How Middle East Outlets Reframe the News To Fit Their Narrative
Changing phrases to be for or against Israel is part of the job.
A wire report about fighting in the West Bank shows up in news editors' feeds around the world. A Jordanian outlet wants to print it—and makes sure to replace every mention of the Israel Defense Forces with the occupation army. Across the Jordan River, The Times of Israel is also making edits, appending the word terrorist to any mention of Palestinian guerrillas. Side-by-side in a Google News search result, the articles make for a striking contrast, a kind of uncanny mirror-world.
People from around the world count on a small group of American and European agencies for their news. Wire services like the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse gather breaking news and sell the stories to news outlets for a small fee. While overall media budgets are shrinking, the internet has allowed local newspapers to get wire reports more quickly and easily than ever before.
The wire services have some advantages over local press, even when covering local stories. They tend to have better resources, and their international presence helps them avoid different countries' censorship laws. Since these agencies are based in the West, their coverage is written for Western readers. But many of their audiences today are in other parts of the world; foreign editors spend a lot of time and effort adapting wire reports to local perspectives.
Several months ago, I received a grant from the Fulbright Program, an educational exchange funded by Congress, to research how the Jordanian press interacts with international media. I was free to conduct my research and write about the results as I wish, as long as I made it clear that my words do not represent the views of the Fulbright Program, the U.S. government, or any partner organizations.
For my research, I volunteered at several Jordanian news outlets. Jordan News is the English-language edition of Al Ghad, a privately owned newspaper. Roya TV is a privately-owned station that broadcasts in Arabic and publishes online content in English. Radio Al-Balad is a nonprofit Arabic-language station that has received funding from European governments.
At all three outlets, I helped translate local content into English, and observed as editors adapted foreign stories for local audiences.
Jordanians pay close attention to English-language—especially American—media. The kingdom receives large amounts of U.S. aid and even hosts U.S. military bases. Some Jordanians received an American education, and many more are fans of American pop culture. A large Jordanian-American diaspora regularly travels between the two countries.
But there are important differences between Jordanian and American views, especially when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While American politics has a strong pro-Israel streak, about half the population of Jordan has Palestinian roots, the descendants of refugees who were expelled by or fled from Israeli forces during the 1948 and 1967 wars.
Even straight news reporting can reflect sharp disagreements, since the very names of places are political. Israel and Palestine do not have defined borders.
The whole land was a British colony, known as the Mandate of Palestine, before a civil war broke out in 1947 and 1948. Jewish nationalists declared the state of Israel, and the rest of the old Mandate fell under Jordanian and Egyptian control. Israel captured the remaining Palestinian territories—the West Bank and Gaza—in 1967. During peace talks in the '90s, part of those territories were placed under an autonomous Palestinian Authority, which declared itself "the state of Palestine" and won a United Nations observer seat in 2012.
Neither Israel nor Western governments recognize the state of Palestine as an independent nation. Many Western newsrooms follow their governments' policies. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and the German state-owned broadcaster Deutsche Welle all ban their reporters from using the word Palestine to refer to a country.
The Associated Press allows its reporters to refer to the state of Palestine when talking about the United Nations, or similar international forums like the Olympics. In other cases, Associated Press guidelines say to use Palestinian territories for the West Bank and Gaza, "since [Palestine] is not a fully independent, unified state."
Some Jordanian journalists see things quite differently.
Roya TV always uses the term Palestine in its Arabic- or English-language content. Israel is referred to as either the Israeli Occupation or Tel Aviv. It sometimes makes for awkward reading. "Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu" becomes "Israeli Occupation Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu," in Roya's parlance.
"Roya's in-house style reflects its commitment to presenting news stories through a Palestinian lens and the aggression the Palestinian people face every day from the Israeli Occupation," says English news editor Dana Sharayri.
Sharayri believes that it's important to highlight "the historical context and the continued struggle for Palestinian rights," whether in the territories set aside for the Palestinian Authority, or the territories that became Israel in 1948.
