Highlighting Biased Western Media Discourse on Israel-Palestine: A Textual Analysis of News Articles by Mohammed El-Kurd

Abstract

Western media is evidently biased when it comes to reporting on escalations in Israel and Palestine in a way that disadvantages the Palestinians. However, recently, there is a visible trend in the rise of Palestinian counter-narratives which interrogate and address the biased discourse in Western media. The rise in Palestinian counter-narratives can be attributed to social media, as it allows Palestinians to bypass the problem of mainstream media censorship, including giving a platform to many Palestinians who advocate for the Palestinian cause. This paper focused specifically on Mohammed El-Kurd, who has used his platform as a journalist, writer and activist to provide counter-narratives to dispute the misrepresentation and invalidation of the Palestinian people. Using the textual analysis element of Fairclough’s Three-Dimensional (3D) model of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), this paper explained the linguistic features of three of El-Kurd’s articles published in the American magazine The Nation. The study finds that El-Kurd consistently used the active voice, negative expressive values of his Western counterparts as well as repetition, overwording and collocations.