The Image of Human Rights Organizations in the Palestinian Press : Analytical Study

Abstract

The study aimed to explore the features of the image of human rights organizations as portrayed in the Palestinian press from 01/01/2012 until 31/12/2012. A study was conducted for analyzing the content and form through which human rights organizations were portrayed in the study target newspapers (Felesteen and Al Hayat Al Jadida). The study adopted the descriptive and survey methods through which it used the methodological comparison method. The data were collected through a content analysis form. The most significant results of the study included that the study sample newspapers paid closer attention to human rights issues related to prisoners than to issues related to the settlements and political freedom, development, and community issues. It turned out that the key role for these organizations was "monitoring and documenting of the violations of the Israeli occupation" which constituted 52.9%, However other roles emerged at varying degrees such as monitoring and documentation of the violations of local authorities, censorship, education, and development. They study indicated that the topics covered in the sample newspapers in relation to human rights organizations were not brought up to form certain perceptions, whether positive or negative, towards these organizations, as the human rights topics which did not contain positive features were 85.3%, while the topics which included positive features were only 14.1%. In light of these findings, we can conclude that there were somewhat positive features for the image of human rights organizations in the study sample newspapers.