Korn, Alina (2004). Reporting Palestinian Casualties
in the Israeli Press: The Case of Haaretz and the Intifada. Journalism
Studies, 5(2), 247-262.
Korn examines coverage of Palestinian deaths during the first year of the latest intifada in 123 issues of Haaretz, an Israeli daily. She looks at the prominence of the articles and how the stories were framed. Haaretz reported the number casualties accurately and prominently through the reports’ salience decreased over time. Prominence is important to Korn because she cites studies that show newspaper readers often do not go beyond reading the headline and a couple paragraphs of each story.
Korn argues that the coverage justified the Israeli army’s actions by making the victims appear to be armed militants engaged in the conflict, when in reality, many were unarmed citizens. She utilizes media effects theory to argue that the media swayed public opinion to accept the Israeli army’s violent actions by instilling a fear of crime. According to Korn, audiences accepted the media’s frame that the Palestinian protests exemplified a violent terrorist threat, and that the Israeli army’s actions were viable responses to quell terrorist threat. She also brings social construction of reality into her analysis. The media are able to define and shaper social reality and instill fear in their audiences. One reason this happens, according to Korn, is because journalists often rely on official sources who are able to frame crime as an impending doom facing people in order to define their actions as solutions to a problematic situation. She also says the mainstream media are primarily concerned with maintaining the status quo and are biased towards dominant ideological interests.
Korn’s article defines a number of key concepts and demonstrates how they interconnect to produce biased conflict reporting. She uses a concrete example of conflict reporting to illustrate these concepts. All of these factors and influences are key to understanding why biased conflict reporting can undermine journalism’s goal to work in the public interest.
Abstract by Meghan Maskery
MA ‘07