Hegemony of Media Misrepresentation: New York Times’ Representation of the Israel-Palestine Conflict
The media does not operate in a vacuum from social, cultural, and political contexts. Its visualizations, texts, and reporting cannot be considered an isolated activity.1 Journalists are social actors who frequently negotiate and respond to a variety of political, ideological, cultural, and professional determinants.2 Media is responsible for constructing meanings, reporting events, expressing opinions (including their own), and depicting imaginations through the employment of a wide variety of linguistic and other resources in real-world contexts and, more particularly, during specific historical moments.3 It holds a powerful influence over how viewers see local and global realities.4 The media does not accurately or impartially reflect the world “out there” and it is far from being objective.5 Journalists are selective and subjective in the sense that they make educated strategic judgements about what material to include or exclude, which lexical and syntactic components to utilise to identify news actors and events, how to introduce and organise information in news texts, and which socio-political, cultural, or professional principles to embrace when writing about or researching a topic.6 These inclusions and exclusions conjure up particular perceptions of social groups and carry the political, cultural, and ideological imprints of the authors and the institutions in which they operate;7 therefore, media is not disentangled from the social and ideological contexts.8 As Edward Said puts it:
“[T]he media are profit-seeking corporations and therefore, quite understandably, have an interest in promoting some images of reality rather than others. They do so within a political context made active and effective by an unconscious ideology, which the media disseminate without serious reservations or oppositions.”9
Similarly, during times of crisis and conflict, the media functions as the sites for dominant discourses to exert their influence over the marginalised ones as was apparent in the case of the Iraq invasions when the Western media constructed public perception against Saddam Hussain by creating an Al-Qaeda-Saddam nexus.10 Jurgen Habermas’ Theory of Strategic Action also contends that the dominant party in communication or dialogue controls the discourse and exerts its influence over the other party, thereby, limiting the capacity of resolving the conflict.11 A similar pattern is observable in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict; the representation that is attached to Russia provides an authoritarian characterisation of Russia by using references such as ‘closed’, ‘government control’, ‘squeezed, harassed and threatened’, and ‘one-party state’. For example, on March 27, 2022, the Washington Post talked about President Vladimir Putin in these words, “Putin for years has snuffed out dissent, muzzled independent media and bolstered a security state to prevent protests, meaning he faces far fewer domestic constraints in waging such a war than the leader of a democratic nation would.”12 As Malkawi explains:
“Media text functions as a window through which we can view the world and live the events as real. It has the power to influence readers by all means since it is an effective mechanism for affecting individual perceptions of reality. By analyzing the media text ideologically, we are able to see the debates in society through text.”13
The Israel-Palestine conflict is no exception. There are a plethora of studies arguing that the Western media representation of the Israel-Palestine conflict is biased and misinterpreted in favor of Israel.14 That the American media treats Israel with “kid gloves” is a continuing discourse in academic circles, especially in the context of Palestine.15 For instance, some studies have taken a critical account of pro-Israel reporting, mapping, and referencing strategies being used in Western media, and it shows a consistent pattern of selection, exclusion, and inclusion that, by and large, approves of Israeli rationales and expressions.16 Others have analysed the tendency of the dominant interpretations in the American media to devoid Palestinians of their existence as a nation,17 thereby, ignoring the alternative interpretations, and generally, absolving Israel of responsibility.18 There is a systematic absence of political and historical context when the American media interprets or characterizes the Palestinian resistance as terrorism and Israeli use of force as a matter of national security.19 Since media functions as agents of social control and influence, it does not “merely transmit but also reproduce social constructions of reality”.20 For example, the construction of the first Palestinian intifada (1987-1991) in the US media was such that it was devoid of meaningful context integral to understanding the conflict dynamics.21 This ‘hegemony of media misrepresentation’ of the Israel-Palestine conflict has pushed the alternative interpretations to the margins that serve the ‘strategic interests’ of the political elite of the country.
