Covering Conflict: Differences in Visual and Verbal News Coverage of the Gaza Crisis 2009 in Four Weekly News Media

Abstract

This article discusses the increasing relevance of pictures in news reporting about war and military conflicts. Particular emphasis is put on the war images’ power of influencing public perception and its opinion-shaping power. According to its professional standards, quality journalism should guarantee a balanced coverage of perspectives in the verbal and visual text as well as sufficient reference and coherence between these two modes of presentation, especially when reporting on war and crises. This article introduces the results of a content analysis of the coverage of the most recent Gaza crisis in four print news media. The results show that the representation of the conflicting parties differs in the visual and verbal text. While the Israeli perspective prevails in written text, images were dominantly depicting the Palestinian civil population. These results account for the importance of qualitative news reporting on the visual and verbal level and the need for respecting image-text relations in media content research.