Bad News From Israel: Reviews and Debate
Press Reviews
 "In my judgment as a journalist and Middle East specialist, the broadcasters' language favours the occupying soldiers over the occupied Arabs, depicting the latter, essentially, as alien tribes threatening the survival of Israel, rather than vice versa.Now comes hard evidence to support these views, gathered by Greg Philo and his Glasgow University Media Group, who have monitored and analysed four separate periods of BBC and ITN coverage between late 2000 and the spring of 2002. Bad News From Israel makes the scientifically based case that the main news and current affairs programmes - with the rare exception, usually on Channel 4 - are failing to tell us the real story and the reasons behind it. They use a distorted lens."
Tim Llewellyn, The Observer
"the Glasgow University Media Group suggest there is a serious and systematic bias among British broadcasters in favour of the government and its allies.Analytical and investigative reporting has given way to breathless descriptions of troop movements and military technology."
George Monbiot, The Guardian
"According to Bad News from Israel , a fascinating new book by the Glasgow University Media Group, mainstream current affairs coverage is leaving more and more of us bored, completely bewildered, or both"
Molly Watson, Mail on Sunday, July 25 2004 .
"In their scrupulously researched book, Bad News from Israel , Greg Philo and Mike Berry show how British audiences' grip on the reality of the Middle East is held firmly through an Israeli prism because that is the way British television tells it."
Will Hutton, The Observer
"The study shows the crucial importance of TV news in informing public opinion and the powerful influence it can have on how we see and understand our world.
It also shows too how news can fail to inform, and the researchers do suggest different and innovative approaches to improve the quality of news. The study also raises serious questions for broadcasters - indeed, all journalists - about their responsibility in trying to tell the truth to the public while maintaining impartiality. "
Roy Greenslade, The Guardian
"British television news, namely the BBC, is widely regarded internationally as a source of objective and balanced coverage, particularly when compared to US news agencies.
Research published last week by Greg Philo and the Glasgow University Media Group, Bad News from Israel , directly challenges these assumptions. In this scientifically based study of the BBC and Independent Television (ITV) news and current affairs programs on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the group analyzes how coverage influences the attitudes and understanding of the TV audience.The results of the study are a damning portrayal of how the conflict is covered."hey
Paul Cochrane, The Daily Star Lebanon
"At least one core argument of the book is hard to dispute: the notion that without a sense of the historical context of a decades-old conflict, a fair picture of the killing and suffering on both sides in the past four years of Intifada is difficult, if not impossible, to project. In some instances, the result has been precisely the opposite - to misrepresent the actions of Israel ."
Jewish Chronicle
"The recent Glasgow University report on the Middle East has some persuasive arguments, but the clock nevertheless sometimes strikes 13.The Glasgow report cites ignorance about the Middle East among 17- to 22-year-olds, but these are a notoriously difficult group for BBC television news to reach - and there should surely be a responsibility for schools or colleges to teach about the Middle East or for people themselves to seek out knowledge."
Roger Mosey, Head of BBC Television News , The Guardian
"The situation described by the researchers seems to be the diametric opposite of what we have been experiencing over recent years. We can't decide whether this book is intended to be a comedy or a surreal horror story"
The Jewish News
"In a remarkable and scientific study of the manner in which the main UK terrestrial news broadcasters (BBC and ITV) cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Professor Greg Philo and Dr Mike Berry of the Glasgow University Media Group, have detailed how that news coverage tends to promote the Israeli perspective while ensuring that viewers remain ignorant of the actual causes that lie behind that long-running tragedy.in an added bonus, the first ninety pages of this book are devoted to a superb concise history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the perspective of both Israeli and Palestinian sources. It is a gripping and frequently shocking read."
Inayat Bunglawala, The Muslim Weekly
".a modest study conducted by an unknown academic."
Jerusalem Post
Journals
"By combining a review of the myriad versions of the foundation of the state of Israel with a wide ranging exploration of current reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Philo and Berry have created a rare and valuable thing. Their analysis of the Western media's distorted coverage of the conflict is firmly rooted in a complex and confused history: one full of people (on both sides) for whom the past is filtered through suffering, deceit, violence and deeply entrenched prejudices."
Sarah Irving, Red Pepper
The work carries not only extensive analysis of TV coverage but also in-depth interviews with broadcasters and research sessions that bring together senior journalists and members of the public."
Olga Wojtas, Times Higher Education Supplement, 25th June 2004
"The Glasgow University Media Group's new book, Bad News from Israel , exposes the dishonest role the main TV news coverage in Britain plays in distorting the Israel-Palestine conflict and misinforming the public.these criticisms are far from new. But Bad News from Israel provides reams of evidence to back up such views."
