Israel’s global news coverage vastly disproportionate and unusually persistent, analysis finds
An analysis of nearly 14.7 million news articles found that coverage of Israel was not only disproportionately high but also unusually persistent compared with other major conflicts and global crises.
A recent analysis has revealed that Israel receives significantly disproportionate and persistent media coverage, even during years when it is not involved in major conflicts or wars. Independent researcher and technology entrepreneur Jeremy Musighi examined nearly 14.7 million news articles from 2017 to August 2026 and found that, unlike typical media trends, Israel's coverage remained elevated and showed no decay over time.
In fact, even in years without a major conflict, Israel's global news coverage was comparable to what other small countries only experience during their worst week.
Musighi's analysis, utilizing data from the Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone (GDELT) and television coverage, showed that Israel's coverage averaged 5.65% of US cable news airtime in the year following the Hamas-led attacks on October 7, 2023. This is more than six times higher than Ukraine's coverage and more than double the coverage of all 48 countries in sub-Saharan Africa combined in 2024.
Additionally, coverage of Israel in print remained consistently high, peaking at 3.8% in 2024 and remaining at 3.6% throughout the year.
Furthermore, the tone of coverage on Israel was found to be unusually negative, with an average of -2.3 in 2019, placing it in a similar range as Iran, Syria, and Iraq. In 2024, Western outlets' coverage of Israel averaged -4.4, with 78% of articles scoring negative, which is a more negative tone than applied to Russia, Iran, or Syria that year.
The analysis concludes that these disproportionate and persistent media coverage patterns can be traced back to a decades-old anti-Israel influence campaign spearheaded by the Soviet Union.
Written by urgent.news from Jerusalem Post's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
