BBC and Sky News to air a humanitarian appeal for Gaza, on the grounds that doing so would compromise their impartiality, brings to the fore the problematical question of what constitutes "impartiality" in British media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

While the BBC has been bluntly criticized for its implicit suggestion that even to acknowledge the present suffering of the Gaza population (56 percent of whom are children according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) would constitute pro-Palestinian "bias," a new Arab Media Watch study reveals that such bizarre interpretations of "impartiality" are not confined to the BBC, but rather, are endemic in the British press.

The study is the first to examine the representation of "retaliation" in British press coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and examined coverage during the first half of 2008. It reveals that when the British press represents one party as retaliating, that party is Israel almost three-quarters of the time.

The tabloid press was even more slanted, portraying Israel as retaliating 100 percent of the time. Yet even within those outlets perceived as "sympathetic" to the Palestinians, Israel was disproportionately portrayed as the "retaliating" party, 80 percent of the time in The Independent and 59 percent of the time in The Guardian. No newspaper, and only 20 percent of reporters and commentators, portrayed the "retaliating" party as Palestinian more often than Israel.

While violent actions by Israel -- including airstrikes, raids, assassinations and the Gaza offensive of February 2008 -- were portrayed both as "retaliations" by Israel and as "provocations" to Palestinians, Israeli violence tended to be portrayed as "retaliation" three times more often than it was portrayed as "provocation."