Similarly, consistent behaviour of pro-Israeli bias was evident in the 11-day Gaza Crisis of May 2021. During the crisis, researchers, activists, and journalists continuously criticized the Western media for portraying the Israeli attacks on civilians as Israeli self-defence against Hamas; coverage of the crisis and interpretations of different events in newspapers like the New York Times were seen both as part of the Western bias and orientalism against the Arabs, and the West-Israel strategic alliance in the Middle East. This article, therefore, looks into how The New York Times (henceforth NYT) reported on the Israeli assault on Gaza in May of 2021. It explores the discursive techniques and linguistic structures employed by the NYT, as well as their contribution to a particular representation of political players and events. The NYT is recognised as one of the most influential news outlets in the world, and its coverage of the conflict in the Middle East is subscribed by influential politicians, policy-making circles, and international organisations.22 Moreover, the NYT is selected due to its ideological stance and structural placement. As Gitlin noted that this newspaper “sets agendas, generating and certifying issues in government, business, intellectual, professional and academic circles in the country”.23 The New York Times, therefore, is an extremely important barometer of the issues and events that are considered newsworthy and would be indicative of how these issues are being discussed within certain influential circles in the US.24
This research analysed all the news articles and editorials published during the 11 days; the analysis reveals that the NYT’s coverage of the attack on Gaza in May 2021 conflated multiple topics, revealing a relatively nuanced treatment of the Israeli aggression on Gaza, which primarily served Israel’s justifications and interests at the expense of Palestinian narrative and resistance. The criticism of Israel’s attacks was generally phrased in a careful and restricted manner that ignored the context of Israel’s military occupation and colonisation. Moreover, the coverage by this prominent media outlet appeared to be sensitive toward Palestinian grievances by giving more agency to Israel than Palestine. On the other hand, the Palestinian armed resistance was primarily seen as an equal force that inflicted comparable amounts of destruction, fear, and deaths among Israelis. This perception persisted for the majority of the conflict. The Israeli bombings and airstrikes were portrayed as a response to the rocket fire by Palestinian factions; as a result, Israel’s choice to bomb Gaza was made to appear legitimate. Figure 1 illustrates the data extracted to analyse the articles published during the 11-Day Gaza Crisis.
No. | Data Extraction | |||
1. | Data set |
71 news articles and 17 opinion articles on Israel and Palestine in the New York Times published between 10 May 2021 to 21 May 2021 |
||
2. | Relevant data extraction |
Number of articles |
88 in total (specifically on Israel-Palestine) |
Out of the 27 authors of news articles in The New York Times, 20 are based outside of the Middle East and in the West, 3 in Israel, 2 in Egypt, 1 in Jordan, and 1 in Palestine. The leading two authors, Isabel Kershner and Patrick Kingsley have published 19 articles out of 71 in total, and have contributed to more than 10 articles as either co-authors or reporters. One article was written anonymously by the New York Times. Out of the 13 opinion authors, 7 are based in the United States and belonged to the right-wing ideology, 2 in Israel, 2 in Palestine, and 2 other authors are US politicians, Bernie Sanders and Jerrod L. Nadler. Sanders is a socialist while Nadler is a conservative politician. |
Keyword search |
Israel, Palestine, Israel-Palestine Conflict |
|||
3. | Period covered |
10 May 2021 to 21 May 2021 |
||
4. | Source |
The New York Times Archives |
Figure 1: This is the data extracted manually for this research
Below, I analyze some of the excerpts from the 88 articles extracted for this research.
Extract 1
The Toll of Eight Days of Conflict in Gaza and Israel
The violence has intensified over the past eight days as diplomatic efforts have stalled and Israel has scaled up its bombing campaign against Hamas.
The war is being fought on multiple fronts. According to the Israeli Air Force, Hamas, the militant group that rules the Gaza Strip, has fired more than 3,300 rockets toward Israeli cities and towns, killing at least 10 people. Israeli forces and settlers have killed 20 Palestinians during unrest in the West Bank, a Palestinian human rights group said. And a wave of mob attacks hit at least one mixed Arab-Jewish city in Israel.
But the worst devastation is in Gaza, a densely packed coastal enclave of about two million people. Israeli forces have struck homes, refugee camps, medical facilities and other buildings.
