Arab media representation of the internal Palestinian conflict a comparative analysis of news reporting

Abstract

During the summer of 2007, the Occupied Palestinian Territories witnessed a serious domestic conflict as a result of the power struggle between the two leading political parties: Fatah and Hamas. The conflict left hundreds of Palestinians dead and ultimately led to the political division between the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and further, to a deep political rift between the Palestinians themselves that still remains at the time of writing. This thesis examines how this conflict was represented in the news reports of the two largest Arab satellite channels, which have different political affiliations: the Aljazeera channel funded by Qatar, and the Al-Arabiya channel funded by Saudi Arabia. The study sheds important new light on the political economy of media ownership in the Arab region and its potential impact on coverage of a key moment in the region’s ongoing struggles in Palestine. The study therefore raises evidence and disturbing questions about the delimiting effect that dominant, privately owned satellite news networks have on the maintenance of the public sphere. The key findings of this study lie in the outline of the boundaries of the Arab satellite media’s independence and objectivity, and in illustrating its persistent submission to political interests. While this is reflected in the two channels’ coverage of ‘Palestine’, it indicated that these channels’ adherence to high journalistic standards is compromised when the crucial ideological interests of their sponsors are involved. The notion that these two channels are working with objective standards of reporting is, however, weakened when it comes to its coverage of events that involve Qatari and Saudi interests. Accordingly, Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya presented different versions of the same events of the Hamas and Fatah conflict that are indicative of their clashing political stances. The findings show that the reporting of the conflict did not meet the professional journalistic and ethical requirements of neutrality and value judgements.