1.0 Introduction

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 editorial coverage of the conflict during its first four months. Our conclusion is that the Times’s editorials have – 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. 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 editorials are necessary to help Americans reach fair conclusions about the issues surrounding the conflict.

2.0 The Editorial Board

2.1 Editorial principles

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.”

2.2 Editorial page editors/writers

The Times’s editorial page editors and writers are:

Janet Clayton
Nick Williams, Jr.
Judy Dugan
Sergio Muñoz
Gayle Pollard
Alex Raksin
Milan Rusicka
Marvin Seid
Molly Sevin
Ronald White

Its op-ed page editors are:

Bob Berger
Claudia Luther

3.0 Definitions

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.

4.0. The Editorials

10/11/00 -- Mideast Needs Bold Intervention - Balanced

10/13/00 -- Broken Hopes and a Grim Future - Balanced

10/18/00 -- Status Quo a Bearable Outcome - Balanced

10/19/00 -- Heat on Arab Moderates - Pro-Israeli

10/25/00 -- Tough Choice for Barak - Balanced

11/06/00 -- An Economic Blow to Palestinians - Pro-Isr

11/30/00 -- Barak’s Gamble - Pro-Israeli

12/12/00 -- A Battle on Israel’s Right - Pro-Israeli

12/20/00 -- Israel’s Election Mess - Pro-Israeli

12/29/00 -- Getting Real in the Mideast - Pro-Israeli

01/04/01 -- Shred of Hope for Mideast Pro-Israeli

01/31/01 -- Mideast Talks Never had a Chance - Pro-Israeli

5.0 Detailed Analysis of editorials

Of the Times’s 13 editorials on the conflict during the relevant period, seven were balanced and six were slanted towards Israeli positions. None were slanted towards Palestinian positions.

The imbalance and bias in the Time’s editorials showed in the types of arguments made. Pro-Israeli editorials included implicit condemnations of the intifadah – such as a November 6 editorial which noted the economic effects of the uprising on the Palestinians without also noting Israel’s efforts over the years to maintain the Palestinian labor force as dependent on Israel. Other examples were editorials, such as those on December 29 and January 4, which characterized the Palestinians as inflexible and the Israelis as generous, when Israel is the position of strength as an occupier and the Palestinians have historically surrendered most of their indigenous lands.

The imbalanced editorials included explicit re-writings of the conflict’s background – such as December 29 editorial which referred to “Palestinians and their descendants who fled before and during Israel’s 1948 war of independence.” Even the Israeli press refers to refugees who fled or were forced to flee, and numerous scholars have documented the killings and forcible expulsions which pre-state Zionist militias (and later the Israeli army) carried out between 1947 and 1950. Another example was an October 19 editorial which asserted that Israel had offered to withdraw from the Occupied Territories shortly after the 1967 war, but failed to note that Israel built its first settlement on confiscated Palestinian land just three months after the war ended.

6.0 Mentions

Description	No. Editorials
U.N. Resolutions mentioned	0
Human rights report findings mentioned	0
Palestinian failure to respect signed agreements mentioned	0
Israeli failure to respect signed agreements mentioned	0
Arafat blamed	8
Barak blamed	3
Arafat praised	0
Barak praised	2
Palestinian death toll much larger than the Israeli toll	0
Specific incident of Palestinian deaths mentioned	0
Specific incident of Israeli deaths mentioned	0

7.0 Conclusions

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.