in the year two thousand and uprising began in palestine like most americans i was and we are the editor of a small town newspaper in california knew very little about the conflict other than what she dreamed from the evening news or newspaper headlines either a muslim nor a jew she nevertheless became more curious about the topic of the palestinian uprising and as she researched it she became increasingly suspicious that the american media were not telling us the whole story months later she travelled to the occupied territories as an independent journalist to find out first so what was media seem to be admitting five years ago i guess it was i knew almost nothing about israel and palestine i skim the headlines on the topic i accepted the confusion of what i read and like most people i just moved on at that time i was the editor of a very small newspaper in northern california in sausalito i was writing about the local school district the city council the local fishing fleet the middle east seemed distant and really irrelevant to my daily life but then finally when this current uprising began about five years ago and i began to see on television those scenes of children throwing stones against tanks i finally at this pretty late stage of my life group serious and wondered what this was all about i decided to finally pay attention and try to just understand the israeli palestinian conflict and when i did that as a journalist i very quickly picked up something i should have noticed before which was that we were getting a very one sided view of this conflict i began to look into it more seriously i began to pay more attention to the news reports to read them all the way through to listen to n p r very carefully and as i did that i realized more and more that this was appearing to be the most distorted issue i think i had ever come across i finally decided i needed to go and see for myself the and so began the most unusual trip that i've ever undertaken during my month of travelling through the palestinian territories i had found a population under siege throughout gaza and the west bank people were being kept virtually in prison i found that there were israeli military checkpoints that limited and often totally prevented if you were a palestinian homes with large was on the roof through the wall bombed out homes when children saw that i was interested in the spent bullets scattered on the floor as they brought them to me by the handfuls  gaza i saw a beautiful agricultural lands bulldozed orchard after an ancient orchard that had been razed i saw one hundred year old palm trees next to the sea that had been flattened an entire group of them the i saw families whose breadwinners at that time had been out of work for five months now it's five years because they were not allowed out of their towns to go to there were i met people who were the only ones still working for an extended family of forty this is the reality in occupied palestine i talked to women living in tin shanties and tents in the dirt they had had homes they were not inherently pendulous people one woman had had two homes one was for her son who had just gotten married but israel had wanted their land so it had both those their homes since thousands of children literally have been injured by american weapons they're not hard to find i saw boys with holes through their makes in their heads in their backs i saw a brain dead twelve years he had dared to throw stones at music carrying tank wielding soldiers i saw boys who will never walk again they won't skip they want to have children they won't frolic military shot at them on occasion and then i visited bethlehem where i saw an infant i saw a hospitalized baby whose mother had not been able to visit him for months because she was not allowed out of g and this is what i saw in palestine but it's not what i saw when i read the san francisco chronicle when i returned to the united states and i went to the library to see upon my return what the newspaper had printed for the thirty days that i was gone as i looked through the pile of newspapers i was appalled at what had been considered news coverage i discovered that there had been no mention of nine year old dead obeid no mention about a mother of three being ramallah nothing about paralyzed children or women drinking tea in the dirt instead i read only about an israel under siege i found it difficult to answer their questions i was tired of telling people that americans don't know what we're doing that are mean newspapers don't tell us three months after returning from palestine and we're quit her job and founded if americans knew an organization dedicated quantifying the ways in which the american media was misinforming the public about the conflict this where explains her group's methodology analyzes the data and reports on the key findings we decide to really look into the news coverage of israel and palestine analytically and statistically to really understand what is going on and we decided to choose clear objective categories that would be as immune as possible to subjective interpretation and we decided to look at how deaths were being covered by our media now the important thing is that we looked at how deaths were being covered among both populations israelis and palestinians it's my view and i'm sure you're who's that they all human beings that all human beings deaths are equally tragic and quite newsworthy we looked at the first year because that's such a significant period first impressions are so powerful they lead us all to conclude about who initiated the violence who is retaliate who is the victim who is the aggressor it's very significant then we decided to also look at the coverage for last year for two thousand and four to see if any patterns we discovered in the first