Report on Middle East OPINION
ARTICLES published
in
The Los Angeles Times
between October 6, 2000 and
January 31, 2001
Palestine Media Watch
Tait Graves
Feb. 6, 2001
In this report – one of a
series of reports examining coverage of the Middle East crisis in America’s
leading newspapers – Palestine Media Watch analyzes the Los Angles Times’s
opinion coverage of the conflict during its first four months. Our conclusion is that the Times’s coverage
has – in the aggregate – displayed a marked imbalance in favor of Israel and
against the Palestinians.
Our aim in conducting this
survey is to raise the Times’s awareness of its own coverage, and our goal is
to encourage the newspaper to strictly maintain a 50/50 balance in its treatment
of the conflict. The situation in the
Middle East is complex, involves important American interests, and the United
States provides Israel more foreign aid than any other state. For all of these reasons, balanced opinion
coverage is necessary to help Americans reach fair conclusions about the issues
surrounding the conflict.
Palestine Media Watch does
not call for censorship, and it does not call for newspapers to stop publishing
pro-Israeli op-ed columns. Rather, its
calls for a 50/50 balance that would provide Americans with a reasonable view
of the issues from the many perspectives on both sides
How then did the Times
fare during these four months? On the
whole, the Los Angles Times’s opinion pages were imbalanced in favor of Israel
and against the Palestinians:
pro-Israeli columns were more than twice as numerous as pro-Palestinian
op-ed columns.
The bias also showed in
more than dry numbers. The columns
published by the Times failed to mention issues that would illuminate
Palestinian positions, and at the same time it permitted pro-Israel columnists
to use language and arguments that can properly be characterized as extreme.
That said, it must be
noted that the Los Angeles Times has done a better job of presenting a balanced
approach during the relevant time period than the major East Coast newspapers –
the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the
Washington Post. Indeed, West Coast
newspapers tend toward a less biased approach, as the San Francisco Chronicle, San
Jose Mercury News, Oakland Tribune, and Seattle Times all reflect a pattern of
op-ed and editorial publishing similar to that of the Los Angeles Times. Palestine Media Watch does not speculate as
to the reasons for the striking differences between coverage on the East and
West Coasts.
In sum, the Los Angeles
Times must work to ensure a fair, 50/50 balance on its editorial and op-ed
pages in the future.
In its statement of
“Editorial Principles” posted on its website, the Los Angeles Times states that
“[w]e pledge to seek and report the truth with honesty, accuracy, fairness, and
courage.” It also promises that “[w]e
will show no favoritism.”
The Times’s editorial page
editors and writers are:
Its op-ed page editors
are:
In this report, op-ed
columns published in the Los Angeles Times will be tabulated in three
categories: pro-Israeli,
pro-Palestinian, and balanced.
3.1
Pro-Israeli: A pro-Israeli
column is one that analyzes the conflict solely from an Israeli viewpoint,
without significant mention of Palestinian suffering or Israeli human rights
abuses. Such columns might include
those that define Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s Camp David positions as
generous, those that criticize Palestinians for using violence without taking note
of disproportionate Israeli violence, and those that advance appeals to
ethnicity or religion as a basis for analyzing the conflict.
3.2
Pro-Palestinian: A
pro-Palestinian column is one that analyzes the conflict solely from a
Palestinian viewpoint, without significant mention of Israeli viewpoints.
3.3
Balanced: A balanced column is
one that recognizes, in one way or another, that both Palestinians and Israelis
have a set of positions and opinions regarding the conflict that Americans must
analyze before reaching any conclusions.
