Challenged on Its Mideast Coverage, Oregonian News Editors Cite AP Inaccuracies

By Sister Elaine Kelley


	(L-r) Rev. Richard Toll, Jennifer Grosvenor, Carol Mazer, Diane Adkin and Hala Gores met with Oregonian representatives to discuss the paper’s Middle East coverage (Staff photo E. Kelley).

A SIX-MONTH statistical study of The Oregonian newspaper’s coverage of Palestinian and Israeli deaths, released March 13, reveals a pattern of significant inaccuracies and omissions, and minimal reporting of critical information. The study was conducted by members of the media committee of the Portland-based Americans United for Palestinian Human Rights (AUPHR). Titled Accuracy in Israel/Palestine Reporting: The Oregonian (A News Coverage Report May-October 2004), the study was a collaborative effort among AUPHR, whose aim is ending U.S. funding of Israel and U.S. discriminatory policies that violate Palestinian human rights; Palestine Media Watch, which promotes accuracy in reporting in the mainstream U.S. media; and If Americans Knew, a research institute focusing on media coverage of Palestine-Israel. The Oregon report was modeled after a similar project conducted two years ago by If Americans Knew, which sudied two Bay Area newspapers, the San Francisco Chronicle and The San Jose Mercury News [see September 2003 Washington Report, p. 22). According to If Americans Knew founder Alison Weir, both showed similar patterns of inaccuracy.

The Pacific Northwest’s largest daily newspaper, and the country’s 20th largest, The Oregonian has a circulation of 347,538. The paper is owned by Donald E. Newhouse, who, along with his brother Sy, runs Newhouse Publications. In addition to publishing 26 daily newspapers, the huge media conglomerate owns the Conde Nast magazine group, whose titles include The New Yorker; the Sunday newspaper supplement Parade; American City Business Journals; as well as cable television programming and cable systems. In the early 1990s Donald Newhouse served as chairman of the Newspaper Association of America and was elected chairman of The Associated Press board of directors.

The report’s writers were Jennifer Grosvenor, former development and public relations director for the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Oregon and past president of the YWCA of Greater Portland; retired sales executive Diane Adkin; Palestine Media Watch’s Oregon field coordinator Rani El-Hajjar, who has analyzed the Atlanta Journal and Constitution newspaper on Palestine/Israel coverage; and AUPHR board member Tanya Haddad. The team decided to focus its research on coverage of deaths in general, and children’s deaths in particular. The study was based on objective criteria that could be verified using control data from The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories (B’Tselem), which has a reputation for accuracy and is used as a resource for reliable statistics by the international community and by Israeli and Palestinian authorities.

Based on 140 Oregonian articles published during the study period, the report found the paper reported 88 percent of Israeli deaths, compared to 63 percent of Palestinian deaths. Because some Israeli deaths were reported multiple times, Oregonian headlines featured 111 percent of Israeli deaths, compared to 66 percent of Palestinian deaths.

The most pronounced discrepancy, however, was found in The Oregonian’s coverage of the killing of children. During the study period, according to B’Tselem figures, Palestinian children were being killed at a rate 15 times that of Israeli children. The Oregonian reported 100 percent of Israeli children’s deaths, but only 18 percent of Palestinian children’s deaths. Its headlines reported 88 percent of Israeli children’s deaths but only 3 percent of Palestinian children’s deaths. The Portland daily also failed to provide cumulative totals of Palestinian and Israeli deaths, a standard journalistic practice allowing readers to put events in perspective. During the study period, 57 Israelis and 505 Palestinians were killed, but 97 percent of The Oregonian’s 140 published articles omitted cumulative death statistics for both sides.

The complete report is posted on the AUPHR Web site (in English and Arabic), <http://www.auphr.org/oregonian.php>, and on the Palestine Media Watch Web site, <http://www.pmwatch.org/pmw/reports/Oregonian_031505.pdf>.

According to report writer Grosvenor, the report was the culmination of three years of frustrated attempts to better inform Oregonian news editors. Individually, AUPHR members regularly submitted op-eds and letters to the editor, made personal phone calls to news staff, suggested articles offering a different view of the news, and encouraged interviews with Oregon peace activists returning from various organized trips to the occupied territories. “I felt I’d gone as far as I could in trying to be a resource for The Oregonian,” Grosvenor explained.

When she and other AUPHR members learned of the If Americans Knew report on Bay Area newspapers, they decided to undertake a similar study of The Oregonian. Following consultations with Ned Hanauer of Search for Peace and Justice in Palestine/Israel (SEARCH), a Massachusetts-based group focusing on improving media coverage of Palestine/Israel, and with Palestine Media Watch’s Rani El-Hajjar, now living in Oregon and working with the AUPHR media committee, an initial meeting in September 2004 attracted enthusiastic volunteers who subsequently spent long hours researching the report.

Two days prior to the report’s March 13 public release, committee members hand-delivered a copy to The Oregonian’s public editor, Michael Arrieta-Walden, with a cover letter requesting a meeting with editors “to discuss the report and our mutual desire for accuracy and high journalistic standards when covering the Israel/Palestine conflict.” Walden responded the following day, and a meeting was set for March 17. The AUPHR team hoped its presentation and review of the study findings would lead to an ongoing conversation with the editors—who, Walden had told Grosvenor, wanted the meeting to go beyond a discussion of deaths.

