~----------------- CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE THE PALESTINIAN GUERRILLAS' IMAGE IN THE NEVv YORK TIMES DURING THE JORDAN CRISIS, 1970 A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Mass Communication by Salwa Shtieh Rifai January, 1987 The Thesis of Salwa Shtieh Rifai is approved: California State University, Northridge. ii Acknowledgements I would like to thank my advisor, Professor Kenneth s. Devol, for his invaluable guidance and encouragement throughout. I would also like to thank Professor Michael c. Emery for allowing this study to come to life during two years by bridging the difficulties that are encountered by foreign students. I wish to express my gratitude to my friend, Hugh Rhys, for his help in editing this work. iii ABSTRACT THE PALESTINIAN GUERRILLAS' IMAGE IN THE NEW YORK TIMES DURING THE JORDAN CRISIS, 1970 by Salwa Shtieh Rifai Master of Arts in Mass Communication In September 1970, King Hussein of Jordan decided to put an end to the state-within-a-state situation through strong military operations that ended in the expulsion of the military forces of the Palestinian Liberation Organization from Jordan. This situation had started to develope after the Israeli occupation of the rest of Palestine--West Bank and Gaza Strip--in June 1967. Accordingly, Jordan had become the base for the Palestinian resistance movement. The ten-day Jordan Crisis that lasted from September 17 to September 27, 1970 received extensive coverage from the U.S. press, yet this very coverage has not been studied vi in terms of its objectivity and impartiality. By means of content analysis, this study explored how a representative of the u.s. prestige press--The New York Times--presented and portrayed the Palestinian guerrillas as they were fighting against their Arab brothers, the Jordanian army. Toward this goal, the role of the prestige press as a source of public opinion and as an image con- structor was examined. The following research questions raised by the study were: 1. What main themes attracted the press' attention? 2. What were the sources of the news? 3. How did the press treat groups/nations for whom there was no American recognition? 4. What was the role of the press in stereotyping and constructing images of guerrilla groups? 5. Did the press use the method of cause and effect in terms of historical and social background portrayal of these groups? To answer these questions, unsigned editorials were analyzed regarding their favorable, unfavorable or neutral direction. Hard news stories and feature stories were each analyzed according to their theme unit, and this unit's relationship with the referent, the Palestinian guerrillas. This analysis revealed that the news reports' portrayal during the Jordan Crisis was conflict-oriented and the editorials' portrayal was predisposed not to accept the role of the Palestinian Liberation Organization as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people in vii ' . peace negotiation. The New York Times editorials were consistent with the official policy of the u.s. government in sharp contrast to the field reports which were mostly neutral, except to the extent that they were fragmented and tended to omit background information favorable to the PLO, which would allow the reader to form an objective and complete picture of the situation. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION . .. .. 1 Research Topic. 1 Footnotes. .. 15 CHAPTER II: METHODOLOGY ••••••••••••• 18 Importance of the Study. 18 Purpose of the Study. 20 A Hypothetical Framework. 23 Objectives of the Research. 25 Thesis Design. 27 Definitions. 31 ·Bias . ...... .. 32 Methodological Weaknesses. 34 Footnotes............................... 36 CHAPTER III: LITERATURE REVIEW ••••••••••••••••••••••• 38 The Arab Image •••••••••••••••••••••••••• 38 Jordan Crisis Coverage. 44 The New York Times ••••• . .. .. .. 48 Conclusion. 50 Footnotes •• . 52 CHAPTER IV: HISTORICAL BACKGROUND ••••••••••••••••••• 56 Footnotes..... 64 iv CHAPTER V: ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION ••••••••••••••••• 65 The Referent: Nomenclature for the Palestinian Guerrillas •••••••••••••••• 67 The Palestinian Guerrillas' Relationships with Others •• 73 Palestinian Guerrillas' Contexts of Relationships •••••• 84 Kind of Relationships ••• . .. .. 90 Attributions •• 95 Direction •••• 100 News Sources. 115 Editorial Analysis. 121 Conclusion •• . 124 Footnotes ••• . 127 CHAPTER VI: GENERAL CONCLUSIONS ••••••••••••••••• 128 APPENDIX: Charts ••••• . 