The Common Good
September-October 2002

Who Occupies the Occupied Territories?

by Rose Marie Berger, Jodi Hochstedler | September-October 2002

The Glasgow University Media Group decided to research how much about the Middle East
conflict students learned from watching TV. This is what they found.

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The Glasgow University Media Group decided to research how much about the Middle East conflict students learned from watching TV. This is what they found.

On British TV news, Israelis spoke twice as much as Palestinians.
Three times as many headlines expressed the Israeli view as that of the Palestinians.
Only .48 percent of Middle East coverage dealt with the history of the conflict.

Coincidentally, in the Media Group's survey of 300 17-to-22-year-old Brits (of whom 82 percent learned about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from TV news):

71 percent didn't know who was occupying the occupied territories; 11 percent believed that the Palestinians were occupying the territories and were the "settlers."
80 percent did not know where Palestinian refugees came from or how they had become refugees.
Only 30 percent believed that more Palestinians had died than Israelis (since September 2000, 559 Israelis and 1,626 Palestinians have been killed).

Source: Glasgow University Media Group, Miftah, Israeli Defense Forces
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