Joining report writers Grosvenor and Adkin for the meeting were three community representatives: Rev. Richard Toll, chairman of Friends of Sabeel–North America, a faith-based grassroots movement of Palestinian Christians; filmmaker/educator Carol Mazer, a founding member of Portland-based Jews for Global Justice; and Hala Gores, a Palestinian-American attorney active with the National Lawyers Guild. The Oregonian was represented by the public editor; his assistant, Helen Shum; managing editor Therese Bottomly; copy desk editor Holly Franko; and wire editor Howard Scott.

Telling the group that this was the first time The Oregonian had been approached by citizens who had done an extensive written study, Walden welcomed the opportunity for dialogue. “The public editor’s receptiveness was crucial in making the meeting possible,” noted AUPHR’s Adkin, “and the meeting was polite on all sides.”

Prior to the meeting the Oregonian editors had contacted AP and Reuters, two of the wire services used by the paper, to inquire how death statistics were obtained and to double check the report’s data. A few minor omissions were discovered in the report, but did not alter the findings (which are presented in this article in their corrected form). The AP told him, Walden said, that they do not use B’Tselem, but have “their own bureau and keep their own statistics.” According to AP, discrepancies in numbers could be due to Palestinians reporting deaths to collect “martyr money,” or because AP doesn’t count deaths from tear gas if, for example, the victim is asthmatic. Managing editor Bottomly said that AP doesn’t run frequent cumulative totals because they want to check the numbers, adding that they do report every death but that numbers don’t go out to every wire service. There wasn’t a lot they, as news editors, could do, she continued, since they rely on major news organizations like AP. Describing her paper as “neutral” in its language, Bottomly said that informed activists who are concerned about misrepresentation would have more of an impact by talking directly to AP.

Walden explained The Oregonian’s article selection process: taking news from the daily wire feeds, selecting the day’s biggest issues and trying to use the best story. News writers do have certain selection and editing prerogatives, he noted, and write their own headlines based on the lead sentence in the article. As Bottomly reiterated, however, they are dependent on the wire services for the stories and the information in them.

Following Up with AP

AP’s media relations representative in New York, who declined to provide his name, told this writer that numbers will differ from organization to organization because “there are different ways to get information.” AP is the only organization that provides periodic reports on calculating deaths due to conflicts, he said. When asked why AP’s numbers conflict with those of B’Tselem and other organizations, he replied that “AP doesn’t verify numbers based on other organizations. The only numbers you verify are your own.” He went on to contradict himself, however, by adding that the Jerusalem AP team checks with doctors and hospitals, “with other organizations” and with every available source to confirm figures. “AP is a journalism organization, we’re the only journalism organization,” he stated. “Every other group is an advocacy group. They have specific ways to come up with numbers.”

He provided the phone number of AP in Jerusalem, where this writer’s call was answered by an American employee. When asked about sources for reporting deaths, he answered, “Figures are compiled for writers and updated daily,” adding, “We have a reporter in Gaza and he himself has a string of contacts.” The Gaza reporter is Palestinian, he said. “Generally when we report Palestinian deaths we put in the story what the source is. The report will come from this fellow and he tells us it was given by Palestinian medical or security sources.” He said he didn’t have time to answer any more questions and could not provide phone numbers for AP’s West Bank or Gaza contacts. “All calls go through us,” he concluded abruptly.

From Jerusalem, B’Teselem’s Sarit Michaeli explained that it compiles data on deaths by going over Israeli and Palestinian daily press reports (Haaretz, Al Quds, and Wafa), which publish all known casualties. “We have field workers in all parts of the territories,” she added, so that if B’Tselem believes there has been a human rights violation, thorough research is done on location—“at the hospital, the mourning tent, etc.”—to determine the victim’s name, ID number, age, residence, and any organizational affiliation. “We base our count on international humanitarian law,” Machaeli explained, “which views soldiers as legitimate targets, while civilians are not.” Palestinian victims are classified according to whether they were participating in fighting when killed, to determine if they were militants or civilians. Michaeli had no comment on AP’s charge that advocacy groups are not journalism organizations, reiterating that B’Tselem makes use of all available sources. The decision on whether to demand an investigation, she emphasized, is based on their own research.

The Associated Press, a cooperative owned by its 1,500 U.S. daily newspaper members and run by a board of directors, has 242 foreign bureaus, including Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. It serves 1,700 newspapers and 5,000 radio and television stations in the U.S. and more than 8,500 newspaper, radio and television subscribers in 121 countries.

Reactions to The Oregonian meeting were mixed. Adkin felt the editors seemed content using pre-written stories from AP. “The depressing reality,” she noted, “is that the editors are in the business of putting out a paper every day with all the stress of deadlines, and they are just going to do it the easiest way.

According to Grosvenor, the Oregonian’s public editor wants to begin combining international news with a local focus, which could give some voice to activists with experience on-the-ground.

The report at least has sparked a new relationship with some of the Oregonian editors. According to Grosvenor, the public editor and his assistant both were very interested to learn that the AUPHR media team already has begun work on photo and editorial studies, which should lead to follow-up meetings. In addition, there is a growing coalition of church, media watch, and peace and justice groups examining the role of The Associated Press as gatekeeper of the news from the Middle East for millions around the world. Here in Oregon those involved in media activism may feel somewhat encouraged—in no small part because, as Grosvenor noted, “What we have done may inspire other groups.”

Sister Elaine Kelley is administrative officer for Friends of Sabeel–North America, based in Portland, OR.