Overtly Skewed Media Coverage
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| Soldiers in the Congo |
So much media attention is spent on Israel. Is it deserved?
Military conflicts around the world are surely newsworthy. By taking media coverage as an indicator, it would seem that most of the world’s military conflict occur in and around Israel…but how large is the conflict in Israel, compared to others?
Stealth Conflicts (via Augean Stables) demonstrates the issue with a clever chart
Comparison of Death Tolls in Congo and Israel
Pyjamas Media (also via Augean Stables) present a further analysis of the problem in an article describing the media footprint of conflicts. They compare the media coverage of an incident from last year’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza to one in the Congo. In Gaza, an errant shell accidentally killed 40 Gazan civilians when it was aimed at an artillery position a scant 30 meters away. In the Congo, more than 100 civilians who took refuge in a catholic church were hacked to pieces by the LRA militia. Pyjamas Media’s analysis (using Google News) found that the Gaza story was reported 242 times more than the Congo one.
Critics of Israel often cite the supposed disproportionality of response by the IDF. Perhaps it’s time to look at the disproportionality of coverage by the media.