Jordan News hews more closely to the style preferred by the Associated Press. The West Bank and Gaza are occupied Palestinian territories. The Old City of Jerusalem and its eastern suburbs, which Israel captured in 1967, are occupied East Jerusalem. According to Editor in Chief Osama Al-Sharif, referring to the territories that way is a matter of "international law and U.N. resolutions."
In May 2022, Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was shot dead in an Israeli raid in the West Bank. Her employer, Al Jazeera, accused the Israeli army of assassinating Abu Akleh, but many international news services were reluctant to point out a perpetrator at first.
Jordan News ran Al Jazeera's claim as a headline: "Israel kills journalist Shireen Abu Akleh 'in cold blood.'" Al-Sharif said that looking at all the sources and his "40 years of experience" led him to run that headline.
After first implying that Palestinian guerrillas were to blame, Israel later admitted that one of its soldiers shot Abu Akleh, and claimed the killing was an accident.
Most strikingly, Jordan News never refers to the Israeli military by its official name, the Israel Defense Forces. Instead, they are the Israeli occupation forces. "We are calling it for what it is," says Al-Sharif.
Less than 100 miles away, Israeli editors are busy taking out references to occupation. The Times of Israel, an English-language newspaper, removes the word occupied from foreign newswires about Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, a territory Israel conquered from Syria in 1967.
Unlike the West Bank and Gaza, the Israeli government has formally annexed East Jerusalem and the Golan. Referring to those places as occupied will "get you labeled with a certain bias" by Israeli audiences, says Deputy Editor Joshua Davidovich.
"We're not in the business of endorsing or not endorsing annexations," Davidovich says. "It's just an expression of our Israeli point of view."
Other Israeli newspapers do not even use the term Palestinian Territories or West Bank. The Israeli government officially calls it Judea and Samaria, the name of the West Bank in Jewish scripture, as do most Israeli media outlets in Hebrew and some in English.
Perhaps the most dramatic disagreement comes when talking about the Palestinian guerrillas who fight Israel. Over the past few decades, these groups have targeted both the Israeli army and civilians, including with indiscriminate shootings and bombings. The Israeli government calls them terrorists, and the U.S. government has also listed many Palestinian rebel groups as terrorist organizations.
The Associated Press discourages using the term terrorism in general, because it "is often used loosely by governments and leaders to condemn any rival political group or act of resistance." Hamas, the Palestinian rebel group that controls Gaza, is simply a "political party, which has an armed wing." Jordan News follows the same rules.
The Times of Israel, however, has a policy of explicitly calling Hamas and other Palestinian rebels terrorists. Davidovich claims "the word has a use in delineating the difference between a non-regular combatant targeting other combatants, as we would describe a militant, and someone who deliberately targets civilians."
Roya, on the other hand, avoids using the terms terrorist or militant, instead referring to the Palestinian resistance. Sharayri argues that the guerrillas are "defending their homeland" and "resisting the inhumane acts perpetrated by the Israeli Occupation Forces."
Given all the ways that wire reports clash with local sensibilities, it's reasonable to ask why local newspapers don't just cover the stories with their own reporters. Al-Sharif and Davidovich are unanimous on that point: The wire services tend to be fast, trustworthy, well-sourced, and good at explaining context to unfamiliar audiences.
"A lot of times when you're in the thick of it, you lose sight of the overall picture…and what the rest of the world thinks is going on," Davidovich says. "Strange as it is to say, [the wire services] might have access to places we might not," he added. For example, he says Netanyahu "does not like talking to the Israeli press," but is more talkative with foreign media.
Then there's the censorship issue. Israeli journalists have to get a military censor's approval to write about certain national security topics. Jordanian authorities often use gag orders, "cybersecurity" laws, and the threat of defamation lawsuits to reign in the local press. Both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas have arrested and tortured journalists for criticizing them.
Wire services have a simple workaround for censorship. If a journalist in Gaza or Tel Aviv gets a sensitive scoop, their organization will publish it under the name of staff in New York or London.