This report analyzes the
following Los Angeles Times op-ed columns:
|
10/06/00 Basil & Riad Abdelkarim – Pro-Pal |
|
10/09/00 Daoud Kuttab – Pro-Pal |
|
10/13/00 Michael Lerner – Bal |
|
10/15/00 Robin Wright – Bal |
|
10/15/00 Howard Teicher – Pro-Isr |
|
10/17/00 Yossi Klein Halevi – Pro-Isr |
|
10/18/00 Hussein Ibish – Pro-Pal |
|
10/20/00 Robert Satloff – Pro-Isr |
|
10/22/00 Henri J. Barkey -- Bal |
|
11/19/00 Yossi Klein Halevi – Pro-Isr |
|
11/24/00 Jonathan D. Tepperman – Pro-Isr |
|
11/26/00 Henry A. Kissenger – Pro-Isr |
|
11/29/00 Yossi Klein Halevi – Pro-Isr |
|
12/11/00 Daniel Pipes – Pro-Isr |
|
12/24/00 Shibley Telhami – Pro-Pal |
|
12/25/00 Robert W. McGregor & Colin Chapman – Bal |
|
12/29/00 Ronald Young - Bal |
|
01/04/01 Yossi Klein Halevi – Pro-Isr |
|
01/07/01 John B. Alterman - Bal |
|
01/10/01 Marvin Hier – Pro-Isr |
|
01/13/01 Hussein Ibish - The Palestinians Must Have a
Right of Return -Pro-Pal |
|
01/31/01 Yossi Klein Halevi - Israel Will Choose Sharon for Survival |
|
Columnist |
No. columns |
|
Yossi Klein Halevi |
5 |
|
Basil & Riad Abdelkarim |
1 |
|
Daoud Kuttab |
1 |
|
Michael Lerner |
1 |
|
Robin Wright |
1 |
|
Howard Teicher |
1 |
|
Hussein Ibish |
1 |
|
Robert Satloff |
1 |
|
Henri J. Barkey |
1 |
|
Jonathan D. Tepperman |
1 |
|
Henry A. Kissenger |
1 |
|
Daniel Pipes |
1 |
|
Shibley Telhami |
1 |
|
Robert W. McGregor & Colin Chapman |
1 |
|
Ronald Young |
1 |
|
John B. Alterman |
1 |
|
Marvin Hier |
1 |
|
Hussein Ibish |
1 |
Pro-Isr = “Pro-Israeli”
Pro-Pal =
“Pro-Palestinian”
|
Date |
Type |
|
10/06/00 |
Pro-Pal |
|
10/09/00 |
Pro-Pal |
|
10/13/00 |
Bal |
|
10/15/00 |
Bal |
|
10/15/00 |
Pro-Isr |
|
10/17/00 |
Pro-Isr |
|
10/18/00 |
Pro-Pal |
|
10/20/00 |
Pro-Isr |
|
10/22/00 |
Bal |
|
11/19/00 |
Pro-Isr |
|
11/24/00 |
Pro-Isr |
|
11/26/00 |
Pro-Isr |
|
11/29/00 |
Pro-Isr |
|
12/11/00 |
Pro-Isr |
|
12/24/00 |
Pro-Pal |
|
12/25/00 |
Bal |
|
12/29/00 |
Bal |
|
01/04/01 |
Pro-Isr |
|
01/07/01 |
Bal |
|
01/10/01 |
Pro-Isr |
|
01/13/01 |
Pro-Pal |
|
01/31/01 |
Pro-Isr |
Space
|
|
No. columns |
% |
|
Pro-Israeli |
11 |
55% |
|
Pro-Palestinian |
5 |
20% |
|
Balanced |
5 |
20% |
Gaps
|
|
Weeks |
|
Longest gap between
pro-Israeli columns |
3 |
|
Longest gap between
pro-Palestinian columns |
9 |
|
|
|
On one hand, the Times
should be commended for publishing a pro-Palestinian column on the refugee
issue (January 13), something no other major American newspaper did during the
same time period. It also published
strongly pro-Palestinian editorials noting episodes in which Israel has misled
the press about its violence against Palestinians and noting the daily
humiliations suffered by those living under the illegal Israeli occupation
(October 9 and October 18).
On the other hand, the
Times apparently made no effort to seek out a balance in its op-ed selections,
which belies its claim that the paper “will show no favoritism.” The extreme content of some of the
pro-Israeli op-ed columns will be discussed in more detail below.
Another, more subtle
manner by which bias can be measured is to reflect on the issues which have yet
to be discussed in detail in an editorial or op-ed column. By failing to write on several of the most
important issues surrounding the conflict, the Times left its readers without
an appropriate and balanced context by which they could judge the intifadah.
