Structure of News Coverage of a Peace Process

Abstract

Newspaper coverage of a peace process is crucial to the success of a peace process. Given the critical role that newspapers play defining “others” in peace processes, it is surprising that little research has gone into the dynamics by which newspapers portray national “others.” Two schools of thought can apply to Western media:the indexing hypothesis and the zero-sum hypothesis. The indexing hypothesis suggests that to achieve balanced and unbiased coverage, newspapers will cover/cite both sides of an issue in proportion to their relative political strength. The zero-sum hypothesis suggests that under conditions of national stress newspapers abandon the indexing rule and that coverage/citation of fellow nation members comes at the expense of coverage/citation of national “others.” Logit and probit models of Israeli newspaper coverage of the Oslo peace process from September 1995 to October 1999 show that the zero-sum hypothesis is a more accurate model. Only under favorable conditions (e.g., a peace treaty ceremony and its political wave) does indexing operate.