Framing the Flotilla: Newsmaking, Image Crises and the Kishon Dives Investigative Report

Abstract

The article explores the journalistic coverage of the public crisis that developed following the publication of Yediot Aharonot's investigative report about the diving practices of Israel's sea commandos in the polluted Kishon River. The coverage of the Kishon diving crisis is probed via two complementing research trajectories. The first trajectory looks at the construction of the newsworthiness of the Kishon diving crisis in comparison to two similar crises while addressing the interpretations provided by various involved factors. The second trajectory explores the various frames through which the Kishon diving crises were narrated. The article's concluding section discusses the complex interrelations between newsworthiness and framing.

Keywords:

• Journalism
• Framing
• Newsworthiness
• Image crises
• Israel

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Smadar Ben-Asher, Ella Ben-Atar, Noam Ben Ishie, Roei Davidson, Oren Livio, Maya Mazor-Tregerman, and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier versions of this article. They thank the four interviewees who agreed to share their thoughts and observations regarding the Kishon dives crisis.

Notes

[1] Although Galtung and Ruge's original study focused on the coverage of international news, later replications expanded the discussion to the coverage of local and national news as well. See, for instance, Harcup and O'Neill (2001) and Tukachinsky (2013).

[2] Koeston and Rowland (2004) conceptualized the Atonement rhetorical strategy as a sub-genre within the Apologia theory. Their study explored President Clinton's 1997 apology to survivors and victims' family members of a 1932 medial experiment sponsored by the Federal Government during which 300 syphilis patients were assigned to the placebo control group, which left them essentially untreated. Clinton's rhetorical strategy was opposite to the one taken by the IDF medical establishment, and it seems to have even gone further (rhetorically, at least) beyond the IDF assumption of responsibility, following the publication of commission report on the Kishon dives.

[3] For a further discussion of the difficulty to “break the silence” and defy hegemonic military discourse; see Katriel and Savit (2011).