Israeli officials have said the assault is aimed at destroying Hamas’s ability to make and launch missiles and a network of underground tunnels used by Hamas to move people and equipment. But the strikes have killed at least 212 people, including at least 61 children, according to local health authorities, drawing international condemnation (NYT, 17 May 2021).25
The excerpt constructs Israel’s actions as being directed against Hamas, as in “ Israel has scaled up its bombing campaign against Hamas,” and as the report indicates that Hamas’ rocket fire, and not Israeli occupation strikes and civilian deaths, are primarily problematized and portrayed as the cause of the conflict in the excerpt as well as in the report as a whole. The use of Israeli references to refer to Hamas’ “3,300 rockets,” the designation of Hamas as a “militant group,” and the stated objective of the Israeli military of “destroying Hamas’s ability to make and launch missiles and a network of underground tunnels used by Hamas” appear to paint a negative representation of Hamas and overstate its power, while portraying Israel as acting in self-defense. Moreover, this construction of events is compatible with the Israeli narrative of events, without challenging this construction or mentioning Palestinian sources that provide counterarguments or rebuttals to Israel’s claims. According to the sources listed in the article, 90% of these rockets were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile defence system, and many missiles either did not reach Israeli-held territory or fell in open areas; Iron Dome is an anti-missile defence system.26
This rendered a significant proportion of these rockets ineffectual, which was proven by the number of Israelis who were killed or injured as a result. It is important to note that the fact that the bulk of fatalities and injuries have occurred on the Palestinian side in this text does not necessarily alter this one-sided representation of the situation in which Hamas and, by extension, the Palestinians are blamed for starting the conflict. The lexical allusions that have been given to Israelis and Palestinians are an illustration of the favorable structure of events in favor of Israel. It’s possible that official collective terms like “Israel,” “Israeli Air Force,” “Israeli forces,” “strikes,” “stepped up,” “campaign,” and “onslaught” give the Israelis’ behavior a veneer of legitimacy. This explanation for Israel’s behavior is uncomplicated, particularly when contrasted with representations of Palestinians who are labeled as “the militant group,” “fire missiles,” and “an underground tunnel network.”
In this sense, constant references in the news coverage to Hamas as an “Islamist militant group” would add to a representation that delegitimizes Hamas as a “terrorist group” that targets innocent Israelis and destabilises the entire region. It is possible that the reader will get the conclusion that Israel is a victim that is being attacked from all sides; hence, any response from Israel can be considered justifiable and an act of self-defense. Therefore, the choice of terminology and voices reveals that Israeli explanations and constructions of events are prominently featured, whereas Palestinian explanations are generally omitted or presented in a manner that does not alter the NYT’s interpretive framework for events. This is because Israeli explanations and constructions of events are more politically expedient than Palestinian explanations and constructions of events. To put it another way, it is in Israel’s best interest to represent the country as the victim of Palestinian aggression and bloodshed.
Moreover, it has been reported by the New York Times that Hamas was the party that initiated the ‘conflict’ and prompted Israel’s reaction; this absolves Israel of any responsibility for the conflict. The assumptions, attitudes, assessments, and language representations associated with the events and ideas communicated by the New York Times are those that legitimise Israel’s use of force. Israel’s aggression is portrayed as a war against Hamas that elicits the Israeli-validated response, and not against the Palestinians, which is undoubtedly how Israel desired its aggression to be perceived. The analysis of the depiction of the Gaza Crisis of 2021 points in every direction to this theme of putting Hamas on equal footing with Israel. In other words, Hamas is depicted as having the same level of power as Israel. This gives the impression that Israel is a victim that is being attacked from all directions, and as a result, any response is regarded to be an act of self-defense.
Extract 2
The violence rocking Gaza, Israel and the West Bank has left scores dead
After another night of intense bombardment by Israeli forces, Palestinians and Israelis on Friday surveyed a landscape marred by violence that has spread from the West Bank to Israel to Gaza and back to the West Bank, leaving scores dead, mostly Palestinians.
