Israeli’s Newspapers Coverage of Palestinian Prisoner Hunger Strike: A Peace Journalism Perspective

This study focuses on how news framing of media institutions (Israelis newspapers) affect the coverage of issues in conflict zones and set the agenda for public perceptions, especially the Palestinian Prisoners hunger strike. A total of 697 news items were analyzed from four English version of Israelis newspaper (Haartez, Jerusalem Post, Yedioth Ahronoth and Times of Israel) to investigate how they portray the other (Palestinians prisoners) through an action (hunger strike) during a period of time (2012-2017) through a peace journalism perspective. Using Ersoy’s peace journalism coding schema, the study found that the total news from four newspapers portrayed the issues with negative frames (n = 542; 77.8%) while some of the news appeared to have portrayed the hunger strike issues in more positive frames (n = 155; 22.2%). However, the study concludes that tendency of the Israeli media toward the other in the hunger strike were negative in framing the Palestinian prisoners as “threat” and “terrorists” instead of being balanced while they are covering humanitarian issue in conflict zone. It therefore, recommends the need conduct more research that focus on advocating the use of peace journalism approach in the coverage of conflict issues. Keywords: Palestinian Prisoner, Hunger Strike, Agenda Setting Theory, Framing Theory, Peace Journalism Theory, Israeli Media, Peace Media, War Coverage, Conflict Zone.