Cable News Nonsense: How the Gaza Attacks Were Covered

What explains American public opinion toward Palestine? I am often asked this question by people who wonder how Americans are not more alarmed at and more sympathetic to the plight of Palestinians. American public opinion toward Palestine, like public opinion toward everything and anything, is shaped largely by the media and the messages the American public is bombarded with.

That's why media coverage of the recent bombardment of Gaza was so important. What made it even more important is the fact that it dominated the headlines. Rarely do stories about Palestinians make headlines in the American media. This is due to a number of factors, including the fact that the United States has plenty of domestic concerns and that Israel/Palestine is but one of multiple foreign affairs issues important to the United States. Since coverage is so rare, extensive crisis coverage, particularly of multi-day events, leave lasting impressions on Americans and significantly shape attitudes. 

So, it is important then to reflect after this crisis period and ask: how was it covered? It is hard to get a sense of coverage from brief excerpts or watching a segment or program here or there. A much greater scope is necessary. 

For this reason, I've put together an analysis of CNN coverage of Gaza from the day Ahmad Jaabari was assassinated (11/14) until the day of the cease-fire announcement (11/21). You might wonder why I focus on CNN and not other networks. There are a few reasons. First, CNN's coverage of this issue was by far the most extensive in comparison to other networks. Multiple CNN anchors were sent to the region and several correspondents contributed regularly throughout the coverage. Second, because of its capacity to cover breaking international stories this way, it continues to be the primary cable news source for Americans on these types of stories. Third, other networks like Fox News and MSNBC have more clearly defined political leanings in their coverage, looking at CNN, which tends to be more centrist, might offer a more clear picture of mainstream coverage than one of the other two. Lastly, for the purpose of expediency, focusing on one network is best, or else I might spend the rest of my month looking at transcripts. Of course, looking at data from more networks would be helpful but I think for the general purposes of understanding coverage of this issue in the US mainstream, looking at data from CNN coverage will do the trick. 

How did I go about this? I went through transcripts of CNN coverage on this issue during the specified time period. What I wanted to know is who is the network providing a platform for through guest interviews or, more specifically, what narratives are they advancing over others. I then coded for guest appearances throughout this time and the affiliations of the guests. I want to be clear about what is not included. CNN correspondents and contributors are not included. The observations here are specifically guests not affiliated with the network (to the best of my knowledge). This also does not include taped interviews on loop from previous shows to avoid counting the same guest appearance twice. While replays of interviews in different segments continue to provide the same guest with a platform, it would simply get too messy to parse out plus, because these replay are taken from live shots, their distribution is more or less represented in the live guest data. 

This coding yielded 148 different observations where data on date, time, program, guest name, guest type and affiliation. Most of these are self-explanatory. Guest type refers to the type of affiliation, for example, Think Tank/NGO, Government/Faction, Journalist, civilian etc. 

What did I find out? Several things. First, the largest grouping by type was State/Faction representatives (73) and the single largest grouping among these were Government of Israel officials, numbering a whopping 45 appearances. These include ministers, elected officials and military or security apparatus officials.

The single most common guest? Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren, who appeared 9 times. The next most common? Israeli Government Spokesperson Mark Regev who appeared 7 times. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Ambassador in the United States was next on the list with 6 appearances, tied with IDF spokesperson Avital Leibovich . 

How many times did Hamas representatives appear? 5 - or 1/9th the number of Israeli state representatives. If you add all PLO, PLC and Hamas representatives appearances it totals 20 - less than half the number of Israeli state representatives.

Below is a chart depicting the number of appearances, by day, of Israeli state spokespeople and Palestinian official spokespeople.

[Click to enlarge]

The next largest groupings were Think Tanks/NGOs and Former US Government Representatives with 25 each. Which Think Tanks were most represented? The Woodrow Wilson Center had 7 appearances, mostly due to Aaron David Miller who appeared 4 times himself. After that, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank established by the Israel Lobby, had 6 appearances.

The former US government representatives that appeared largely provided an echo chamber of already very pro-Israel US government positions toward the issue.

So what is the take away? The complete imbalance of voices in the American media does a tremendous disservice to an American audience. Palestinian voices are dramatically underrepresented and the official Israeli narrative of events gets far more time and space. Among one of many important writings of Edward Said, the esteemed Palestinian scholar who passed away nearly a decade ago, was an essay in the London Review of Books from which this blog borrows its name.

Today, the fundamental problem of Palestinians being denied permission to narrate sadly continues.

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