Crises Press Coverage: Local & Foreign Reporting on the Arab-Israel Conflict

Abstract

This study analyzes Israeli Haaretz and the American New York Times crisis press coverage on four short Arab-Israel crises, from the early 1950s to the late 1990s. To illuminate the similar and different reporting modes of the press from within and outside a conflict region, the article probes three hypotheses: reporting on the salient crisis events will differ (H1), reporting on conflict related events will differ (H2) and dominant media functions will differ (H3). Findings on most reporting variables examined in both newspapers support these hypotheses. Compared with the NYT, in Haaretz, overall crisis exposure was higher, crisis was addressed more frequently than conflict, use of pictures was negligible and surveillance substituted correlation. But in both papers, similar peaks and lulls were reported for all four short Arab-Israel crises, coverage of crisis was the overwhelming topic and surveillance was the dominant media function.