year were then continued in the second year or whether coverage changed significantly we specifically studied the new york times and the three major networks we looked at a b c c b s and n b c their evening prime time news shows now to do the study the first job was a very sad job to discover how many people had been killed during those two years how many israelis and how many palestinians and to learn that fact we went to an israeli human rights organization but selim which is very respected and quite careful in its gathering of data it gathers information for both israelis and palestinians so in looking into how many people had been killed in that first year we discovered that one hundred sixty five israelis had tragically been killed by palestinians and that five hundred and forty nine palestinians had tragically been killed by israelis in thousand two thousand and four what you discover is that one hundred seven israelis have been killed which was a reduction it was about thirty percent less than the first year so they had experienced a calmer period of time for the palestinian population however you discover that the amount of death had greatly increased that eight hundred and twenty one palestinians had been killed during that period that they were therefore palestinians were being killed last year by a rate of eight t one over israeli deaths now keeping those numbers in line we then looked at what the new york times had reported and what these major networks had reported for example we found that a b c had covered israeli deaths at a rate of three point one times greater than palestinian deaths we discovered that c b s had covered israeli deaths at a rate almost four times greater three point eight to one we discovered that n coverage israeli deaths at a rate four times greater than palestinian deaths in other words just to take one example c b s we found that c b s was covering israeli deaths at a rate of two hundred and two percent and they were covering palestinian deaths at a rate of fifty four percent now of course the question is how can they exceed one hundred percent of deaths well when what we were really  see is that it was not rear for our need to exceed one hundred percent coverage of israeli deaths because we were counting every mention every report of a death that was being made of  population and we found that quite frequently there would be follow up reports about israeli deaths so that one death would often be reported on twice so it's this kind of disparity that we discovered now in two thousand and four did these patterns get better you would hope that maybe you know our reporters know our editors would would improve over time and we found that was not the case we found that basically they hold they held the same and in fact in number of cases the distortion that we found in the first year had grown even greater we saw that a b c for example reported on one hundred fifty seven percent of israeli deaths and at the same time they reported on thirty nine percent of palestinian deaths in other words the disparity of four to one we noticed that was with c b s the ratio of differential between reporting on the two populations was also about four to one they had reported on israeli deaths three point eight times greater and we found that n b c was it was actually worse than those two it had reported israeli deaths at a rate four point four times greater this is the this is these are enormous differences we have to be careful not to sort of say oh that's not bad it's only three times greater you know some variation is certainly allowable it's difficult to gather all the deaths and and to do a perfect job certainly none of us should expect or or ask for perfection from our media but when you have distortion that's over two times greater that's a major major factor and we're seeing it three and four times greater now what's even more troubling is when you look at how children's deaths are being covered because children's deaths of course are especially tragic to so many of us almost everyone throughout the world feels that children are illegitimate targets of strike their deaths are intolerable they're something that the world should prevent so it's very important to see how our media are reporting on the large numbers of children that have been killed in this conflict now again the first that we always should ask and i hope we'll always remember to do this everywhere is how many children were killed among both populations when we hear a number among one population anywhere in the world let's always ask what about the other population i want the full information so again we had the very sad job of looking at how many children were killed in this conflict in the first year and then again last year we discovered that in the first year twenty eight israeli children had been tragically killed and we discovered that one hundred and thirty one palestinian children had been tragically killed during that first year now let's look at two thousand and fo a period of relative calm as our media were telling us well again we find a difference it's very significant we learned that two thousand and four eight israeli children had been tragically killed by palestinians and we learned that one hundred and seventy nine palestinian children had been tragically killed by israeli in other words a rate is palestinian children were being killed last year at a rate twenty two times greater than israeli children now here's an example of what the new york times covered in that first year we found that the new york times covered israeli children's deaths at a rate six point eight times greater than palestinian children's deaths they reported on one hundred and twenty five percent of israeli children's deaths and for that same year they reported on eighteen