The second was a teenaged Bedouin, an Israeli Arab, who died while trying to kill Israeli policemen. Take a look at how the AP describes each of the teenagers. This is exactly why I have a category titled "AP media bias."
The Israeli terror victim has no name, no town, no details other than his age (and that is actually rare for the AP). The terrorist? Everything but a quote from her family.Netanyahu's government also is dealing with a sudden surge in violence. Last week, a Palestinian attacker infiltrated a Jewish settlement in the West Bank and killed a 13-year-old boy with a pickax. The attacker is still at large.
Over the weekend, a teenage girl from an Israeli Arab town opened fire at a police station in southern Israel before she was shot and killed.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the 16-year-old girl was an 11th-grade student from the Bedouin township of Hura in southern Israel. He gave her name as Basma Awad al-Nabari.
This information comes at the end of an article about Netanyahu's peace policy. The AP is pushing the narrative that Netanyahu is being "tested" by terror attacks that are occurring in the early days of his administration--neglecting to notice that terror attacks occur in Israel on a regular basis. They haven't been very successful lately, thanks to the security forces and the separation barrier. But there are always stonings and attempted shootings and stabbings going on. The AP rarely reports them.
And when they do, they do it like this. They humanize the terrorists, and dehumanize the victims--but the simple act of almost never naming Israeli victims, and always naming terrorists. The process is slow, subtle, but eventually contributes to the overall negative image in Israel in the world media.
Your analysis of media bias is great!
ReplyDeleteThe problem with interpreting bias in any regard, is that your detractors are going to identitfy an opposite bias, which they believe works in your favor.
This leads me to believe that we naturally experience a perception error when noting "bias".
Just thought I'd throw that out there.
Really? It's a perception error?
ReplyDeleteFunny, but I keep perceiving it over and over and over again, and, well, backing it up with quotes from the articles in question, including the simple fact that Israeli victims of terror are almost never named by the media, yet terrorists who carry out attacks are always named.
My detractors are going to have to work hard to identify news articles where Israeli victims of terror are named, but not their murderers. They simply won't find it. The Palestinian propaganda machine works 24/7 promoting "martyr" bombers.