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What did the world press say about the Hezbollah-Israel war?

Hezbollah won.
Israel was the victim.
Deaths were mere stats.
Qana was the turning point.

The Summer 2006 Conflict Between Hezbollah and Israel, One Year Later...

Understanding Results

Study Methodology

Authors

The study used five categories to evaluate the news outlets:

Authority: Was the coverage first-hand & from the battlefield?

Depth: How comprehensive, complex & diverse was the coverage?

Source Balance: How balanced was the use of sources?

Frame Balance: Was one side given more focus than the other?

Empathy: How personal & compassionate was the coverage of victims?

	Excellent
	Very Good
	Average
	Poor
	Not Acceptable

It is hard to cover war when it is happening. It is hard (and expensive) to actually get to any fighting. Context and complexity in stories give way to breaking news about “targets hit” and “numbers killed.” Official sources are the easiest to get on the record. Reporters’ perspectives are skewed when they can only see what—and who—is in front of them. And often what is wanted back home is “What does this mean for us?” rather than “What is happening to those poor folks over there?”

Overall Coverage:

Did the press covering the fierce fighting between Hezbollah and Israel last July and August (2006) manage to cover the war with balance and depth, authority and empathy?

The short answer is: It could have been a whole lot worse.

	One-fifth of the articles analyzed were reported from Lebanon, and another one-fifth were reported from Israel.
	46 percent of the articles were critical of Israel, and 51 percent were critical of Hezbollah.
	Although Lebanon is the home country of Hezbollah, the reporters did not blame the Lebanese: 50 percent of the articles were sympathetic to Lebanon, and only 4 percent were critical.

The longer answer is: They could have done a whole lot better.

	Most newspapers focused on their own leaders' diplomatic activities. Only 10 percent of articles dealt with the political negotiations between the fighting parties.
	Although human victims of the war were mentioned in one out of every five articles, they were mostly covered as facts and figures. Almost 91 percent of the articles covered killed and wounded civilians in a very or somewhat impersonal manner.
	Most coverage focused on the military and diplomatic aspects of the war. Only 2 percent focused on economic damage and 1 percent on environmental destruction.
	Only 10 percent of stories covered aid and humanitarian relief efforts and/or refugees (click on Chart 1.1 below for more details).

Chart 1.1 Topics the news focused on.

More details on the Overall Coverage

Comparing Media

But the coverage did differ from one media outlet to another, and some did better than others. Certainly, there were surprises. The Washington Post, the Guardian and the Irish Times led the group. The Lebanese Daily Star and the Israeli Jerusalem Post came in last mostly due to their partisan coverage.* Some of the highlights:

	The Washington Post, the Financial Times and the Nation (Pakistan) received the highest scores for balance.
	The Financial Times had the highest level of authority, and the New York Times scored highest on depth of coverage.
	Although none of the news sources received perfect scores for covering the human victims of war, the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and the Daily Star received the highest marks for empathetic coverage of victims.

The cumulative scores for each category resulted in this final ranking (click on chart for details):

Chart 1.2 How well did each media outlet cover the war overall?

More details on Comparing Media

Coverage Over Time

The coverage also changed over time. At the beginning of the war, the coverage was mostly sympathetic to Israel and highly critical of Hezbollah. On July 30, the day an Israeli air strike on the Lebanese village of Qana killed 27 civilians, the trend started to reverse (see chart "A" in Chart 1.3 below). By the time Hezbollah scored a direct hit on Kfar Giladi on August 6 (B) killing 12 Israeli soldiers, media coverage had shifted; the press became more neutral in its coverage of both the fighting and the politicians on both sides. This change was in Lebanon's and Hezbollah's advantage. Overall coverage of Israel remained positive, but not as much as at the start of the conflict. This was the Qana-effect.

Three other events registered as significant in the coverage: August 12 (C), the day the UN Security Council adopted resolution 1701; July 20 (D), a day of unprecedented violence and bloodshed on both sides; and July 25 (E), the day following an Israeli air strike that killed three UN peacekeepers in south Lebanon. By the end of the war in mid-August, the press declared Hezbollah the winner of the conflict (click on chart 1.3 for more details).

The main five events mentioned are marked in the following chart.

How did the coverage change over time? (% of articles per day)

More details on Coverage Over Time

It's a year later.

The consequences of the fighting are still playing out in the region, even though the rest of the world has blinked and moved on. But there are still lessons to be learned from this war—political and military lessons, certainly, but also lessons about how the press should cover conflicts when they erupt.

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* Both the Lebanese Daily Star and the Israel based Jerusalem Post received low scores on 'Source Balance' and 'Authority' since neither newspaper had reporters posted in the other country. But the papers also received low scores on 'Frame Balance' since the coverage of both papers was typically partisan. The war reporting of these papers points up one of the classic dilemmas in war journalism: showing journalistic "balance" can be seen by a home front as evidence of lack of patriotism, perhaps even to the point of treachery; yet reporting the news with a patriotic spin is to be "biased" and even opens a paper to charges of its being an arm of the state's propaganda apparatus. Neither the Lebanese nor the Israeli news outlet was able to show the level of balance of the papers studied from outside the region. As a result, both were disadvantaged in the rankings above.

Study released July 30, 2007

A center of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism and the School of Public Policy. Copyright © 2006 International Center for Media and the Public Agenda. 1117 Journalism Building, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742