Subject of Focus: Stories emphasized the fighting and the international politics
Country of Focus: Israel received slightly more coverage
Covering Sides (tone): Stories criticized both sides, but...
Sourcing: Israeli sources dominated the news
Covering the Killed and Wounded: Victims and survivors covered as stats
Covering Political Leaders: Few liked Nasrallah or Ahmadinejad, but Rice favored

Three subjects or angles clearly dominated the coverage of the war, while two topics were gravely under-covered. Slightly over one quarter of the articles covered military operations (Chart 2.1). Another one quarter covered international diplomacy and the UN’s efforts. Stories that focused on the killed and wounded (civilians or fighters) accounted for one fifth of the stories. Coverage dealing with the process of negotiations between the fighting sides came in a distant fourth at 10 percent. Another 10 percent of the coverage focused on refugees and the humanitarian effort.

Stories about destruction accounted for only 5 percent of the articles. But the big failure came at the economic and environmental levels. Stories focusing on economic damage and hardship received less than 2 percent of the coverage, while stories about environmental damage were only 1 percent of the coverage, or 9 stories out of 910.

When the various elements of each story were broken down and analyzed separately, several angles were found to appear frequently in each article, while others barely appeared. Those angles are sometimes called "media frames" or references (see Understanding Results for details). Consistent with the above findings, most of the frames focused on the military and political aspects of the conflict, while the economic and environmental aspects of the war barely received any coverage. 

Over 85 percent of the articles included references to military operations, tactics and outcomes. The majority of those frames were covered in a negative tone (64% - of all articles). In addition, three-quarters of the articles included a political frame, which covered the internal and international political process, including diplomatic efforts of the UN and other countries. Most political frames had a neutral tone (39%), but a substantial number were covered negatively (28%).

References to the political and military aspects of the war were followed by casualties frames. These referred to the plight of refugees, the killed and wounded (both military and civilian) and the efforts of aid and relief agencies and appeared in 64 percent of the articles. They were overwhelmingly negative in tone (50%).

About one in every four articles included references to terrorism. Half of those references were neutral in tone, and half were negative. This frame was almost always associated with Hezbollah, with few exceptions.

Human touch frames, or segments of stories that are mostly personal and focus on victims, soldiers or families in dramatic, unique and highly emotional situations, appeared in one-quarter of the articles and were mostly negative in tone (21%).  In addition, one in every five articles had a reference to religion--mostly in the context of religious conflict, and rarely in the context of holy war. Two thirds of those references carried a neutral tone, and one third carried a negative tone.

Only 13 percent of the coverage included references to economic damage and hardship and to the war’s effects on local and global economy. Most of those (10%) carried a negative tone and mostly focused on the price of crude oil. Barely 6 percent of the articles had any references to environmental damage and destruction, and almost all of them were negative in tone. They tended to focus on the oil spill on the Lebanese coast caused by the Israeli bombing of oil reservoirs at Beirut Airport.

When measuring the number of articles and resources dedicated to each of the fighting countries, slightly more stories focused on Israel. When it came to origin of coverage, one-fifth of the articles analyzed were reported from Lebanon, and another one-fifth from Israel. In addition, about 6 percent of all articles were dispatched from the Lebanese-Israeli border, where most of the ground battles took place.

When taking the focus of the headlines and leads into consideration, 29 percent of them focused on Israel, while 26 percent focused on Lebanon. Another 25 percent focused on both Lebanon and Israel simultaneously. The rest of the articles focused on the country of the media outlet.  For instance, 15 percent of headlines and leads published by U.S. media outlets focused on the United States, while 19 percent of Australian headlines focused on Australia.

The overall coverage of the fighting sides (Israel and Hezbollah) was highly critical of both, although Israel received more sympathetic coverage than Hezbollah (see Chart 2.3 below). About 46 percent of articles were dominated by a critical tone towards Israel, and 51 percent were predominantly critical of Hezbollah. Almost one-fifth of the coverage was sympathetic to Israel, while barely 6 percent of the coverage was sympathetic to Hezbollah. Also, 36 percent of articles were neutral towards Israel, while 45 percent were neutral towards Hezbollah.

