Over the years, HonestReporting has analyzed and critiqued hundreds of articles, editorials and opinion pieces. But what goes through the minds of the journalists and writers that influence them to treat Israel in a certain way?
Here we present our Media Psychology 101 series – taking an academic examination into the minds of the media and how news consumers are influenced by the media’s reporting.
This is the second part of a guest post by Cherryl Smith, PhD, a Professor of English in Rhetoric and Composition at California State University, Sacramento. She is currently writing a book on media framing of Israel.
Recently, the media used their usual terms, “cycle of violence” and “tit for tat” to tell us about events in Israel and Gaza. As always, these terms obscured more than they illuminated. For while they may seem to be descriptions, “cycle of violence” and “tit for tat” are only metaphors.
The more frequently a particular metaphor is used, the less metaphoric it will seem. It can begin to appear that media are actually reporting on a “cycle of violence” rather than just interpreting events this way. Unfortunately, once a metaphor takes hold in the press, it is unlikely to be questioned.
This one is well established, so much so that “cycle of violence” is a dominant news frame through which media routinely view conflict involving Israel. Even without including the words, “cycle” or “tit for tat,” stories are framed around this perspective.
Read the first part of Media Psychology 101 – Framing Israel: Is Fair Coverage Possible?
Nevertheless, it is useful to point out the limits and distortions of this frame. While some editors and writers may prefer the cycle of violence frame precisely because it distorts reality, some readers may find themselves reflecting critically on mainstream reporting once they see biases exposed.
There are many problems with the cycle of violence frame, not the least of which is that it does not actually describe the situation. Scholars who carefully tracked violence during the Second Intifada, for example, “found little evidence to suggest there is a cycle of violence.” David A. Jaeger and M. Daniele Paserman concluded that “Israel responds predictably and systematically to Palestinian violence” but that “Palestinian violence is not predictable by past Israeli violence.” Their research identifies an imbalanced pattern: not a cycle so much as a series of attacks on civilians and defensive Israeli responses to such attacks.
Regardless of the frame’s inaccuracy, the need to fit events into it actually makes confused reporting acceptable. If readers can’t quite tell what happened or when, it is not especially problematic since the main thread of the story is the never-ending cycle. Media coverage most often identifies a “cycle” as beginning with actions taken by Israel, a pattern HonestReporting has called “it all started when Israel fired back.” The most recent conflict this March was said to have started with Israel’s targeted killing of Zuhir al-Qaisi, the terrorist leader who last August had overseen an attack from Sinai into Israel that killed eight Israelis on a public bus and in a car; al-Qaisi was planning another major attack. That Israel’s actions begin the cycle is significant. The cycle is not said to have started with al-Qaisi’s terror plan, nor with the previous attack, nor were the 177 rockets that landed in Israeli towns from March 9 to 15 described as an escalation of the 42 rockets that hitIsrael during the previous two months. Each “cycle” is treated as something complete in itself and not as part of a larger context.
Although the frame appears to offer balanced reporting –the cycle presents an equal responsibility for the conflict–it almost always works to disadvantage Israel. Here Reuters neatly matches its tit for tat framed article with photos showing Palestinians but not Israelis impacted by the conflict. In fact, in some cases, like this report from the International Business Times, the cycle of violence frame gives cover for a mostly anti-Israel story.
But beyond getting the facts confused or wrong, the frame completely obscures the reasons for the violence. The stated goals of the Hamas government to get rid of the Jewish state and the stated goals of the Israeli government to protect its citizens demonstrate the inadequacy of an equal, cycle of violence frame.
Rockets are flying into Israel from launching pads in Gaza, so Israel invests more than a billion dollars to set up the Iron Dome defense shield – pretty much the opposite of a tit-for-tat response. The Iron Dome causes the incoming rocket to dissolve in the air.
But you wouldn’t know that from within the cycle of violence frame. Here’s a Getty Images photo in the Baltimore Sun of the Iron Dome in action and a caption sure to mislead readers. The headline added by the newspaper? “Tit for Tat.”
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Image: CC BY-SA HonestReporting.com, flickr/stinging eyes, flickr/lauren michell.
© Divuach Ne’eman R”A, 2025
