Monday, June 27, 2011

HP Bias: Grapel Vs. Dogan

I'm sure you all remember the case of Furkan Dogan, one of those killed in Israel's flotilla raid. He was a dual citizen of both Turkey and America. Take a look at how the HP covered the story about him:


Note the headline: "Furkan Dogan, U.S. Citizen". No mention of any dual citizenship in the headline or the first paragraph.

Now let's take a look at the Huffington Post's coverage of the arrest of Ilan Grapel, an Israeli-American dual citizen, in Egypt for the crime of spying. There were actually two articles, one of the arrest itself and one of a Congressman calling for Grapel to be freed. Let's take a look.




Boom! For Grapel, his dual citizenship is part of both headlines. Funny how for Dogan, the dual citizenship was left out, but for Grapel it's emphasized over and over again. Is there doubt in anyone's mind as to the agenda the Huffington Post is pushing with the information it leaves in and out of its headlines?

Note the choice of pictures as well. For Dogan, there's a nice picture of him all dressed up sitting on the couch. We get a good look at him as a person. For Grapel, in both articles, the pictures is of a bunch of newspapers covering the story. No attempt to humanize Grapel is made, but why would the Huffington Post want to do that? They know which victims of governments they want us to like and which they don't. I may not be a multi-million dollar newspaper corporation, but after about two seconds on Google I was able to find this picture of Grapel:

 Ilan Grapel in IDF uniform

Anyone care to venture a guess as to why the Huffington Post chose a bunch of generic newspapers to accompany both of their stories about Grapel rather than this picture of the man himself?

1 comments:

  1. We can all guess why. Portraying Jews sympathetically is not what HP readers want and the editors know their readers' bias. Still one can't help but notice how blatant such unequal treatment gets to be there.

    ReplyDelete

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