Coverage of News Broadcasts in Palestinian and Arab Satellite Channels to The Issues of Palestinian Prisoners of War on Hunger Strikers

Abstract

This study seeks to record and analyze the properties and the characteristics of The news coverage of the cases of the Palestinian Prisoners' Hunger Strike in the basic newscasts broadcasted in the Palestinian and Arab Satellite Channels. The study used the survey methodology for the sample of the newscasts broadcasted on Palestine Channel and Al Jazeera News Channel to analyze the coverage of the cases of the prisoners' hunger strike mentioned in the newscasts by using the content analysis sheet. The two satellite channels gave a large interest in the news and the cases of the Palestinian prisoners' hunger strike with the variance in the interest percentages from a channel to the other. The news and the social and psychological cases came at the top of the cases of the Palestinian prisoners' hunger strike, followed by a coverage for the security cases, the political cases, the economical cases and finally the military cases. The results revealed an increase in the dependence on self-sources in the news coverage in both channels. In addition, the results reported an absence of dependence on the Palestinian media sources in Al Jazeera Channel while Palestine Channel depended on and transferred from the Israeli Media Sources in its news coverage for the cases of the prisoners.