INTRODUCTION

“THE HARTFORD COURANT COVERS THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT” is a daily chronological analysis of news articles, editorials, OP-EDs, commentary, and political cartoons from May 1, 2001 to August 31, 2001. The format of the report consists of the date, identification of the article, and the wire services used where applicable. Each article is broken down into “bulleted” segments. The quote from the article is italicized, followed by our analysis. The “CATEGORY” column identifies segments of each article with one or more of the following categories:

DISTORTION

Distortion alters truth. All of the listed categories contain an element of distortion and may be listed in conjunction with another category.

HALF-TRUTH

A statement that is partially true but omits critical portions of related information.

HEADLINE

Headlines and sub-headlines that do not reflect the major theme of the story or excludes the opposing position to the theme.

IMAGING

Words, phrases, photos, size and location of articles that create an image that distorts the truth.

INACCURATE

A statement that is not factual.

NO REBUTTAL

Reporting an event from one source without offering a rebuttal or response from an opposing party.

OMISSION

Omission of critical information when reporting on an event.

OPINION

The insertion of the writer’s opinion in news articles that should be objectively reported.

UNBALANCED

Primarily using one source when reporting news events and opinion pieces.

UNVERIFIED

Statements made without substantiation or verification.

Missing dates in the chronological sequence of the report are either due to articles being neutral, or there were no Courant reports on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on those days.
Editorials, OP-EDs, and commentary are reflections of opinion. It was noted that The Courant published OP-EDs from both the Israeli and Palestinian positions. There were no tabulations made as to whether or not, collectively, opinion pieces were balanced between Israeli and Palestinian views. Our review of opinion articles focused on articles with glaring omissions, distortions, and misinformation. We did not review letters to the Editor, where both Israeli and Palestinian positions were noted.