Our statistical analysis of their coverage, however, showed that there was startling disparity in how deaths were reported, depending on the ethnicity of the victim.
For example, we found that in 2004, at a time when 8 Israeli children and 176 Palestinian children were killed - a ratio of 1 to 22 - Times headlines and lead paragraphs reported on Israeli children's deaths at a rate almost seven times greater than Palestinian children's deaths.
A one-month sub-study indicated that this disparity grew even larger when the entire article was analyzed, with Israeli children's deaths mentioned (through repetitions of deaths reported on previous days) at a rate ten times greater than Palestinian children's deaths.
Times coverage of deaths of all ages, while less dramatically skewed, showed similar distortion. In the first year of the current Palestinian uprising, which began in fall of 2000, we discovered that the Times reported prominently on 42 percent of Palestinian deaths, and on 119 percent of Israeli deaths (follow-up headline articles, we find, frequently push coverage of Israeli deaths over 100 percent). In other words, the Times reported Israeli deaths at a rate approximately three times greater than Palestinian deaths.
During this period over three times more Palestinians were being killed than Israelis.
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