That isn't to say that wire journalism is risk-free. Hamas held several wire reporters at gunpoint in 2017, and Israel blew up the Associated Press offices in Gaza in 2021, claiming that Hamas fighters were stationed in the building.
In turn, news published abroad allows the local media to indirectly report on sensitive topics. For example, Israeli newspapers will almost always add the disclaimer "according to foreign reports" when alluding to Israel's nuclear weapons program. When Jordan carried out secret air raids against drug traffickers in Syria earlier this year, Jordanian media reported it as a claim by the British wire service Reuters.
Wire services and local news both have their problems. Bringing them together may be the best solution—especially in a world where censors and border guards want to squelch the flow of information.
"We use all media sources including Times of Israel, [right-wing Israeli newspaper] Jerusalem Post, and [left-wing Israeli newspaper] Haaretz," Al-Sharif says. "We look at all and decide how best we can present objective and balanced news."
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OK, now go local and do Democrats and the MSM.
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Israel is an occupied apartheid state stolen from the Palestinians who Jews are trying to erase from history.
The declaration of the state of Israel identifies the Balfour Declaration as instrumental in creating/stealing Israel.
The Balfour Declaration of 1917, though an illegitimate deal to promise Palestine to Zionists to bring the US into WWI, clearly recognizes the rights of the Palestinians who live there. Something Jews have never done.
Foreign Office,
November 2nd, 1917.
Dear Lord Rothschild,
I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet:
“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country”.
I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.
Yours sincerely
Arthur James Balfour
Samuel Landman, the Lawyer and Secretary to the UK Zionist organization between 1917 and 1922 wrote about American entry into WW1 in his 1936 published paper entitled “Great Britain, the Jews and Palestine”. Reminding Britain of their deal.
“that the best and perhaps the only way to induce the American president to come into the war, was to secure the cooperation of Zionist Jews by promising them Palestine…The Balfour Declaration in the words of professor H.M.V. Temperley, was “a definite contract between the British Government and Jewry.””
This after Woodrow Wilson was elected on an anti-war platform.
Look at Louis Brandeis, the leader of the American Zionist Organization who was hastily and controversially appointed to the US Supreme court and as Wilson’s special council to WW1.
Edward Bernays, the Jew who with the help of his uncle Sigmund Freud reverse engineered psychosis and created the official US department of propaganda at the same time to fool the US citizens to enter WW1.
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. … It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.” ― Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda
Consider the official cause of the US entering WW1, the torpedoing of the Passenger liner Lusitania and subsequent insincere US submarine restriction demands. Britain and the US still lie to this day to the world that she was not carrying ammunition and a legal target, when they both knew she was always both.
Etc etc etc
If it wasn’t for 3000+ years of hatred of Jews, from the Assyrians, to the Babylonians, to the Romans, to the Christians, to the Muslims, to the Communists and the Nazis, no one would have ever called for a Zionist homeland and Jews could just live free as equal citizens before the law anywhere and everywhere.
Because of assholes like you, that is simply not possible for Jews and everyone else needs to watch out because the hatred of Jews is never confined to just Jews.
Fuck Off, Nazi!
Stupid fucking Jews have never realized that many millennia of everyone’s perception of them is the direct result of Jews own behaviour.
Fuck off Kol Nidre boy.
Has it ever occurred that this would apply more to you than them?
Everyone here hates you, not for any condition of your birth, but for your conscious, volitional delusion and your flaunting of that delusion in the face of reality and in defense of one of the most evil tyrannies to plague humanity!
Fuck Off, Nazi!
At least Reason is openly states it has an ideological POV, though it is becoming fuzzy what ideology its POV is based on lately.
How USA Left Wing Media Outlets Reframe the News To Fit Their Narrative
Grandpa Joe good
Orange man bad.
In other news, pot calls kettle black.
That’s some crazy stuff. I’m sure glad we don’t have anything like that over here in the U S of A.
