War Journalism on Israel/Palestine

Abstract

Apart from giving voices to the voiceless, the coming of Aljazeera English and Press TV as an alternative perspective in the global news sphere was thought to herald an important departure from the war journalism that describes the attitude of the dominant media to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. To track this expectation, this study adopted the peace journalism model to examine how Aljazeera English and Press TV have responded to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in the recent past compared to BBC World and CNN International. Findings show that similar patterns of war journalism are reproduced in the alternative perspective with counter-demonizing language and disagreements on the identity of terrorists. Peace journalism contents in the alternative perspective, as in the dominant perspective, are engendered more by events of the peace process and peace propaganda than by the much ideated conciliatory media.