The Guardian’s obsession with Israel and the conflicts not covered

H/T Margie

A recent report by Just Journalism on the UK media’s coverage of the Middle East demonstrated that, at the Guardian, coverage of Egypt, Libya and Tunisia combined doubled in 2010 (due to the upheavals inspired by the “Arab Spring”) but still fell far short of the total coverage of Israel;  News reporting about Israel was nearly six times the volume of the next most reported Arab country, Egypt; Comment pieces on Egypt, Libya and Tunisia combined to less than half those published about Israel; Sixteen editorials were published on Israel, whereas none were published on Egypt, Libya or Tunisia.

Of course, it’s possible that the Guardian’s disproportionate coverage of Israel merely reflects the broader obsession in the world with anything Jewish or Israeli, in which case the Guardian may be cynically exploiting this sentiment to drive up web traffic. 

Indeed, if you visit CiF ‘s Middle East section today, you’ll find three pieces highlighted (under “Editor’s Picks”): One about the war in Libya, one about Syria’s continuing bloody crackdown against civilians protesting the regime, and one about Israel’s recent anti-BDS legislation.

As you can see in the snapshot of the page below, the commentary on Israel has generated over three times the number of reader comments than the two other pieces (about Libya and Syria, two nations currently at war) combined, despite the fact that British troops (under NATO) are directly involved in the Libyan conflict. 

More broadly, I recently corresponded with the Guardian readers’ editor, Chris Elliot, to inquire about the Guardian’s disproportionate coverage of Israel, in the context of the Just Journalism report, and his answer was, I think, quite revealing.  He said:

“Israel/Palestine is one of the most intractable conflicts in the world, the effects or which are felt throughout a very large part of the world. It is entirely reasonable that the Guardian, an internationalist newspaper, should devote a great deal of coverage to the issue.”

As I responded to Mr. Elliot, however, no matter how “intractable” the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, it actually pales in comparison to other “intractable” conflicts throughout the world in terms of number of people killed.  

While I don’t realistically expect the Guardian to cover the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (over 5 million killed since 1991) with the same level of intensity they devote to the I-P Conflict (far less than 10,000 casualties), it’s quite curious that, within their main CiF page, there isn’t even a link to Africa related commentaries. 

There’s a very interesting site, called Stealth Conflicts, for those interested in holding the Guardian, and the rest of the mainstream media, accountable to standards of coverage based on evidence, and not merely the arbitrary (or ideologically and/or financially driven) desires of the sites’ editors, and becoming familiar with the information contained in the table below (on conflict death tolls throughout the world since the end of The Cold War) from the site, is a great place to start.