Talk:Media coverage of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict

Bias

This article seems to contain a lot of sources from the Palestinian side of the issue, while the Israeli issue isn’t covered in much detail. Zaffrei (talk)

CAMERA again

The matter of CAMERA has been discussed above, and Palestine Media Watch is much the same. It is about time that people who want to include these disputed unreliable sources in the article get the consensus that ONUS requires them to get. As well as being unusable for factual information, the fact that they are pure propaganda organisations with no other purpose means that it is inappropriate to cite their opinions either. For similar reasons, Electronic Intifada is not cited all over the place though it easily could be. CAMERA and Electronic Intifada are cited together in one section when the story involves them according to a reliable source. Zero^talk 09:28, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

@Zero0000: Looking through WP:RSN, I'm not seeing any consensus that CAMERA is unreliable - I note that in comparison, there is a consensus to deprecate Electronic Intifada. If there is something I have missed, can you link it? BilledMammal (talk) 09:39, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Happy to discuss it here to establish consensus. Do you have sources that confirm that they are "pure propaganda organisations"? As you surely know, biased sources can be reliable. Alaexis_¿question? 09:47, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Sorry but that's a sky-is-blue question. What else have they ever done? And CAMERA has come up at RSN on multiple occasions with a clear majority against it. CAMERA is the organization that mounted a secret attack on Wikipedia years ago which ended with a lot of editors being banned. And I'll repeat that the ONUS is on inclusion, not on exclusion. Zero^talk 10:10, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

I’ve read a number of the discussions at RSN on CAMERA, and I didn’t see any with such a mandate. Can you link the ones you are thinking of?

Regarding ONUS, I note the material you are trying to remove has been in the article for years; it is the status quo now and consensus is needed to remove it. BilledMammal (talk) 10:18, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

There is no such rule. Read WP:CCC. In this case multiple people have challenged it, so whatever consensus it ever had is now gone. It never had much consensus anyway; if you look in the history you will see that it was challenged from the beginning. Zero^talk 10:49, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

And multiple people have supported it. Consensus can change, but it has not yet, and until it does we stick to the status quo - I note WP:NOCONSENSUS.

But back on the topic of CAMERA’s reliability, I’m still hoping you can link those discussions you say establish a consensus that it is unreliable? BilledMammal (talk) 11:01, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Given that discussion has died down I've restored the status quo; please don't remove it again without either a consensus to remove it or a consensus that CAMERA is unreliable. BilledMammal (talk) 06:53, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Adding: there is a huge academic literature on media coverage of the middle-east. How about we seek it out and cite it instead of arguing about political advocacy organizations? What was here before was not an encyclopedia article but instead a thinly-veiled mirror of professional propaganda sites. The underlying problem is that this article grew up when editors knew nothing about the subject except stuff like Tuvia Grossman, whose relevance is at the trivial end of nothing. (He is still there; not for long.) We can and should do better. Zero^talk 10:20, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

@BilledMammal, as I've seen you say elsewhere, the burden is on you to get consensus for inclusion, and there is no consensus here for the inclusion of such poorly sourced material. CAMERA is not a reliable source, and you have presented no evidence that it is. There has been clear majorities against CAMERA as a source repeatedly at RSN, and regardless a primary sourced piece from CAMERA does not have weight to be included here. Same for PMW. I am again removing this material as lacking reliable sources to demonstrate weight, please get consensus before adding such poor sources to this article again. A number of reasons have been provided for its removal, and silent consensus is no longer valid once there is not silence. nableezy - 18:10, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

That was newly added material; this has been in the article for years, and is now the status quo - a consensus is required to remove it.

With that said, if you are correct that there is a consensus that these sources are unreliable I will consider that a consensus against its inclusion here. Can you link the discussions that establish that consensus? BilledMammal (talk) 01:24, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

If it only had silent consensus then once that silence is broken there is no consensus and the onus is on you to get it. Full stop. If you want to seek further comment from NPOVN and RSN if these sources are reliable and have weight to include feel free, but you have been given several reasons why this material should not be included, and the only response is that it is long standing material. Sorry, but that is not a reason for inclusion. Finally, I am unaware of any policy backing for the claim is now the status quo - a consensus is required to remove it, feel free to substantiate that claim at any time. Because what our policy actually says is The responsibility for achieving consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content. nableezy - 03:57, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

BM, As I wrote above, there is no policy that removing older material requires a consensus. It only requires that the material is disputed. You should either prove me wrong or stop making this claim. Zero^talk 04:03, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

See WP:NOCONSENSUS - When discussions of proposals to add, modify, or remove material in articles end without consensus, the common result is to retain the version of the article as it was prior to the proposal or bold edit.

