San Jose Mercury News Opinion Page Representations of Israel

By Lisa Neinchel, JCRC Summer Intern 2007

Project Outline

This project, conducted by the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) intern Lisa Neinchel, is in response to concerns in the local Jewish community about how the San Jose Mercury News represents Israel in the Opinion Page.  The JCRC has conducted a detailed research project to fully address these concerns to determine if there is neutrality or bias in the San Jose Mercury News Opinion Pages for the months of May and June 2007.  These two months were selected for the study in order to focus on the timeframe during which a new editor replaced the old one, and the Sunday Perspective section of the paper was eliminated.

Process, Parameters

The research is confined to the months of May and June to focus on the time when the editor changed from Susan Goldberg to Carole Leigh Hutton on May 21, 2007 and the Perspective section ended Sunday June 17, 2007.  During this time the Gaza Strip was taken over by Hamas, and Islamist groups.

Each issue of the May and June San Jose Mercury papers were found in hardcopy so that the original layout and wording could be analyzed.

Lisa Neinchel has been out of the State of California for the past three years as a college student at New York University (NYU).  She spent the spring of 2007 in the NUY campus in Paris.  She had not read the San Jose Mercury News regularly until she began this project and therefore came into it with as little bias as possible.

The categories within the Opinion section of the paper include editorials, syndicated columnists, and readers’ letters.

Criteria to analyze articles

*Does this article represent a positive, neutral, or negative representation of Israel?  What is the overall tone after reading the article? 

            *What specific terminology does the writer use to describe Israel, Israelis, and Palestinians and their conflicts?

            *Does the article portray a negative image of Israel or is it constructively critical of Israel without being             negative?  Does the article take a specific Israeli action and describe why   it doesn’t work?  Or a way to do it better?

            *Does the article take a complex situation and turn it into generalizations?

            *Does the article put the situation into a context describing the back-story and the surrounding issues?

            *Is the article balanced?  Does the writer discuss the multiples sides of the story?  Is the “other” view represented?

Based on these questions each article is rated on a scale of One to a Five.

A rating of One indicates the article demonstrates a positive representation of Israel.
A rating of Two means that the writer implies a positive representation of Israel without directly saying it in clear terms.
A rating of Three means that the article provides a neutral representation of Israel.
A rating of Four conveys that the writer implies a negative image of Israel without necessarily using directly disparaging words.
A rating of Five means that the article gives a negative image of Israel.

Conclusion

Many of the articles included in this research do not focus on Israel.  More often than not, the articles focus on other issues ranging from American presidential administrations to Palestinian behavior to Iraq.  Some discuss Israel multiple times and some only once.  The common thread topic relates both directly and indirectly to Israel (i.e. Palestinians’ presence in Gaza).

After reading, rereading, analyzing, then finally editing the analysis I wrote about the twenty-three sources from the Mercury News’ Opinion Pages, the results reflect that only two articles hold a definitively negative representation of Israel.  The two articles that rate a Four and a Five utilize terminology with connotations that convey a clear opinion that blames Israel for the problems between Israelis and the Palestinians.  Out of nineteen editorials, readers’ letters, and syndicated columnists, two articles are a small portion of the whole.

Seven articles earned a rating of Three.  This means that more than a third of the articles were neutral.  Neutral simply means that Israel was neither stated as a positive or a negative force in the Middle East, the world, or Israel itself.  A Two rating was earned when the article indirectly promoted Israel in a positive way.  A Two rating occurred when the writer discussed Israel in conjunction with Palestinians and Hamas or Fatah.  Consequently, the writer implied that Israel is better or more deserving than Palestinians in the conflict.  A One rating was given to clearly positive articles about Israel.  This means that the specific terms the writer utilized promoted Israel to be without fault.

My challenge in the beginning was to determine whether criticism of Israel was constructive, negative, or anti-Israel.  An article that specified actions that Israel could have done differently during this two month period did not immediately mean to negate Israel as a country.  For an article to earn a rating of Five in the rubric meant that the writer had to completely side against Israel and believe Israel to be illegitimate in its existence.  That has proved to be a rare publication for the Mercury News Opinion Pages.

A discovery that I made was with the sometimes negatively portrayed Palestinians.  Many of the articles focused on Palestinians more than Israelis, and made only mere mention of Israel in relation with Palestinian behavior.   Focus on Palestinian action is not surprising when one considers the time frame for the research.  May and June, 2007 was a time when Hamas took over Gaza by force from Fatah and did not directly involve Israel.  However, an accurate study of how the Opinion Pages represent Palestinians is a separate issue that will have to wait for another time; my observations of Palestinian negative representation was not the focus of my research.  It was simply observation along the way.  The high number of Three, Two, and One ratings does not mean that Palestinians are automatically portrayed in neutral to negative perspectives.

Moreover, the evidence that proves the overall Opinion Pages are negative or positive representations of Israel requires a key element:  a pattern.  There is little evidence of any pattern when looking at these ratings (One to Five) in chronological order.

Looking at the difference with Goldberg as editor compared to Hutton’s takeover as editor demonstrates no pattern.  Neither does the elimination of the Perspective section.  The two articles that were clearly providing negative views of Israel were after Goldberg left.  With that said, more neutral and positive representations of Israel appear in the paper starting May 21 to the end of June with Hutton as editor.  From this, a conclusion can be made that there are more articles that discuss Israel when Hutton became editor.  More difficult to evaluate is whether there is any change with the types of editorials, syndicated columnists, and letters after the Perspective section is eliminated.  My research focused on the months of May and June and the Perspective section stopped running the second half of June, providing too little time to make a fair analysis.

My conclusion on this research and analysis is that the Opinion Pages of the San Jose Mercury News do not represent Israel in a negative light.

Seeking an answer to the question of Israel’s representation in the newspaper has brought about more questions in the end than answers.  Although the primary question has been answered, there now remains new questions to evolve from my research.  Is the representation of Palestinians negative?  Do the other sections of the San Jose Mercury News contain biased views of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?  Does bias exist in other subject matters written by editors, syndicated columnists, and readers?  What do other papers’ Opinion Sections say about Israel?  It will have to be the responsibility of the community, or maybe me at another time, to research, analyze, and arrive at some conclusion.  Yet even with those future analyses, newspaper journalism is a dynamic medium.  My conclusions are limited to two months of one section of one paper conducted by one person.

Although such conclusions can only be made with time-spent analysis, I have learned that it is our responsibility to look closely at each article and read carefully and analytically before making a conclusion about its bias.  In addition, how wonderfully fortunate we are to have an opportunity to read such variety of writers, columnists, scholars, and people of the community conducting a dialogue about Israel.

Lastly, I’d like to thank those who gave me the opportunity to conduct this research and reap the benefits of learning how to do this analysis, learning about the San Jose Mercury News, and getting to know a new group of people.  Thank you Diane Fisher and Yitzhak Santis for encouraging me and guiding me.  Thank you Mom, Dad, and my brother, David, for support along the journey.