Land Day - Studies of Israeli Media Coverage

Studies of Israeli Media Coverage

Israeli media coverage of Land Day has been analyzed and critiqued by Israeli academics. Alina Koren's 1994 study of seven major Israeli newspapers found that coverage of the preparations and outcome of the day was extensive in March–April 1976, with reports relying almost entirely on statements from official Israeli information sources such as ministers, advisers or "experts on Arabs." Hardly any space was devoted to the voices of Arab organizers and participants. All of the newspapers examined, whatever their ideological differences, minimized the causes, emphasizing instead two main themes: portraying the demonstrations as the work of a marginal and unrepresentative minority and describing them as a potential threat to state security and law and order. Daniel Bar-Tal and Yona Teichman write: "Of special importance is the finding that all the newspapers delegitimized the participants, as communists, nationalists, extremists, agitators, inciters, enemies or violent people."

Bar-Tal and Teichman also cite a 2000 study by professors Gadi Wolfsfeld, Eli Avraham and Issam Aburaiya that analyzed coverage by Haaretz and Yediot Aharonot of the annual commemorations between 1977 and 1997 and found that reports prior to the event each year also relied heavily on news items from the police and military sources. The focus was on security preparations, with reports on Arabs limited to the agitation and incitement put forward by their leadership. Information on the reasons for the protest was provided in between 6% to 7% of the stories published. Almost all of the reporters were Jewish, and only Haaretz had a reporter specially assigned to cover the Arab population. The event was framed within the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict with Arab demonstrators defined as enemies, rather than citizens making demands of their government. A March 22, 1997 editorial in Yediot Ahronoth for example read: "The right to protest does not include the right to run riot, to close roads, to throw stones at passing vehicles ... Again, it has to be made clear to Israeli Arabs that most of their Israeliness is based on their loyalty that they owe to their country and its laws. If they don't want these laws no one is preventing them from leaving."