Regardless, both you and Zero have said there are discussions establishing that these sources are unreliable. I have searched for those discussions, and though I have been unable to find them it is very possibly that I have missed them - I am hoping that you can link those discussions. BilledMammal (talk) 04:13, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

What I’ve said is that repeated discussions at RSN have had majorities saying CAMERA is a poor source. Your quote from NOCON only says what a common result is, not that it is required. What ONUS says is that the person seeking to include disputed material needs to establish consensus. If there was some explicit consensus for it previously you might have a point, but there was not. Again, feel free to seek further views on the sources and their reliability and weight, but in the meantime I’ll ask that you abide by WP:ONUS. nableezy - 04:36, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

The exceptions listed there, which make it "usually", don't apply here.

Regardless, can you please link the discussions you are referring to? BilledMammal (talk) 04:38, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 78#CAMERA / Alex Safian for one. nableezy - 04:56, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Thank you. It's a discussion of a single article which isn't overly helpful to assess the suitability of the source as a whole, but it's better than nothing. Reviewing that discussion, I'm seeing:

Appropriate to use with attribution:

1. Tempered
2. Shuki
3. Cptnono
4. brewcrewer

Generally inappropriate to use:

1. harlan
2. Dailycare
3. Cs32en

Unclear:

1. Bali ultimate (Appears to say that the source can be used, attributed, "when appropriate")
2. Wehwalt (Suggests attributing inline, but also suggests finding a less controversial (on Wikipedia anyway) source for the same information)

I might have assessed some of their positions incorrectly; please let me know if you disagree with any of my assessments. However, if I have not, I'm not seeing any consensus against use in that discussion; if it was a RfC for WP:RSP I think it would be closed as "Option 2". BilledMammal (talk) 05:10, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Shuki: This is a frivolous exploitation of RSN since Camera is not RS. Bali ultimate: Camera is a propaganda and advocacy outfit. They're not a reliable source for anything but their own opinions, attributed to them (and when appropriate, etc. Again, if you feel this source that’s has been challenged and for which you have no consensus for inclusion is reliable or has weight to include then feel free to raise it at a noticeboard. I’ll continue to ask that you abide by ONUS and not reinsert unreliable propaganda outlets as sources in an encyclopedia article unless and until you establish a consensus for inclusion, as there has never been any consensus besides WP:SILENCE, and as that explanatory essay explains, Consensus arising from silence evaporates when an editor changes existing content or objects to it. nableezy - 05:20, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

PMW

Given the focus of this section has been CAMERA, I haven't previously considered this aspect in as much detail. It was previously unsourced in the article but I've found a secondary source for it, "Arab Lobby in the United States Handbook" on page 162. I can't find much on the publisher, but I'm seeing WP:USEBYOTHERS that suggests the handbook might be a decent source.

I also haven't found any discussion of Palestine Media Watch as RSN - only a single mention that appears factually inaccurate by a banned editor.

With that said, looking at the content again it doesn't seem to explain anything to the reader; what do these questions mean? Why are they relevant? Unless additional context can be provided, I have no objection to removing that paragraph. BilledMammal (talk) 04:27, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Photo of Tuvia Grossman

Some people think that media eagerness to believe the worst of Israel and Israelis on flimsy evidence with little fact-checking is itself a sign of media bias. As someone said on Twitter the other day, it took the New York Times 5 minutes to blame Israel for bombing the al-Ahli hospital, but 82 days to conclude that Israeli women had been raped on October 7th... AnonMoos (talk) 04:49, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

I agree that it shouldn't be removed; the argument that it had nothing to do with media bias is not relevant because reliable sources associated it with media bias; whether that association was correct, false, or even eventually disproven, it is WP:DUE to be covered here.

I would note that it has been argued that it does have something to do with media bias; for example, Florian Markl in "Comprehending Antisemitism through the Ages" argued that incidents like these are not simple mistakes, but systematic, with the evidence being that such mistakes are disproportionately against Israel. BilledMammal (talk) 06:51, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

You would think that with thousands of violent incidents over multiple decades, many involving death of innocents, some American who got minor injuries might sit a little down the importance list. Readers are going to think that the evidence for anti-Israel bias must be pretty weak if evidence-free trivial examples are the best on offer. Zero^talk 08:10, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure what your point is? Our personal opinion of an incident doesn't determine whether it is appropriate for inclusion; coverage in reliable sources does. BilledMammal (talk) 08:54, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

And this has trivial coverage that is all of the "me too" variety except for false claims such as that the NYT was forced to issue a correction after a public outcry (as if "the public" would know who the guy in the photo was). Zero^talk 10:38, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

First, I don’t see the relevance of #MeToo, and I don’t think it is appropriate to trivialise it.

