Neutral News? A study of the neutrality in BBC’s and Al Jazeera’s reporting on the Israeli military operation “Pillar of defense”

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to question the neutrality in the reports from Al Jazeera and BBC about the Israeli military operation “Pillar of Defense” that took place in November 2012. The study is conducted through different linguistic and structural analyses that aim to find ideological patterns in the way the agencies report about the events. Since both agencies claim to be neutral and not politically biased, the study also examines the truth in these statements. Thus, a part of the study will be to question the trustworthiness of the news media. The results of the analyses show that none of the agencies are honest in their claims of neutrality. There are various examples that show that BBC is favoring the Israeli view of the operation while Al Jazeera clearly promotes the Palestinian. This is probably not surprising for those versed in the subject. For a majority of people, however, what is said in the news is considered to be true, hence opinions about different events are built upon the information presented by the news media.