Israeli Media Coverage for the Gaza War 2014; Case Study of “Yedioth Ahronoth” Newspaper

On 7th July 2014, the third Gaza war in Palestine between the Israel and the Palestinian resistance erupted. It lasted for 51 days and left thousands of dead and wounded victims, most of whom are Palestinians. It was an important event in which both the local and international media were interested. The present study focuses on the coverage of the Israeli media for the 2014 Gaza war, taking Yedioth Ahronoth online newspaper Hebrew-speaking as a case study. It was selected because it is the most widely spread newspaper in Israel; it is a private one, and due to its independent ownership. It is an important study due to the lack of research in this filed, especially in English language. It is also important to understand how the Israeli media works, especially during the war times. The study is based on testing three media theories; Agenda Setting, Gatekeeping, and Framing Analysis Theory. Furthermore, the quantitative methodology and content analysis method has been carried out in the study. The researcher developed checklist and analyzed the sample of study that includes 116 news taken from Yedioth Ahronoth online newspaper; in other words, the news that were published during 5 days of the war. The main findings of the present study can be summarized as follows: in the use of interesting frame by Yedioth Ahronoth to present information and make it more convincing, the focused on Israeli issues and the dependence on Israeli official news sources and narrative, provided justifications for Israel and portrayed it as a victim of the war. So the newspaper was supporting the war against Gaza and was not neutral in its coverage. It was biased to the Israeli side. Keywords: Gaza war 2014, Yedioth Ahronoth, Agenda Setting Theory, Gatekeeping Theory, Framing Analysis Theory.