Analysis on the Different Media Coverage of Gaza

The following are some quotes from an article written by Lawrence Pintak entitled Borderless Journalism in Gaza: BBC, CNN-I, and Al Jazeera English offer nuanced coverage of Gaza war. It discusses what I referred to it in my earlier post about how to read the media coverage…

…Like the BBC, the staff of CNN International is drawn from many countries. As a result, it has been producing coverage markedly different from that seen on its sister channel in the U.S. An American diplomat here in the Middle East told me that he and a colleague were working out in the embassy gym one day with the television on. The embassy gets a feed from Armed Forces Radio and Television, so diplomats have access to CNN’s domestic service. Out of curiosity, they started switching back and forth between CNN Domestic and CNN International. “We couldn’t believe it,” he recalled. The domestic CNN was dominated by commentary supporting Israeli actions, while the international feed was focused on the devastation on the ground…

…Whether in the field or in the studio, AJE’s coverage has been cool and collected, largely free of the emotion that is often in evidence on its sister Arabic-language network; and the word “martyr,” used by Al Jazeera Arabic and many other Arab news organizations to describe Palestinian dead, has not crossed the lips of AJE’s staffers…

…The overarching title of AJE’s coverage, “War On Gaza,” telegraphed the channel’s perspective-“on” not “in” was a conscious choice. The reporting reflected a distinct attitude; an implicit sense of identification with the Palestinian victims-the civilians, not the Hamas fighters-evident, for example, in a crawl at the bottom of the screen listing the names and ages of some of the more than 300 Palestinian children killed….

To read the entire article visit http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/borderless_journalism_in_gaza.php