Most of the death and destruction have occurred in Gaza, the already impoverished territory controlled by the militant Palestinian group Hamas, where officials said more than 120 people had died, including 31 children, scores of buildings were destroyed, and electricity water was running critically short.
More than 2,000 rockets have been fired at Israel from Gaza this week, and eight Israelis, including a soldier, have been killed, Israeli officials said on Friday (NYT, 14 May 2021).27
It is important to measure the controlled and calculated rhetoric that avoids naming Israel as the responsible authority responsible for wanton destruction, vast abuses of human rights, and murders of Palestinians, particularly in Gaza. The situation here is represented as a horrific and unfortunate one in which casualties occurred on both sides of the conflict. The description of Israel’s massive attacks and destruction as “a landscape marred by violence” seems to treat “Palestinians and Israelis” equally as victims of the situation, and it fails to assign blame to the Israeli state for, among other things, its attacks in Gaza, evictions, settler attacks, and storming of religious sites. This is problematic because it seems to imply that “Palestinians and Israelis” are victims of the situation in the same way. Moreover, the last phrase of this text highlights the Palestinian resistance’s role in rocket firing by pointing out that “more than 2,000 missiles” prompt Israeli strikes.
It is crucial to keep in mind that citing the number of rockets that have been shot seems to emphasise the violent Palestinian attacks and portray Israel as the victim, which justifies the reactions that Israel has responded with. This is especially clear when the Palestinian entity is characterised as “the violent Palestinian group Hamas,” which is a pejorative way of referring to the Palestinian movement. The reporter did not reveal the fact that the majority of these rockets either landed in open areas or were stopped by the Iron Dome air defence system in Israel, as mentioned earlier. Officials in Israel claim that the Iron Dome was successful in stopping ninety percent of the missiles, and the Israeli population has access to bunkers and safe rooms that are appropriately protected from any threats. This is made abundantly clear by the fact that the conflict resulted in the deaths of only eight Israelis. This is in stark contrast to the Palestinian side, which lacks the military capability to intercept Israeli missiles, where the vast majority of airstrikes hit their targeted aims without being interrupted, and where many Gazans do not have access to safe rooms or shelters. Many Palestinians tried to find safety at schools founded by the United Nations, but these buildings were also targeted by the Israeli military.
One might observe a process in which the news coverage selectively emphasises certain behaviours while downplaying others, thus highlighting those aspects of the situation that are favourable to Israeli interests and justifications. The use of transitivity in this section puts a significant amount of attention on activities committed by Palestinians while significantly downplaying those committed by Israelis.
The use of the middle voice in phrases like “have occurred” and “have died,” the nominalization of the word “violence,” and the passive structure of the phrase “were destroyed,” as opposed to an active clause structure, leave Israeli responsibility for the deaths and destruction unexplained or at the very least disguised. Imagine if the event had been written about using the active clause pattern to emphasise Israel’s actions: ‘Israel killed 120 civilians, including 31 children, wrecked dozens of buildings, and inflicted significant death and destruction in Gaza.’28 This would have brought more attention to Israel’s actions.
To put it another way, the usage of these verbs creates the representation that Israeli acts are less brutal than they would be if laden with verbs such as “killed,” “occupied,” “attacked,” “inflicted,” and “bombarded” were employed instead. In contrast to the background of Israel’s damaging operations, explicit allusions are made to Gaza’s rocket firing and the number of Israeli deaths. To demonstrate that such decisions are not arbitrary but rather ideologically driven in allocating weight to specific arguments in order to achieve particular ideological consequences, only the barest minimum of argumentation is required in this situation. Because Hamas fires rockets into Israel, such language characteristics construct a broad discourse that is consistent with the Israeli assumption that they only target Hamas and not all Palestinians. This is because Israel believes that Hamas is the only Palestinian group they are targeting. The Israeli government has a vital national obligation to respond to the terror carried out by Hamas; however, this response should not be carried out in the manner of a brutal occupying power that attacks defenceless civilians and targets a national resistance that fights for the freedom, independence, and self-determination of its people.
