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Israel-Palestine on Record: How the New York Times Misreports Conflict in the Middle East, by Howard Friel and Richard Falk. London: Verso Books, 2007. 269 pages. Notes to p. 302. Index to p. 309.

$19.95 paper.

Pens and Swords: How the American Mainstream Media Report the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, by Marda Dunsky. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. x + 395 pages. Notes to p. 437. Index to p. 444. $27.50 paper.

Israel-Palestine on Record: How the New York Times Misreports Conflict in the Middle East and Pens and Swords: How the American Mainstream Media Report the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict are two tour-de-force works devoted to an analysis of the U.S. media as it reports on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Both present devastating critiques of the media in its pro-Israel bias, and both are extensively documented, reflecting analytical scholarship in the finest tradition.

The books, though different, are complementary. Howard Friel and Richard Falk focus their examination exclusively on the New York Times, grounding their methodology primarily in international law and in the reports of major human rights organizations, demonstrating the failure of the Times to consider either principles of international law or the findings of the human rights groups in its reporting. Marda Dunsky focuses on the mainstream media as a whole

and utilizes the theoretical underpinnings of journalism as her basis for analysis, considering such frames as the "parameters of permissible discourse," the social "construction of reality," and "framing, hegemony, and the status quo" (pp. 7-22).

Friel and Falk's Israel-Palestine on Record amounts to a seminal and devastating critique of the media from the perspective of international law and human rights. Richard Falk, a Princeton University professor emeritus of international law, was recently appointed special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories for the UN Human Rights Council and is considered one of the foremost international law experts in the United States. Howard Friel is a researcher and founder of Differentiated Information, an information services company. In 2004, Friel and Falk published The Record of the Paper: How the New York Times Misreports U.S. Foreign Policy (London: Verso), to which the current volume serves as a follow-up.

The current book contains two main elements: First, it is a critique of the manner in which the Israel-Palestine conflict has been reported by the Times from 2000 to 2006. Second, it offers a template for reporting based on respect for international law, "which we believe should guide responsible journalism in a democratic society whenever foreign policy or international conflict are present" (p. 10). The book's chapters cover an array of topics, including the relationship between the Times and various human rights organizations; the British and Israeli presses; torture; international law; the 2006 war in Lebanon; and the 2006 Palestinian elections.

As a preliminary matter, the authors offer a brief primer of the conflict's main issues from the perspective of international law-the Palestinians' right to self-determination, territorial rights, the rights of refugees, and the question of Jerusalem. They focus heavily on the Geneva Conventions and major UN Security Council resolutions in their examination of such issues as the protection of civilians, the use of excessive force, collective punishment, settlement expansion, water rights, and targeted assassinations. The gap between these international mandates and the Times coverage speaks volumes.

In Friel and Falk's analysis, a gap also looms between the facts reported by the Times and those reported in the publications of a number of respected human rights organizations (e.g., the International Committee of the Red Cross, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B'Tselem, the Public Committee against Torture in Israel, and others). Using statistics from the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem for the period 29 September 2000-30 November 2006, the authors found that nearly four times as many Palestinians were killed as Israelis, including nearly seven times as many Palestinian children. The Times, however, focused predominately on the killing of Israelis by Palestinians: "[F]rom 29 September 2000 to 31 December 2005 the Times published about fifty front page articles on Palestinian suicide bombings and other terrorist acts, in addition to twenty-five articles on Palestinian terrorism reported elsewhere in the front section . . . In contrast, there was much less emphasis in the Times on the far more numerous Israeli killings of Palestinians in the occupied territories during this same period" (pp. 25-26).

The authors' conclusions are clear: "[T]he Times currently refuses even to acknowledge the relevance of international law unless it reinforces the paper's pro-Israel bias . . . This selectivity in the treatment of international law establishes the bias of the Times beyond any reasonable doubt" (p. 9). Friel and Falk further criticize the Times for its "unwillingness to acknowledge the degree to which the central Palestinian claims in the conflict are solidly supported in international law" (p. 9).

Friel and Falk have performed the rigorous analysis needed to make clear and comprehensible the pro-Israel bias of the New York Times and the consequences of this unbalanced reporting on the conflict itself. They have skillfully chipped away at the mythology that the Times is the U.S. "newspaper of record," revealing that it more often functions as a mouthpiece for Israel and its interests. The book is meticulously documented and supplemented by testimonies of victims of human rights abuses whose stories never made it to the pages of the Times.

While Israel-Palestine on Record unmasks the NewYork Times, Pens and Swords goes after the American media more broadly. Marda Dunsky examines the period from 2000 to 2004, drawing on some 350 media reports and transcripts (supplemented by reports from the Israeli press) from close to 30 major American print and broadcast news outlets. Dunsky, who teaches at DePaul University, is a former Arab affairs reporter for the Jerusalem Post and an editor on the national/foreign desk of the Chicago Tribune. Despite the theoretical framework underpinning its analysis, Pens and Swords is not a work of communication theory but rather an examination of journalistic practices.

The content analysis focuses on four major themes, each of which constitutes a chapter. Chapter 1 examines the degree to which media coverage of the conflict reflects the parameters of U.S. Middle East policy and the pro-Israel Washington consensus. Chapter 2 looks at media coverage of the Palestinian refugee question, which is rarely reported on in depth or with any historical context in spite of the fact that it lies at the root of the conflict. Here, Dunsky emphasizes the importance of international law and global consensus on refugee rights-instruments to which the media almost never refer. Chapter 3 analyzes reporting on Israeli settlements in the occupied territories; here, too, the author notes the importance of international law and consensus and the lack of media attention to these principles. Chapter 4 examines reporting on the violence and suffering inflicted and experienced by Israelis and Palestinians during the first half of 2002. This chapter reveals an enormous imbalance in media coverage: Israeli victims are overwhelmingly given a human dimension (names, families, stories, and so on), while Palestinians largely go unnamed, classified primarily by numbers (e.g., "fifteen dead"). Also discussed in this chapter is the media's tendency to hold the Palestinians responsible for violence while excusing Israeli actions under the mantle of security.

Dunsky also considers several other important issues, including the unprecedented public pressure and criticism to which U.S. media outlets were subject to allegations of anti-Israel bias by pro-Israel media-watch organizations such as CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America) and HonestReporting.com. Such groups use a range of tactics to pressure media outlets to change their coverage, including (but not limited to) mass mailings, deluges of phone calls and e-mails, delegations to editors and publishers, and accusations of anti-Semitism. For their part, news outlets have not taken charges of bias lightly; CNN responded to such pressure, for instance, by broadcasting a five-part series on Israeli victims of terror.

In the final chapter, Dunsky presents an alternative paradigm for reporting the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, calling for the following: (a) reframing the conflict by acknowledging and analyzing the impact that U.S. policy has on its trajectory; (b) broadening the parameters of mainstream media discourse by expanding the pool of sources that can contribute broader and deeper interpretations and analyses of key elements of the conflict; (c) reconsidering the role of audience reaction to critical coverage of the conflict; and (d) rethinking the concept of journalistic objectivity as it relates to reporting the conflict. To Dunsky's four suggestions, I would add the crucially important issue of providing context and historical background in reporting on Israel-Palestine.

Pens and Swords is rich in detail, clear and illuminating, extensively documented, and very well analyzed. Like Israel-Palestine on Record, this book makes a vital contribution to the scholarship on this issue.