During the period in
question, the Times failed to publish an editorial or an op-ed column which
explored
· The early
history of the conflict, including the Zionist settlement and the first
widespread Palestinian uprising during 1936-39;
· The
rejection of the 1947 UN Partition plan, and the reasons that the Zionist
settlers favored it and the Palestinians opposed it.
· The war of
1947-50 during which Zionist and then Israeli forces expelled or forced to flee
some 600-800,000;
· The
Israeli destruction of the cultural landscape of the indigenous Palestinian
population, through destruction of villages and renaming of physical places;
· The 1967
war and the subsequent rise in Palestinian militancy and guerrilla violence;
· The
Israeli settlement campaign in the occupied territories, which began in
September 1967 and continued throughout the Oslo process;
·
Palestinian protest campaigns during the 1970s and the first intifadah
of 1987-93;
· The
ethnocentric nature of the Israeli state, and the attendant discrimination
against Palestinian citizens of Israel; and
· Ariel
Sharon’s fifty-year history of violence and authoritarian policies against
Palestinians.
While this list may appear
long, these issues could have been mentioned as background in editorials and
op-ed columnists could have been invited to write about them. These facts could have been covered in a
manner that allowed each side to have its say.
But without this necessary context, the Times’s readers were left
without any understanding of what a “settlement” is, how the refugees came into
their current state, and so forth.
Another manner in which
bias can be measured is the extent to which partisans of one side – but not the
other – are permitted to engage in extreme language and/or direct appeals to
one ethnicity or one religion. This
type of imbalance conditions readers to accept actions from one side that they
would not countenance from the other.
During the period in
question, the Times allowed several pro-Israeli op-ed columnists to engage in
crude appeals to ethnicity and religion as arguments in favor of the Israeli
position, and it allowed them to make sweeping assertions about Palestinians
and Arabs. In contrast, the five
pro-Palestinian op-ed columns were reasonable in tone – as they should have been.
Appeals to ethnicity and
religion – neither of which is an acceptable basis for resolving international
conflicts – were sadly numerous. For
example, Howard Teicher stated in his November 15 op-ed column that “In
rejecting Israel’s proposals on Jerusalem’s status, Arafat repudiated the legitimacy
of the historic Jewish and Israeli presence in Jerusalem, despite the fact that
Islam didn’t come into existence until 600 years after Rome exiled the Jews
from Jerusalem.”
In turn, Yossi Klein
Halevi claimed in his October 17 op-ed column that Joseph’s Tomb “according to
Israeli press reports is being transformed from a synagogue into a mosque by
the Palestinian Authority” – a blatant appeal to religious anger, and one which
proved to be wholly false. Finally,
Marvin Hier argued in his January 10 op-ed column that “our justification for
returning to the Promised Land was never based on our ability to make the
desert bloom . . . . the cornerstone of our return to Zion was always based on
the fact that it was a return to our historic biblical roots.” Mr. Hier also noted that Jerusalem was not
the city to which Muslims pray.
The best way to get a
sense of how extreme these columns were is to imagine how jarring it would be
to read op-ed columns in the Times which argued from a Palestinian position by
asserting that Islam places more importance to certain territories, or that
ethnic Palestinians have a greater ancestral right to a “promised land” than
Jews do. Any such columns would
rightfully be condemned for ethnic and religious prejudice, and for obscuring
the issues of occupation and land confiscation which are the real basis of the
conflict.
In the future, the Times
must endeavor to avoid publishing such extreme op-ed columns among the
pro-Israeli writers it selects. Op-ed
columns should remain within the bounds of appeals to the rule of law – on both
sides.
The Los Angeles Times
displayed a marked bias towards Israel and against the Palestinians during the
first thirteen weeks of the Palestinian uprising. This bias was evident in the sheer numbers of columns published
from both perspectives, the subjects which were not written about, and in the
extreme tone taken by some pro-Israeli columnists. Although the Times was not as imbalanced as the leading East
Coast newspapers, its efforts leave much to be desired.
The Times states that its
goals include “fairness” and the avoidance of “favoritism.” It should immediately enact these goals by
ensuring that it practices a 50/50 balance in its editorial and op-ed pages. This is the only way that Americans can
receive a fair set of opinions by which they can make up their minds with a
full set of facts in place.