percent of palestinian children stats let's look at what they did in two thousand and four in two thousand and four we found that the disparity had grown even greater and the new york times reported on israeli children's deaths at a rate over sex seven times greater than they had reported on palestinian children step then you look at the t v networks and they make the new york times almost look good on the television networks the disparity in coverage of children's deaths is truly off the charts which of course is the name of our reports and as as we describe our report you'll see how that phrase continues to fit the media coverage off the charts so we found that the networks had covered once again israeli children's deaths at far greater rates and remember we're not even measuring how much time was spent on each death the wording that was used how much personal information was given i have no doubt that that would increase the differential even far greater than describing richest talking about a death even having been reported or having been mentioned and finding enormous distortion there we founded that that in the first year of covering children's deaths a b c coverage is children's deaths at a rate thirteen point eight times greater than palestinian children's deaths we discovered that c b s covered israeli deaths at a rate six point four times greater than palestinian children's deaths we discovered that n b c covered israeli children's deaths at a rate about twelve and a half times greater than palestinian children's deaths these are all children their deaths are all tragic why are we hearing about one population's deaths at a rate up to thirteen times greater then we're hearing about another population's deaths as americans we need for information not information about only one population then we look at what the networks did in two thousand and four in two thousand and four we found that again this this immense distortion was going on we discovered that a b c coverage israeli children's deaths at a rate nine times greater c b s covered israeli children's deaths at a rate almost thirteen times greater and b c covered israeli children's deaths at a rate approximately ten times greater once again a huge differential based on ethnicity in the reporting that we're getting from our media another way of looking at these deaths is in the following charts where we show on one side the israeli column is in blue and you'll see that the top half of the column is a different shade of blue those are the repetitions of deaths that were reported in our media where that makes the blue column which is the israeli death column look significantly higher than the amount of death that was actually going on on the ground then you compare that to the red column the palestinian column and you'll notice that the top half far far more than half i'm afraid of that column is a vast empty column of palestinian deaths that were never even reported once making the palestinian death column look far smaller than it was in reality now of course though that empty column is full of tragedy every one of those children are men or women whoever was was killed is still being mourned by their families and yet their deaths were invisible to the american population whose tax money israel is using that's why we have to know these facts another very revealing way of looking at these deaths is to chart them chronologically in the following chart the first line that you'll see is how the new york times reported the deaths the israeli deaths now in the next line will show you the number of israeli deaths that had actually occurred during that first year now the next line both show how palestinian deaths were reported in that first year and the final line will be the number of palestinian deaths that actually had occurred during that year as you'll see in time after time after time the curves all follow the israeli death rate rather than the palestinian reported deaths following their own death rate this is startling to me and i suspect will be startling to many people you know i'd like to just mention a few other studies in addition to these major media that i've just described many people perhaps listening to n p r to national public radio and consider them considerably better in fact a number of years ago there was a boycott and a great deal of pressure by pro israel organizations against n p r saying that n was pro palestinian well another working ization fairness and accuracy in reporting fair a very respected media media watchdog organization did a similar study actually their study preceded our studies of n coverage of deaths the researcher who did this excellent work seth ackerman discovered that n p r was reporting israeli children's deaths at a rate of about ninety percent and it was reporting palestinian children's deaths at a rate of about twenty percent now does this kind of reporting continue around the country what about smaller newspapers around the country we found that typically the reporting actually gets even worse in other publications partly because many of the the deaths of palestinians are reported in the very last paragraphs of newspaper reports and so naturally when a newspaper is cutting a long news report they cut out a lot of the palestinian deaths in some cases for example with the san francisco chronicle which used to be my news paper we discovered cases however where there were deaths reported of palestinians in  one case of a nine year old boy who had been killed the death was reported in the news story as i recall in about the third paragraph in the wire service report the san francisco chronicle foreign desk had cut out that paragraph of the report they they printed in their newspaper so we've discovered for example with a six month study we did of the san