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Obama, those settlements and media coverage. Or is that bias?

Anthony DiMaggio teaches American and Global Politics at Illinois State University. He is the author of Mass Media, Mass Propaganda (2008) and the forthcoming When Media Goes to War (2010).

The accusations of media bias - either pro Palestinian or pro Israel - has waged for ages. Each side puts foward examples of what they regard and say is media bias one way or the other.

DiMaggio undertakes an analysis in a piece "Obama and the Settlements" on CounterPunch:

"The mild pressure that President Obama is placing on Israel to curtail its settlement expansion is worth examining in light of the debate over U.S. media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Anecdotal evidence from the last few weeks suggests an American-Israeli monopoly over media reporting. A piece published in the New York Times on July 30, for example, discusses the Israeli settlements in the West Bank through the eyes of the settlers. The story, “West Bank Settlers Send Obama a Defiant Message,” fails to quote a single Palestinian, relying exclusively on Israeli settlers. The fact that the occupation of the West Bank is universally considered illegal by the international community and under international law is also absent from the piece. No admission is provided that the settlements prohibit the emergence of a contiguous Palestinian state. The settlers are only vaguely referred to as a “challenge” to peace. Although U.S. negotiator Dennis Ross is cited, his role in denying the emergence of a sovereign Palestinian state during the 2000 Camp David talks is also neglected.

Another story from the July 27 issue of Time magazine is instructive as well. Titled “Two Views of the Land,” the piece allocates a mere paragraph to exploring the hardships of Palestinian families in the West Bank, while spending nine paragraphs chronicling the lives of those families who live in the settlements. The Time piece fits comfortably within a larger political debate [led by Obama] seeking only to stop the expansion of the settlements, not to dismantle them. This limitation of media debate to two options - keeping the status quo or allowing for the settlements’ expansion - represents an impressive victory for U.S. and Israeli propaganda."

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