Jean Shaoul, Variant , Winter 2004
"Messrs Philo and Berry are fearless. They have attempted in this book to analyse how the news bulletins of both BBC1 and ITV have covered the ongoing conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians.
Few people are able to write about this subject without incurring the wrath or one side or other.I do hope those with the power to improve the situation read this book.
I also hope it is read by the viewers who have some responsibility to gather their own facts."
Linda Christmas, Camden New Journal
"This volume is a must-read for those journalists and media critics who are tired of the same old debates about objectivity, and wish to move on to more sophisticated questions about how media bias actually works to alter public perceptions of the important issues. As bonus, the first part of the book, in setting up the study, provides the most concise and readily understandable history of the region".
The Republic , August 14
What is the answer for those fed up with official truths?...there are those venerable things called books. None of the following titles is likely to appear on the summer reading lists, yet each offers an antidote to the daily hagiographies of power. The first is Bad news From Israel .every journalist should read this book; every student of journalism ought to be assigned it.
John Pilger, New Statesman , 28 June, 2004
"Greg Philo and Mike Berry, researchers at the Glasgow University Media Group, have written an important study on news media coverage of the Middle East . Bad News from Israel will have wide-ranging repercussions at a time when many people question the interrelationship of the media and the political forces, the media's dulled critical edge and its role in trumpeting recent wars.In order to have a meaningful democracy it is necessary to have an informed body politic. If the media fails to educate the public to have a better understanding of key issues, then there are grounds to demand remedial actions. Bad News from Israel is an important contribution to what eventually will be an important debate in our societies regarding the role of the media, and news coverage in particular".
Paul de Rooij, The Washington Report on the Middle-East Affairs
"This book contains a fascinating, impressive and meticulous study by the Glasgow University Media Group of how the main TV news channels (BBC1 and ITV) misrepresent the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and misinform the great British public. It is therefore essential reading"
Moshe Machover, Race and Class
Websites and e-Journals
"[Bad News from Israel ] ought to be required reading in newsrooms and media schools. The research showed that the public's lack of understanding of the conflict and its origins was compounded by news reporting, especially on television."
John Pilger, ZNet
"In a new study of media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a group of American college students was asked, "Who is occupying the occupied territories, and what nationality are the settlers?" Fairly simple questions, but only 29 percent knew the correct answers. The Israelis are both the occupiers and the settlers.The study points out that the Americans questioned were journalism and media students and some had even done projects on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. So their answers clearly overstated the public's level of knowledge about the Middle East .
As a journalist who has spent almost four decades reporting on world affairs and especially the Middle East , I was not surprised. I learned long ago that you cannot underestimate the level of understanding of the general public..In both Britain and America , television news is still the main source of information on world affairs for most of the public. So it is not surprising that most of the public hasn't got a clue about what is behind the depressing news from the Middle East . It's mostly "bang bang" and very little context."
Tom Fenton, CBS News , Oct 28, 2004
"In Britain , the recent publication of Glasgow University Media Group's book 'Bad News from Israel ' has again highlighted the depth of ignorance around the Israel-Palestine conflict and the media's inadequacies in providing vital historical and legal context within its news coverage."
Benjamin Counsell, The Electronic Intifada , 8 November 2004
Academics
"This superb study is extensive in scope and scrupulously fair. It will be a landmark. It blends together material on what the media do, why they do it, and how their modes of reporting affect public knowledge and interest."
Professor Edward S. Herman, University of Pennsylvannia
"Coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often dangerously superficial. Bad News from Israel is a strong contribution to scholarship and public debate.'"
Professor John D.H. Downing - Director, Global Media Research Center, Southern Illinois University
"The book does a very good job of summarising for the reader the complex historical background to present day Israel . It covers a lot of ground in a clear and readable manner and is particularly good at airing different views about the Arab-Israeli conflict.'
Professor Avi Shlaim, University of Oxford
"A remarkable book, very comprehensive, with an innovative approach and full of interesting examples. It is convincing and very useful not only for researchers but for the general public as well."
Prof. Lucrecia Escudero Chauvel, Universite de Lille III and Paris VIII
'Just about everything that we know about Israel/Palestine comes to us from our television screens. Bad News from Israel reveals remarkable levels of ignorance about what and why things are as they are. What's more, the analysis offered here strongly suggests that the media are intimately linked to the perpetuation of this unhappy situation.'
Professor Frank Webster, City University, London
"Unusual in its scope and methods, and astonishing in its outcomes."
Professor Kees Brants, University of Amsterdam
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