Conclusion
It has been determined that the New York Times constructed such a representation for ideological purposes since several powerful themes have emerged, and their linguistic manifestations have been recognised. Specifically, the concept of equivalence emerges as a result of the analysis of the New York Times’ consistent portrayal of the Israeli assault on Gaza as a conflict between Israel and Hamas with victims on both sides, while ignoring the vastly greater number of Palestinian civilians killed. Also, despite the fact that the New York Times seems to have paid equal attention to Palestinian and Israeli casualties, which may give the impression of objectivity, this has the effect of diminishing Israel’s moral, legal, and political responsibility for the wanton destruction and deaths it inflicted on the Palestinian people in Gaza.
The findings of this study are consistent with those of previous research that found a pattern of Israeli-centric bias in the news media in the United States.29 By framing the situation as the terrible and unavoidable cost of war, this journalistic technique protects Israel from moral and legal criticism and condemnation for its horrendous atrocities committed against innocent Palestinians. In most cases, the backdrop of Israel’s occupation, brutalities and violations, colonialism, and ethnic cleansing was ignored while reporting, which represented the conflict as one over territory and religious sites. The textual manifestations, in particular the lexical references to Israelis and Palestinians, the choices of transitivity, and the quotation patterns employed by the New York Times, indicate that the New York Times favoured Israeli rationales and perspectives over Palestinian perspectives and international legal perspectives on Israeli actions.30
Studies conducted by media researchers have shown that the news media have a substantial impact on the persistence of power asymmetries between various socio-political groups.31 This research analyses the ways in which reporters justify, contextualise, and legitimise acts and attitudes as they cover events, as well as the ways in which they impact the cognition and knowledge of target audiences when reporting on the military crisis. In order to accomplish this, it is necessary to challenge the commonly held belief that the concept of “objectivity” plays an important role in the news media.32 It is critical to have the understanding that journalists are not autonomous from the political and professional milieu in which they operate.33 This argues that the news coverage of every event is inextricably influenced by the cultural values, social practises, and ideological convictions of the journalists, as well as by the cultural and institutional environments in which they operate.34 According to what White says:
“Contrary to any claims to ‘objectivity’ on the part of the media industry, news reporting is a mode of rhetoric in the broadest sense of the word – a value laden, ideologically determined discourse with a clear potential to influence the media audience’s assumptions and beliefs about the way the world is and the way it ought to be.”35
The study demonstrates that the New York Times misrepresents the Israel-Palestine conflict as a result of its hegemonic influence, which results in a decontextualized and negative depiction of the Palestinian resistance. Under the umbrella of Islamist militancy, Hamas was considered to be synonymous with the entire Palestinian resistance movement. The Palestinian point of view is consistently ignored by the Times, which effectively strips them of any agency. This also demonstrates the theoretical foundations of this research, which state that language is used as a strategic action in which one party is dominant in communication and disseminates the knowledge it wishes to disseminate via middle-class intellectuals such as the media, thereby exercising their hegemonic power.
About the Author
Arsim Tariq
Arsim Tariq is Editor and Research Associate at The Truth International, Islamabad, Pakistan. He is a graduate of National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), Islamabad, Pakistan with a master’s degree in Peace and Conflict Studies.
1 Amer, M. M. (2008). The Linguistics of Representation: The New York Times’ Discourse on the Second Palestinian Intifada. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Melbourne, Australia.
2 Ibid.
3 Amer, W. M., & Amer, M. M. (2011). US Media Coverage of the Situation in Jerusalem: A Discourse Analysis Study.
4 Evans, M. R. (2002). Hegemony and discourse: Negotiating cultural relationships through media production. Journalism, 3(3), 309-329.
5 Bagdikian, B. H. (2004). The new media monopoly (Rev. ed.). Beacon Press: Boston.
6 Bell, A. (1991). The language of news media. Oxford: Blackwell.
7 Fowler, R. (1991). Language in the news: Discourse and ideology in the press. London: Routledge.
8 Cotter, C. (2003). Discourse and media. In D. Schiffrin, D. Tannen & H. E. Hamilton (Eds), The handbook of discourse analysis (pp. 416−436). MA: Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1111/b.9780631205968.2003.00022.x
9 Harb, Z., & Bessaiso, E. (2006). British Arab Muslim audiences and television after September 11. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 32(6), 1063-1076.
