Media bias in reporting Palestinian victims of Israeli terror, 

As submitted to the New York times, September 20, 2002

Editor

The New York Times

New York, NY

Dear Editor:

Subject: Media bias against covering Palestinian victims of Israeli terror.

On quo, your  paper joined many US media outlets to quickly declare that two suicide bombings in Israel on September 18 and 19, in which eight Israelis were killed, had brought an end to a period of "calm" simply because there had been no similar attacks for six weeks and few Israelis had been victims of Palestinian violence.

The terrorist bombings occurred after an especially bloody period in which 69 Palestinians were killed by Israel occupation forces. In effect, the definition of "calm" or a "lull in violence" inherent in these reports is “only Palestinians are being killed”. It is utterly maddening that there is a widespread tendency in the US media to simply ignore or marginally report on violence when its victims are Palestinians, while making it "breaking news” by focusing intensely on incidents when the victims are Israeli.

 Your editor gave a lame reason as an explanation for the disturbing and persistent phenomenon of devaluing Palestinian life and death. It is argued that since most US news organizations, for security and technical reasons, base their reporters in Tel Aviv or west Jerusalem . By default and because of Israel media restrictions, reporters are rarely there to provide gavel to gavel coverage on Palestinian victims of Israel terror. The truth is that this decision is based on deliberate structural geographic bias.

I would argue that these geographical basing decisions in themselves may reflect an inherent anti Palestinian bias: Israel lives are more important and newsworthy than anything else in the conflict, including Palestinian lives.

Respectfully,

Aref Assaf,