The Palestine News Network article about Israel approving building new settlements, written by Madeeha Araj on April 5, 2016, discussed the new settlement East of the Shilo settlement that has been approved by Israel's government as well as many other human rights violations that Israel has allegedly committed.
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| The West Bank settlement of Shilo located near the city of Ramallah |
After briefly mentioning the new settlement, the article continues onto how the cabinet had also approved continuing the construction on the existing settlements to improve them and increase their size. After this, the article moves onto discussing how Israel had been coming many crimes against the Palestinian people, and then goes on to list the most recent human rights violations by location. Some of the violations mentioned include expanding a checkpoint from Jerusalem to Ramallah to increase flow of travelers and the completion of one of the walls built near the city of Bethlehem.
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| The Kalandia checkpoint from Jerusalem to Ramallah |
Analysis:
This article and the author do not do a good job at staying unbiased although I do not believe they even attempted to be. The author continuously uses negative words and descriptions when referring to Israel in these situations with the obvious goal of demonizing Israel and creating an anti-Israel attitude in the reader.
Although I am not an avid news reader, I had never actually heard of the Palestine News Network. After doing some research on its history it seems that neither has Wikipedia, displaying only options to create an article on the subject. Their website's "about us" page describes the network as a group of independent journalists that try to stay professional and apolitical on topics discussed, then, in the next paragraph, states that they support the Palestinian people and their cause. This is a complete contradiction of their original statement. This news agency is very obviously biased, favoring the Palestinian people.
The contents of the article also confirm this bias. The very first paragraph of the article does not even call Israel by its name but as an "occupation government" that continuously steals land that belongs to the Palestinians. This is a very negative and not apolitical way to portray Israel. Throughout the article the author talks about Israel in a very negative light, describing Israel's various actions as "violations". At the end of the article, Araj lists the events from the prior week that she sees as violations against the Palestinian people. She uses many words with negative connotations like apartheid, demolish, and storming.
As far as the credibility of the author or the news source, I unfortunately cannot tell. The author did not mention any other newspaper or any other source anywhere in the article, only referring to the "National Bureau" as the source with. No link of explanation of this source can be found. This is something that is very important, in my opinion, when reporting the news, and is especially needed when the author goes on to list several of Israel's "violations" that took place. For all I know, the author could have fabricated many if not all the events. When trying to find more information on the network, there does not seem to be very many results. A quick search on the author's name does, however, display some useful information. On the author's Facebook page, she lists herself as an employee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). There are also other articles written by her that can be found. They all seem to follow the same format of briefly explaining the topic then listing the violations documented by this National Bureau. All this put together confirms the network's and the authors bias against Israel.
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