Yedi'ot Aharanot

Yedi'ot Aharonot, Israel’s largest newspaper in terms of circulation and sales, presents an Israeli perspective on the conflict at hand. YNet News, as it is known in English, has typically aligned center-left politically, and is known for being biased against Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s current Prime Minister. Through a content analysis over the last several years, it is clear that this newspaper is partial to Israel and against the formation of a Palestinian state.

Bias in media may manifest itself in differing ways. As seen in several YNet News articles, specific words are chosen to evoke emotion from the reader. In these cases, the connotation of the words is helpful creating a bias. For instance, Palestinians are often referred to as “terrorists” or “militants,” which both carry negative connotations. Meanwhile, the Israeli forces are referred to as “security forces” or by their official name, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). The difference in the diction used suggests that the Israeli forces are acting defensively, while the Palestinian forces are acting offensively, and often aggressively.

Another way YNet News created a bias in favor of Israel was through headlines. In several cases over the years, YNet News used headlines that attracted a pro-Israel and pro-Western reader. On June 13, 2014, one day after the kidnapping of three Israeli boys, which led to this past summers rise in conflict, an article outlining the incident was headlined with, “US citizen among missing teens in suspected West Bank kidnapping.” (Zitun, 2014) Because of the mention of a US citizen, this article makes this issue expand beyond the borders of Israel. In another instance, on November 11, 2014, the top headline for the day was, “European nations threaten to recognize Palestinian State.” (Report, 2014) This headline denotes the recognition of the Palestinian State as a risk to Israel. In both of these cases, the headline is used to evoke negative emotion towards Palestine, while confirming YNet News’ bias for Israel.

In YNet News it seems as though every slight Israeli wound is made into a news story, while almost no Palestinian injuries are brought up unless they occurred in a wide scale attack. While scrolling through the YNet News twitter account, it became tedious to read through all of the “Israeli slightly wounded” (Devir, 2014) stories, while there were almost no mentions of Arabs or Palestinians. This could be attributed to selective reporting. If that is the case, YNet News is choosing to report every Israeli slight so that the readers think that the Palestinians are the aggressors, while the average reader remains unaware of most Palestinian casualties.

Overall, it could be presumed that Yedi'ot Aharonot is a pro-Israeli newspaper. Despite the fact that they aimed to remain neutral on all sorts of world issues, the writers paid special attention to the plight of Israel and the Jewish people more often than not. Even though the newspaper was biased against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the right wing, the fact that it is based in Israel and has Israeli creators and editors aids the bias towards the pro-Israel movement.