Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January-February 2009, pages 51-52

Human Rights

Alison Weir Speaks in Des Moines

	According to Alison Weir, founder of If Americans Knew, American taxpayers give Israel more than $7 million a day (Photo M. Gillespie).

ALISON WEIR, founder of If Americans Knew, spoke at Drake University’s Olmstead Center on Nov. 8 about her organization’s research on bias in media coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict. If Americans Knew is a tax-exempt, independent research and information-dissemination institute, with particular focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, U.S. foreign policy regarding the Middle East, and media coverage of this issue.

“We decided to look at a category that would be universally accepted as significant and quantifiable,” Weir explained, “so we settled on coverage of deaths among both populations. We decided to look at two periods in particular, especially the first year of the uprising, because first impressions are so powerful. They set the context in which we ever after view a conflict.”

First impressions, said Weir, determine for us who is the aggressor, who is the victim, who is initiating the violence, and who is defending their population. Her organization used numbers of the dead provided by the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem.

“Using the Israeli numbers we discovered that 165 Israelis were tragically killed by Palestinians, and 549 Palestinians tragically killed by Israelis. Now how was this covered by our prime time network news broadcasts?” asked Weir.

Using Nexis-Lexis databases, Weir said she discovered that ABC reported Israeli deaths at a rate 3.1 times greater than Palestinian deaths, CBS reported Israeli deaths at a rate 3.8 times greater than Palestinians’, and NBC reported Israeli deaths at a rate 4.0 times greater than Palestinians’ during the first year (September 2000 to September 2001) of the second intifada.

Weir said she also performed original research on media coverage of the deaths of children on both sides, and in 2004, when 8 Israeli children and 179 Palestinian children were killed, network news broadcasts reports were again markedly biased in favor of the deaths of Israeli children.

ABC reported on the 8 Israeli children’s deaths and on 20 Palestinian children’s deaths, or 100 percent of Israeli children and 11 percent of Palestinian children, a ratio of 9.0 to 1. CBS reported on 4 Israeli children’s deaths and 7 Palestinian children’s deaths, or 50 percent of Israeli children’s deaths and 4 percent of Palestinian, a ratio of 12.8 to 1. NBC reported on the 8 Israeli children’s deaths and on 18 Palestinian children’s deaths, or 100 percent of Israeli children and 10 percent of Palestinian children killed during 2004, a ratio of 9.9 to 1, at a time when Palestinian children were being killed at a rate 22 times greater than Israeli children, said Weir.

“In other words,” said Weir, “the media were using Israeli-centric perspectives to determine how they reported. Again we see the same type of distortion that we saw before, in which Israeli deaths are emphasized and Palestinian deaths are almost invisible.”

Weir pointed out that Americans have a direct connection to the anguish of Israelis and Palestinians who are suffering as a result of the conflict.

“We give Israel more than $7 million per day of our tax money. Now, if that sounds like a lot of money to you, that’s because it is,” said Weir, who noted that although Israel is about the size of Vermont, the U.S. government gives Israel more money than any other country—more than we give to all of sub-Saharan Africa.

“Most Americans don’t know about that,” Weir noted. “Why don’t we? Well, we did a study of the San Francisco Chronicle, a six-month study. We discovered that during that period there had been 251 stories about Israel-Palestine. And U.S. aid was mentioned in only three of those stories, usually in the last sentence. And how many times did they give the full amount [of U.S. aid to Israel]?” she asked. “Never once.”

Because of such flawed and biased reporting, Weir said, few Americans understand the Israel-Palestine conflict or their own government’s role in it. The former reporter and newspaper editor noted that her organization’s findings regarding biased media coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict are supported by a similar 2001 study by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR)’s Seth Ackerman entitled “The Illusion of Balance.”

About 85 people attended Weir’s presentation at Drake University, sponsored by a number of local peace and justice organizations. Weir also spoke to audiences in Ames and Iowa City.