Second, the NYT did issue not just one but two corrections. BilledMammal (talk) 11:12, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Not really. The second correction only mentions the same errors noted in the first correction. The purpose of the second correction was to refer to an article on the incident published on the same day. That article includes the fact that the original Israeli photographer also misidentified Grossman (as an ambulance worker). Finally, don't you know that "me too" had a meaning before #MeToo? The fact is that this whole story is very short and all anyone can do with it is repeat the same story with the same commentary. Zero^talk 11:25, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

The only meaning that made sense to me in this context was #MeToo. Are you saying you meant something different?

To return to the main point: we don’t decide if something is relevant, our sources do. BilledMammal (talk) 11:28, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

"Me too" means "I'm going to say the same thing as everyone else because I don't know any more about it". Also, you are wrong per WP:VNOT. Zero^talk 00:12, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

I didn't say that verifiability alone was sufficient criteria for inclusion? This is an incident that has been widely covered; it warrants inclusion per WP:NPOV, not per WP:V. BilledMammal (talk) 13:32, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

We go by what reliable sources say, not the opinion of editors. The Grossman incident received robust national and international coverage as an example of media bias, whether it was intentional or not, and is still cited decades later in both press and academic literature as an perceived egregious example of media bias that led to the creation of outfits designed to combat perceived media bias (opinions about these organizations aside). There are a lot of accusations of media bias in this article and in the media discourse today, both pro-Israel and pro-Palestine, without the "slightest evidence was ever produced that this was more than an innocent mistake". There's sufficient grounds to add international news organizations jumping to blame Israel for the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital explosion based on nothing more than Hamas propaganda, which led to violence and synagogue burnings across much of the region, as an especially egregious case of media bias, even though it could be argued that news organizations being lazy is more to blame. Longhornsg (talk) 05:43, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

In Google Scholar there are only 23 citations altogether and only 4 in the past 4 years. news.google.com has only 4 citations in total, 2 of them in highly unreliable sources. That's called negligible continuing coverage. Zero^talk 12:23, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

This is moving the goalposts. The event happened in 2000. There was international coverage of the incident, including in the context of media bias, for many months. That's enduring and continuing coverage and more than enough for notability. That there's still coverage of it in academic books more than 20 years later [1] demonstrates how deep and lasting the impact of the event was. What's ironic is the Grossman incident has received the most coverage of any event in this article that actually relates to media bias, the supposed subject of this article.

By contrast, the 2006 Gaza beach blast is a clear example of an event that doesn't belong in this article. First, there's nothing that indicates it's related in any way to media bias. Pure SYNTH. Second, how many citations are there in newsorgs/academic sources for years after, much less in the last 4 years? How about the 2001 and 2002 studies by Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting? (And FAIR is a biased activist organization that is a "pure propaganda" like CAMERA, so it really isn't an RS for notability anyway). You said it best above: "There is a huge academic literature on media coverage of the middle-east. How about we seek it out and cite it instead of arguing about political advocacy organizations?" Agree wholeheartedly. Longhornsg (talk) 13:46, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

To add, the Tuvia Grossman incident is one of the defining events in the conversation of media bias in the Arab-Israeli conflict, giving birth to the cottage industry of campaigns and organizations to combat perceived media bias. That there wasn't massive amounts of SIGCOV and enduring coverage -- not from CAMERA or the like -- is simply wrong. Longhornsg (talk) 13:53, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

I couldn't help laughing when I read "So what if it was a mistake?" in the latest edit summary. I actually agree about the "defining event" characterisation. I was paying attention to the noise at the time. What you should do is find a good source that explains how it was a defining event and use that as the opening. Zero^talk 05:35, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Also, it's embarrassing that the "appears frequently in Israeli criticisms of the media" sentence has only two junk organizations (HonestReporting and Aish.com) and two dead links. If it's covered as widely as you claim, you should be able to do better than that. Zero^talk 10:57, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Never said the current state sourcing for that section is good (much of the article is in an awful state, in prose, sourcing, and content). Longhornsg (talk) 11:29, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 3 April 2024

• What I think should be changed (format using {{textdiff}}):

−

'''Media and academic coverage''' Main article: Media coverage of the Arab–Israeli conflict

+

'''Media and academic coverage'''

• Why it should be changed: It links the article back to itself and thus is redundant.
• References supporting the possible change (format using the "cite" button):

Kuomalainen (talk) 18:48, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

References

 Done Liu1126 (talk) 18:54, 3 April 2024 (UTC)