Our new series where we crunch the numbers behind the media coverage of Israel, taking a snapshot of individual media outlets as well as offering a comparison between some of the major press organizations. Isaac Hart will be breaking down the statistics and offering analysis over the coming weeks and beyond based on our Red Lines series on the Eight Categories of Media Bias.

HonestReporting’s study on The Independent’s bias against Israel in March 2017 broke new ground in exposing the systemic bias against Israel in one publication. We now present a broader comparison of the Israel-related media cultures in Britain and the United States.

Many observers identify Britain – from the House of Commons to academia – as home to more prejudiced anti-Israel activity than the United States. But what causes this discrepancy? According to a new HonestReporting analysis, the heavily negative reporting of Israel in British newspapers may play a large role in determining the disturbingly frequent anti-Israel stance of British public institutions.

BRITISH MEDIA

In the British media market, left-leaning papers like The Independent and The Guardian publish many negative stories about Israel, while more right-wing papers like the Telegraph publish comparatively fewer articles overall about the Middle East. This arrangement, while likely unintentional, allows for unbalanced criticism of Israel to drown out more balanced reporting on the important events that occur in the Jewish state.

The Independent’s Israel-related bias remains just as prevalent as it was in April’s Bias by the Numbers preview. The Independent published far more negative articles about Israel than are warranted by the facts on the ground: a whopping twenty-two stories over the last two months were critical of Israel, while only three were positive. Furthermore, the paper regularly engages in reporting that violates HonestReporting’s Eight Categories of Media Bias, including the headlines below.

The above claim – that Donald Trump’s election caused an unprecedented permitting of new settler homes by the Israeli government – could not pass even the most basic fact-check. There are over 400,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank, not including eastern Jerusalem. Only about 2,500 new settlement homes have been announced since Trump took office, in addition to a new settlement for former residents of the unrecognized Amona settlement. While this amount is a drastic increase over his predecessor, Barack Obama, it is not nearly as monumental an addition to the settler population as The Independent suggests in this headline, making this statement an extreme distortion of facts.

This Independent headline strangely refers to an event that never occurred: Israel did not negotiate any sort of agreement with Palestinian hunger strikers or their leader, convicted terrorist Marwan Barghouti. The improvement in prison conditions was solely the result of an agreement between the Palestinian prisoners and the International Committee of the Red Cross. HonestReporting exposed the Times of London for bungling a similar headline last month.

Anybody listening to Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech on the IDF’s new David’s Sling missile defense system could easily identify this headline as a distortion of facts. This simple expectation seems to have been too much to ask of The Independent; the publication misquoted Netanyahu here to draw readers to the false conclusion that the Israeli prime minister was displaying a new “weapon.” David’s Sling is a defensive missile interceptor with a purpose analogous to that of Iron Dome; it is not meant for attacking enemies of Israel and could never represent a so-called “existential danger” to belligerents in combat with Israel.

The Guardian, HonestReporting has found, holds the disheartening record for publishing the greatest proportion of negative Israel-related stories out of all newspapers surveyed in April and May. Having published fifteen Israel-related stories, eleven of The Guardian’s headlines included anti-Israel themes. The Guardian, unsurprisingly follows its rivals’ pattern of printing headlines that flout the HonestReporting’s media bias guidelines.

This Guardian headline follows the tradition of foreign papers distorting the facts of attacks committed by Palestinians in Israel by refusing to identify their perpetrators. Issuing correct headlines in such events is not a difficult task – one need not look further than one written by the Telegraph on the exact same event below.

Relative to its British competitors featured here, the Telegraph published few Israel-related articles. However, four out of the six published were balanced in their reporting of Israel, and its headline about the stabbing of British student Hannah Bladon by a Palestinian sets the standard for how other publications ought to report similar attacks.

Many papers give the excuse that no headline can be balanced due to the minimal space afforded for headers at the top of articles. The Telegraph, however, was able to bypass these perceived limitations, fitting a fully explanatory headline into the normal amount of header space. It includes details that characterize the victim and correctly identifies her assailant as a “Palestinian attacker” – because of his mental illness, he cannot definitively be labeled a “terrorist” as similar attackers are rightfully called.

The British media market could use more balanced headlines like those frequently issued by the Telegraph, but perhaps this publication is correct in covering Israel and the Middle East markedly less frequently than its competitors. This tiny nation is likely of less importance to the average Briton than myriad other issues, despite being given such prominent coverage in The Guardian and The Independent.

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US MEDIA

The American newspapers surveyed by HonestReporting generally published fewer stories about Israel in their pages compared to The Independent and The Guardian. However, the American average proportion of negative articles about Israel was about the same as its British counterpart. In short, both media markets are subject to the same anti-Israel biases, but American papers publish fewer stories that are the product of this bias; this occurs solely because there are fewer stories about Israel in general in American publications. This may contribute to the seemingly lesser level of anti-Israel sentiment in the United States, though any amount of unbalanced reporting should remain worrisome to the concerned reader.

The New York Times published fourteen Israel-related articles in April and May, ten of them negative stories. This high – and distorted – concentration of negative pieces about Israel gives devoted Times readers a skewed illustration of the situation in the Jewish state. Like The Independent, The NY Times has composited for its readers an overwhelmingly negative image of Israel. The NY Times also violated the Red Lines.

In this headline, the Times selectively omits the rationale for and true target of the Israeli strike on a Hezbollah weapons convoy proximate to the Damascus airport. The attack was actually directed at warehouses near the Damascus airport that were stocked with weapons for the terrorist group. This headline falsely implies that Israel might have targeted civilians or civil aircraft.

This statement falls prey to the same impulses to protect the Palestinian attacker’s identity as a headline on the same event (the stabbing of British student Hannah Bladon) in The Guardian. False headlines like these push readers towards the view that Israel is entirely at fault for the lack of peace in the region, even though continual attacks and the Palestinian unwillingness to recognize the legitimacy of Israel are far more at fault for continual regional instability.

The Washington Post published roughly the same total of Israel articles as the New York Times in April and May, issuing only one fewer negative piece about Israel. Many Post articles were biased, violating HonestReporting’s media bias guidelines.

This headline – another one about the stabbing of Hannah Bladon, the British woman enrolled at Hebrew University – features an appalling lack of context. This attack had nothing to do with Good Friday. Furthermore, the headline also fails to mention the Palestinian assailant or the fact that the woman was a foreign student whose final action before the fatal attack was one of pure goodwill – she left her seat on the Jerusalem light rail to allow a woman with an infant to sit down in her place. This act of kindness put her in the strike path of the attacker.

This headline is an even more heinous example of Washington Post journalistic malpractice. It seems to endorse the extremist definition of Palestinian terrorists as “martyrs.” Astonishingly, the publication did not find it necessary to clarify that those identified as “martyrs” are terrorists. The Post also implies that Israel stands alone on this issue, even though many American legislators are attempting to pass a bill that would stop Palestinian Authority funding until terrorist payments are cut off, and Donald Trump has instructed PA President Mahmoud Abbas to eliminate the terrorist payments program. The Palestinian Authority cannot credulously identify itself as a partner for peace while providing hundreds of millions of dollars to terrorists annually.

The Wall Street Journal is frequently described as the most important conservative bastion in American print journalism. This tradition – and the support of Israel that is often associated with it – was apparent in the newspaper’s pages in April and May, as the number of positive and negative Israel-related articles was roughly even. The Journal and the Telegraph were the only papers surveyed in which neutral articles formed a majority of those published. Furthermore, no Journal headline succumbed to any of HonestReporting’s media bias guidelines, a positive lining within the otherwise bleak outlook of Israel-related journalism.