10 Robinson, P. (2004). Researching US media–state relations and twenty-first century wars. In Reporting war (pp. 106-122). Routledge.
11 Johnson, J. (1991). Habermas on strategic and communicative action. Political theory, 19(2), 181-201.
12 Sonne, P., & Dixon, R. (2022, March 22). ‘Diminishing returns’: What can change the course for Putin in the Ukraine war? The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/27/putin-ukraine-limits-war/
13 Malkawi, R. (2012). The ideological stamp: Translation of political discourse in news media. Writescope Publishers.
14 Ackerman, S. (2001). Al-Aqsa Intifada and the US media. Journal of Palestine Studies, 30(2), 61-74.
15 Friedman, R. I. (1987). Selling Israel to America. Journal of Palestine Studies, 16(4), 169-179.
16 Hawkins, V. (2002). The other side of the CNN factor: the media and conflict. Journalism Studies, 3(2), 225-240.
17 Ismail, A. (2008). Mission statehood: portraits of the second Palestinian intifada in US news media. Media, War & Conflict, 1(2), 177-201.
18 Firdous, T. (2009). Al Jazeera English Presenting a non-Western viewpoint and contesting Western media dominance during the Gaza crisis Hawaii Pacific University].
19 Handley, R. L. (2009). The conflicting Israeli-terrorist image: Managing the Israeli–Palestinian narrative in the New York Times and Washington Post. Journalism Practice, 3(3), 251-267.
20 Amer, W. M., & Amer, M. M. (2011). US Media Coverage of the Situation in Jerusalem: A Discourse Analysis Study.
21 Ackerman, S. (2001). Al-Aqsa Intifada and the US media. Journal of Palestine Studies, 30(2), 61-74.
22 Friel, M., & Falk, R. (2004). The record of the paper: How the New York Times misreports US foreign policy. NY: Verso.
23 Ali, S. I. (2005). Hegemony of misrepresentation: American media coverage of islam and islamic revivalism (1980-2001).
24 Friel, M., & Falk, R. (2004). The record of the paper: How the New York Times misreports US foreign policy. NY: Verso.
25 Cai, W., Holder, J., Leatherby, L., Lutz, E., Reinhard, S., & Yourish, K. (2021, August 27). The Toll of Eight Days of Conflict in Gaza and Israel. The New York Times. Retrieved October 3, 2022, from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/05/17/world/middleeast/israel-palestine-gaza-conflict-death-toll.html
26 Ibid.
27 The violence rocking Gaza, Israel and the West Bank has left scores dead. (2021, May 14). New York Times. Retrieved October 3, 2022, from https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/05/14/world/israel-gaza-updates
28 Fowler, R. (2013). Language in the News: Discourse and Ideology in the Press. Routledge.
29 Said, E. (1986). The burdens of interpretation and the question of Palestine. Journal of Palestine Studies, 16(1), 29-37.
30 Orimogunje, A., Oluremi, C., Oyelekan, & Oyebimpe, C. (2016). Lexicalisation as a Tool for Ideological Expression in News. European Journal of English Language and Literature Studies, 4(6), 13−24.
31 Van Dijk, T. A. (2013). News as discourse. Routledge.
32 Viser, M. (2003). Attempted Objectivity: An Analysis of the New York Timesand Ha’aretz and their Portrayals of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict. Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, 8(4), 114-120.
33 Said, E. (1986). The burdens of interpretation and the question of Palestine. Journal of Palestine Studies, 16(1), 29-37.
34 Malkawi, R. (2001). The ideological stamp: Translation of political discourse in news media. https://doi.org/10.16194/j.cnki.31-1059/g4.2011.07.016
35 White, P. R. (2006). Evaluative semantics and ideological positioning in journalistic discourse. Mediating Ideology in Text and image: Ten critical studies. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 37-67.