Trump and DeSatan are Freedom Fighters and Biden is an oppressor-terrorist!
How many times has now has Biden attempted to implement an unconstitutional executive order?
They’ve ALL (recently at least) had “a pen and a phone” with which to get ‘er done!
I wonder if they consider a good guy with a gun who shoots 3 armed teenagers robbing a convenience store as a “mass shooting” because one innocent bystander was also hit in the crossfire. I mean those “mass shooting” stats aren’t going to pad themselves you know.
So was there any flashes of enlightenment while you wrote this, or are you still under the illusion that you’re any different?
All the News that’s Fit (snip, snip, snip) to Print.
Actually, “Judea” and “Samaria” are the long-standing, standard geographical terms, not Biblical terms revived by Israel. The term “West Bank” was introduced by Jordan after it illegally invaded and annexed the area in order to distinguish it from the rest of Jordan, which lies to the east of the Jordan River.
Similarly, “terrorist” is the more accurate term for Palestinian “militants”/”guerillas”. “militant” suggests that they merely agitate, which is false, since they are combatants. And “guerilla” suggests that they are irregular forces who, however, engage in warfare, which is false, since the Palestinians primarily target non-combatants and even when targeting Israeli soldiers do not do so for legitimate military objectives, such as taking territory or destroying munitions or communications. There is indeed much manipulation of language here, but it is primarily on the anti-Israeli side.
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I am sure my news and information, edited and written by college educated young people, every one of them fully informed about Critical Race Theory and The Problem of Whiteness, is very reliable.
I don’t see how this is a problem for anyone. All news sources everywhere “spin” the news constantly. What you call something is the least important aspect of that thing. Clearly media bias is an important context for evaluating reporting, but the facts in the report should be subject to verification.
What you call something is the least important aspect of that thing.
‘Things’ do not tend to resolve themselves. What you call something is the ONLY way communication about anything can happen. And thus the only basis upon which anyone can agree with anyone else or can resolve a thing which is the basis of disagreement. From Aristotle’s Rhetoric:
Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. The first kind depends on the personal character of the speaker (ethos); the second on putting the audience into a certain frame of mind (pathos); the third on the proof, or apparent proof, provided by the words of the speech itself (logos).
The words themselves are the foundation of ethos, pathos, and logos.
Roya TV always uses the term Palestine in its Arabic- or English-language content. Israel is referred to as either the Israeli Occupation or Tel Aviv… Jordan News hews more closely to the style preferred by the Associated Press. The West Bank and Gaza are occupied Palestinian territories…The Times of Israel, an English-language newspaper, removes the word occupied from foreign newswires about Jerusalem and the Golan Heights…Other Israeli newspapers do not even use the term Palestinian Territories or West Bank. The Israeli government officially calls it Judea and Samaria,
It should take about a century to agree to disagree about those names. But first – the two sides need to argue about the shape of the negotiating table, the food that will be permitted to be served during the negotiations, and anything else they choose to argue about. Oh – and kill each other in the interim since both sides prefer that option for the foreseeable future.
And the rest of the world continues to pay attention to that clogged toilet.
There’s a big gap in the author’s history:
“The whole land was a British colony, known as the Mandate of Palestine, before a civil war broke out in 1947 and 1948.”
When did the British Mandate begin, and when did the British parcel out most of “the whole land” (as it was then) to establish the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan? Since so much of the article is about Jordan, this is a puzzling gap.
Right. Also, how did the British come by this “mandate”? Who was this “mandate” from? For what express purpose did that entity give it to them? How well did they carry it out? All good questions.
Kudos! I very much appreciated reading a news article from someone who understands and appears to value that the root of the word “reporter” is “report”. There is too much bias in the news today. Credibility of the content, then, must be suspect and the reader who desires facts in order to rationally reach their own opinion is forced to do their own research. Seems strange when that reader is, effectively, forced to take on the task that the “reporter” is paid for. So, thank you for this article! I cannot tell where you, personally, stand on the Palestinian issue and I find that immensely refreshing.