Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Disproportionate Reporting

In response to this post by Yaacov Lozowick, I was curious about the occurrence of the term "disproportionate force" as applied to the IDF vs. other countries' militaries.


Let me preface the results by saying that these are Google results, and may not reflect all content that exists or existed on the various web sites. For example, Guardian blogs may not be discovered by searches on site:guardian.co.uk, which would remove many of the biased commentators from the sample.




Google search: "disproportionate force"

(because of the quotation marks, search results should contain the exact term "disproportionate" rather than just some of the words)


59900 Google results


"disproportionate force" AND Israel

(i.e. must contain BOTH the exact phrase "disproportionate use of force" and the word Israel)


43400 results


"disproportionate force" -Israel

(i.e. must NOT include the term Israel)


17200 results


(that's 43400 for Israel, 17200 for the rest of the world combined)



First, some of the big orgs that often give credibility to these claims:



"disproportionate force" AND Israel site:amnesty.org

(i.e. constraints the Google search to the site amnesty.org)


193 results


"disproportionate force" -Israel site:amnesty.org


255 results


"disproportionate force" and chechnya site:amnesty.org


232 results


"disproportionate force" and darfur site:amnesty.org


48 results


"disproportionate force" and Israel site:un.int


20 results


"disproportionate force" -Israel site:un.int


1 results



Now some major news sites:


"disproportionate force" AND Israel site:bbc.co.uk


69 results


"disproportionate force" -Israel -burglar site:bbc.co.uk


60 results (Russia in Chechnya and Georgia, Turkish police brutality, US in Iraq, etc.;

the -burglar query term removes 30 hits associated with a bill allowing citizens to attack burglars).


"disproportionate force" AND Israel site:aljazeera.net

16 results


"disproportionate force" -Israel -Israelis site:aljazeera.net

2 results


"disproportionate force" AND Israel site:guardian.co.uk

(does not appear to search the Guardian blogs)

56 results


"disproportionate force" -Israel -intruder site:guardian.co.uk

44 results


"disproportionate force" AND Israel site:cnn.com


66 results


"disproportionate force" -Israel site:cnn.com


48 results


"disproportionate force" AND Israel site:foxnews.com

28 results


"disproportionate force" -Israel site:foxnews.com


20 results



news.google.com search for "all dates", though the news in Google's index is mostly from recent years:

========================


"disproportionate force" and Israel


509 results (most are about police brutality toward protesters;

in most wars, there are no widely covered hysterical

claims of DUOF)


"disproportionate force" -Israel


550 results


(that's 509 for Israel, 550 for the rest of the world combined).


Further breakdown:



"disproportionate force" AND american -israel


128 results


"disproportionate force" AND russia -israel


101 results


"disproportionate force" AND iraq -israel


90 results


"disproportionate force" AND afghan -israel


59 results


"disproportionate force" AND chechnya -israel


46 results


"disproportionate force" AND serb


43 results


"disproportionate force" AND turkey -israel


42 results


"disproportionate force" AND pakistan -israel


42 results


"disproportionate force" AND kosovo -israel


25 results


"disproportionate force" AND sudan -israel


20 results


"disproportionate force" AND congo -israel


10 results


"disproportionate force" AND algeria -israel


7 results


"disproportionate force" AND syria -israel


5 results


"disproportionate force" AND colombia -israel


5 results


"disproportionate force" AND hiroshima -israel


4 results


Update: fixed the font and a link.

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