139 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• 146 v CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Research Topic Americans, like most people, get images of the world from their newspapers, magazines, radio, television, books, and movies. The mass media become the authority for what is true and what is false, what is a reality and what is fantasy. There is no greater force in shaping the public 1 mind. Authorities have therefore recognized that to control the public they must control information. The initial possessor of news and ideas possesses the political power too--the power to disclose or conceal, to predetermine the interpretation of what is revealed. Controlling media is 2 as controlling armies, using words instead of arms. The degree of control by the possessor of news in the u.s. is increasing with time. In 1984, there were 1,730 daily 3 newspapers with a total circulation of 61 million. 1 2 This mass production is a product of human beings. The human beings are the primary agents of the media who form and inform, who sell and profit; therefore, the media have a tendency to form negative or positive images and bias is not unexpected. In the case of the Palestinian issue, negative image 4 and bias go beyond the expected human failure • This expected failure is based on several studies of the atti- tudes of the u.s. press toward the Arab world in general and toward the Palestinians in particular. Some of the important studies are Michael Suleiman's survey of seven news magazines, and the New York Times, from July to December, 1956; the special report by the American Insti- tute for political communication on the coverage of the 5 June war 1967; a content analysis of American newspapers, including the New York Times, by Janice Terry covering from 6 1948 to 1968; and Issam Suleiman Mousa's survey in 1982 of the Arab image in the u.s. press in the New York Times, 7 between 1917 to 1948. There are also some recent studies on the 1973 October war coverage and the Lebanon Crisis in Lebanon. These studies concluded that the u.s. press coverage of the Arab world has generally been biased in 8 favor of Israel. In order to estimate the importance of image construe- tion in the u.s. press we have to define the meaning of images and give some examples. Image is perhaps the key J word in this study. It is not an easy term to define in this context and in fact no one definition comprehensively fits the meaning intended. Boulding (1956) was concerned with "images of 9 nations" and suggested that it was the image~ that were real and that reality, however defined, was actually an image. Images were the basis on which nations communi- cated, be they hostile or friendly. He saw them as constantly changing in their elements and therefore in their meanings. History was very much part of image. Scott (1965) described the social and psychological correlation of image as representing the totality of attri- butes that a person recognized or imagined for that country 10 rather than people of that specific country. This is an important aspect of imagery because it underscores the concept that people tend to accept other people as reflec- tions of themselves but they tend to identify other countries as reflections of different (and perhaps unlikely) cultural or political structures to those of their own. Gerbner and Manvanyi (1977) explored the similarities and differences in the image of the "outside world" that 11 each society projects for its members. The study con- eluded in one of its findings that the media focus on areas of immediate u.s. interest which in practice covers only two-thirds of the world, namely Western Europe, Asia, the 4 u.s., and particularly the Middle East. Specific consideration of the role images played in the presentation of the Palestinians in reporting the Middle East conflict was of a biased nature. Daugherty and Warden (1979) compared the editorials of the New York Times, washington Post, Christian Science Monitor and The Wall Street Journal with respect to their treatment of Israel and the Arab states including the Palestinians from 1957 to 1977, to determine extent and 12 nature of biases in the construction of images. overall, Israel was pictured as a besieged state surrounded by hostile Arabs. The predominant theme appeared to be that of urging peaceful solutions between the Israelis and the Arabs. In 1980, Rachty contributed to the understanding of 13 the many faceted aspects of an image. Her concern was the "negative image" of the Arabs in the u.s. media. She conceptualized image as "subjective knowledge" and stressed that the "historical baggage" carried by the Arab states prevented the emergence of a more contemporary situation relevant image. She identified five factors that influenced the image of the Arabs: (1) historical aspects of religion, the Crusaders, the crude peasantry and the immorality of the sultans and their harems; (2) Arab nationalism and communism, stemming from Nasser and the arms deal with the Soviet Union, a piece of recent history 5 seen as an anti-Western act; {3) Arab internal conflict and bickering born of longstanding feuds and rivalries buried in the events of the past; {4) blackmailing the West through OPEC as a memory still fresh in people's minds; {5) uncritical acceptance of the Israeli version of events in the Middle East. She judged the New York Times to be the most pro-Israel and the Los Angeles Times the most pro- 14 Arab.