Copyright by Robert Lyle Handley 2010 The Dissertation Committee for Robert Lyle Handley certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Palestine Media Watch and the U.S. News Media: Strategies for Change and Resistance Committee: _____________________________ Stephen Reese, Supervisor _____________________________ Robert Jensen _____________________________ Dustin Harp _____________________________ Karin Wilkins _____________________________ Clement Henry Palestine Media Watch and the U.S. News Media: Strategies for Change and Resistance by Robert Lyle Handley, B.S.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2010 Dedication To G-Ma. We miss you. Acknowledgements Thanks to my advisor, Steve Reese, who has been a key influence in my academic life and scholarly thinking and whose work was one of the reasons I chose the University of Texas. Thanks to Bob Jensen who has been a major influence on my political and intellectual life and encouraged my interest in U.S. foreign policy, the Middle East, and the nature of capital. Thanks to Dustin Harp whose encouragement helped me get my first publication and for allowing me to work as a teaching assistant in a class on women and the news despite resistance due to my anatomy. Thanks to Karin Wilkins who helped me think about why media matter when I doubted they do and for introducing me to literature that helped guide this project. Thanks to Clement Henry whose class on democracy in the Middle East changed my views about religion and democracy for the better and who pushed me to read The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere – something communication students claim to have read but haven’t. Thanks to my family for entertaining my crazy thoughts when I visit them in Michigan, and thanks to my Austin family – Lou, Tony, Greg, Sara, Nate, Brent, Hilary, Sarah, and Bigsby – for keeping me sane with smiles, laughs, and pints of cold beer. I also want to thank my fellow Blind Puppies – Brent, CC, Grubb, and Aaron – for letting me rock with them. Nothing let’s one vent like rocking it. Thanks to Bigsby for the cuddles, walks, and for constantly licking my face. Most of all, thanks to Sarah. You tolerate and laugh at me when I use words like “hegemony” and “nominal.” Because I like your laugh, you can bet that I will use big words in the future. v Palestine Media Watch and the U.S. News Media: Strategies for Change and Resistance Robert Lyle Handley, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2010 Supervisor: Stephen D. Reese Toward the start of the Palestinian Intifada in 2000, activists formed a media watchdog group called Palestine Media Watch (PMW) to challenge U.S. news coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Tired of coverage that blamed the conflict on Palestinian terrorism, PMW monitored news coverage, met with newsworkers, and bombarded news organizations with complaints in an attempt to root the conflict’s cause in Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories. I study PMW’s efforts to produce change in coverage, and examine its campaigns’ effects. Most critical research examines the news system’s production of “propaganda” and news models suggest that media monitoring is one mechanism through which an entire “ideological air” is supported. “Guardian watchdogs,” like the Israel lobby, guard the ideological boundaries around news content that are erected by others. This study considers PMW’s efforts in terms articulated by the dialogic and dialectical models, which gives agency to dissident movements and requires study of the strategic interactions between media and movements to understand framing struggles. These vi models suggest that “dissident watchdogs,” like PMW, can affect news coverage. What is not clear is the extent to which dissident watchdogs can affect news content when they can make appeals that resonate with professional journalism but that do not resonate with the country’s ideological air. I examine PMW’s strategies to produce content changes between 2000 and 2004, detail the group’s interactions with newsworkers, and document the outcomes of those interactions to understand the struggle to affect media framing. The watchdog, when it systematically monitored coverage and individually critiqued news staff, produced substantive changes in content and practice but these were limited in number. When the watchdog bombarded news organizations with complaints it was able to produce several superficial changes, but these changes resulted in no meaningful impact on the news frame. These findings indicate that the dominant narrative is incorporative enough to accommodate “journalistically useful” points without resulting in a fundamental or substantive change in the frames that inform newswork. Thus, the emergence of dissident media monitors to “neutralize” guardian monitors is only one step toward affecting the entire “ideological air” that informs newswork of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and other issues. vii Table of Contents CHAPTER ONE: Palestine Media Watch and U.S. News Media ..........................................1 Introduction .................................................................................................................1 Study Purpose .............................................................................................................4 The Significance of the Case: PMW as a Dissident Watchdog ..................................6 Importance of the Study .............................................................................................21 The Lobbies and U.S. Foreign Policy ........................................................................28 Problem Statement: The Relative Power of Dissidents .............................................34 CHAPTER TWO: Theoretical Framework ...........................................................................44 The Propaganda Model and Media Watchdogs .........................................................44 Coverage of the Conflict and the Israel Lobby ..........................................................48 Resistance in Media-Movement Models ...................................................................55 Dissident Media Watchdogs as Unique Social Movements ......................................60 The Ideological Paradigm that Guides Professional Routines ...................................64 Framing the Message: The Professional Route to Ideological Change .....................68 The Problem and Research Questions .......................................................................71 CHAPTER THREE: Method .................................................................................................78 CHAPTER FOUR: Systematic Monitoring as a Strategy .....................................................86 Strategies to Influence Opinion Pages .......................................................................90 Journalism’s Resistance and Journalistically Useful Criticisms ................................93 Strategies to Influence News Coverage .....................................................................103 Journalistically Useful Criticisms and Journalistic Resistance ..................................106 viii Conclusions ................................................................................................................119 CHAPTER FIVE: The Turn Toward Distributive Action .....................................................124 Journalists’ Strategic Resistance and Substantive Progress .......................................125 The Effect of Axiomatic Resistance on PMW’s Strategy Choice .............................134 CHAPTER SIX: Distributive Action’s Effects on Movement Objectives ............................138 The Initial Justification for Distributive Action .........................................................139 The Effects of Distributive Action Campaigns ..........................................................146 The June – September 2002 “Victims of Terror” Campaign .....................................149 Conclusions ................................................................................................................163 CHAPTER SEVEN: Coverage of Palestine Media Watch ....................................................166 Journalistically Useful Criticisms and Tension Relief...............................................167 Ideological Boosterism ..............................................................................................176 The Form of Coverage: Professional Paradigm Boosterism......................................184 Journalism’s Ability to Function During a Proxy War ..............................................185 “Balance” as Resistance .............................................................................................187 PMW Becomes Newsworthy .....................................................................................190 Minimal Mediation ....................................................................................................191 Conclusions ................................................................................................................194 CHAPTER EIGHT: The Relative Power of Dissident Media Monitors ...............................198 The Utility of Systematic Monitoring and Distributive Action .................................198