Although Lebanon is the home country of Hezbollah, it received mostly sympathetic or neutral coverage. Fifty percent of the articles about Lebanon were predominantly sympathetic and only 4 percent were critical.

Among the other countries that received substantial coverage and were often linked to the conflict, Iran received the most critical coverage, followed by Syria, the US and the UK. Almost one in every two articles that mentioned Iran was critical of that country, and only 4 percent were sympathetic. Although 61 percent of articles were neutral when covering Syria, 36 percent were critical and only 4 percent sympathetic. Similarly, 66 percent were mostly neutral when covering the U.S., while 27 percent were critical and only 7 percent sympathetic. Finally, 71 percent were neutral in tone towards the UK, while 20 percent were critical.

In addition to tone of coverage, the study tracked news references to those blamed for starting the war, those portrayed as the victim and those presented as the winner of the war (see Chart 2.4 below). An overwhelming majority of articles (55%) explicitly blamed Hezbollah for starting or causing the war. Only 11 percent of the articles blamed Israel, and 9 percent blamed both sides equally. Interestingly, the rest of the articles blamed Iran (9%), Syria (8%) or the United States (5%). Articles that blamed Hezbollah tended to also blame Iran and Syria, while those that blamed Israel tended to also lay the blame on the US.

Sixty five percent of articles portrayed Israel as the victim in the conflict, while only 13 percent portrayed Hezbollah (but not Lebanon) that way. Twenty two percent presented both sides as victims of a bigger conflict, and those tended to mention the ‘proxy war’ theory between the US, on one side, and Syria and Iran, on the other. Lebanon was treated as a country external to Hezbollah in most articles and was almost always (97%) portrayed as the victim of the war.

Although few articles mentioned anything about who was losing or winning the war, it was interesting to note that more than half of those articles (54%) portrayed Hezbollah as the winner and Israel as the loser, while only 30 percent depicted the opposite. The rest either portrayed both as losers (9%) or both as winners (7%).

Sourcing: Israeli sources dominated the news

Civilian casualties received substantially more attention than military casualties. However, coverage of both military and civilian casualties focused on figures and facts. Little coverage emphasized the pain and suffering of the victims and their families (Chart 2.6).

About two-thirds of all the articles studied referenced killed and/or wounded-but only by numbers. Half of those included casualty figures for both soldiers and civilians. The articles that mentioned only the number of dead and wounded civilians accounted for 23 percent of the coverage. Only 11 percent of articles mentioned the number of killed and wounded soldiers (including Hezbollah fighters) alone.

Both Israeli and Lebanese civilian casualties were presented in a very or somewhat impersonal manner. Barely 11 percent of articles covering Lebanese victims and 8 percent of those covering Israeli victims were somewhat or very personal. Military casualties were presented in an even more impersonal manner. Fewer than 5 percent of Israeli military casualties and almost none of Hezbollah’s military casualties were presented in a personal manner. In addition, among all articles that mentioned casualties (both military and civilian), only 12 percent mentioned any of their names, and only 13 percent mentioned anything about their relatives or other survivors.

Overall, Israeli soldiers got more coverage than Hezbollah fighters, at a 6:1 ratio.  UN casualties during the war received only 7 percent of the coverage. Interestingly, almost 6 percent of all articles mentioned Palestinian civilian casualties, and about 2 percent also mentioned Palestinian military casualties.

When it came to political leaders, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad received the most negative coverage with 40 percent of articles characterizing him negatively, 55 percent neutrally, and only 5 percent positively (Chart 2.7). He essentially tied with Hezbollah's Chairman Hassan Nasrallah (40% negative, 15%  positive), who was followed by US President George Bush (30% negative, 15% positive), UK Prime Minister Tony Blair (26% negative, 22% positive), Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (21% negative, 5% positive) and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (20% negative, 17 percent positive). US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice received the most positive coverage with 30 percent of articles characterizing her positively and 13 percent negatively. She was followed by Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Seniora (24% positive, 5% negative) and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni (13% positive, 11% negative)