francisco chronicle headlined coverage of this conflict that they were reporting on israeli children's deaths at a rate thirty times greater than they were reporting on palestinian children's deaths another small newspaper also in california that's where i'm i'm from but i'm finding these are typical we've done these studies of connecticut and oregon is well but for example with the san jose inner mercury news paper we did a study of their their front page coverage because again front page coverage is very significant and we discovered that they had in fact reversed the reality on the ground in other words the headlines made it appear that more israelis were being killed than palestinians and in fact by a by a great percentage this is just extraordinary when you think about it consider if the mercury news or our networks had reported the world series backwards imagine if they had reported the winner to be the loser and vice versa they would be the last laughingstock around the country everyone would notice you know late late night comedians would be making jokes about it here we have a situation of life and death with this kind of error being committed daily and no one is even noticing it now again let's look at what this omission and tails because mainly what we what we discovered was omission and of course we all know the most effective lying is lying through omission because no one even knows what's missing so by omitting so many of these deaths it also omitted what was the cause of their death what were these people like what was going on we discovered that in looking at children's deaths we especially looked at the first month and collected the data we could gather on the palestinian children who had been killed in that first month keep in mind that in that first month there had not been a single suicide bombing in israel there had not been a single roadside bombing there had been no bombing no not a single israeli try and happily had even had it had died yet in this conflict and yet we found that child after child after child in the palestinian territories had been killed and as you'll notice as you look at these reports the largest single cause of their death was gunfire to the head this we have found reputed to be we also of course the sole mission and our reports didn't cover the injury rates but palestinians have been injured in also far greater rates than israeli have been injured for example we discovered that in the first three months alone one hundred fifty nine palestinian children had had eyes shot out and no where did that fact come from certainly not from the new york times we didn't get it from quote palestinian propaganda this was reported in the is really newspaper  very respected newspaper in israel and we need to know these facts to israelis are getting these reports americans should also get them finally in many ways perhaps the most significant omission in our media's reporting is our own connection to this conflict the american connection to it we need to all always know that factor and it turns out that unlike my initial impressions it seems so long ago now five years ago where i thought this conflict was basically irrelevant to me that i didn't have much to do with it i've learned that americans are major players in the israeli palestinian conflict because we give over ten million dollars per day to israel in fact when you count up everything all the loan forgiveness programs the weapon weapons subsidies etc the amount of american tax money to israel is approximately fifteen million dollars per day now if this sounds like a lot that's because it is it's off the charts of our foreign expenditures abroad we give to israel which has a population of about six million people that's the size of the san francisco the bay area for example we give them more than we give to all of sub saharan africa put together this is a very important statistic to know we give more to israel than we give any other nation on earth why don't more of  know this are we just lazy self absorbed people i don't think americans are that bad i think most of us try to do a good job and those of us the try to read our new york times listen to our network news coverage it turns out that they are not reporting this we did a study for example of the san francisco chronicle during six months of reports we found that the chronicle had run many many news stories on this important topic in fact you would have thought it was ample coverage they were running more news stories on israel palestine than some local issues that of great importance and yet that we counted up how many times the chronicle had even mentioned u s aid to israel and found that out of that over two hundred fifty stories they had only mentioned aid to israel three times usually in the the last sentence of the story and how many times have they given the full accurate figure of the amount of aid that gives that goes to israel we found they had never once done that sadly what i've mentioned here today is really just the tip of the iceberg about the coverage and really lack of coverage of israel and palestine i cannot suggest too greatly the profound seriousness of this situation this is potentially an apocalyptic situation as we see the tragic war in iraq the discussion of perhaps warfare certainly sanctions against iran against syria this is the promoting regional instability of the greatest danger to the region to all people in the region to the entire world and certainly to americans as well we need drastically better coverage and fuller coverage of what's going on we need the full facts our children i feel i have three children i feel that our children are being placed at serious risk by american policies now other americans can and should draw their own conclusions but they cannot draw informed