MEDIA BIAS AND THE MIDDLE EAST: Here's a long piece from the "American Journalism Review" on perceptions of either pro-Palestinian or pro-Israeli bias in the coverage of the Middle East conflict. I tend to agree with the author's conclusion that the "bias," such as it is, isn't a deliberate thing. It's more a function of ignorance:

"I think bias is a strong word and term to describe what's out there," says Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. "There are problems – problems of ignorance, of lack of perspective. There are problems of people with no knowledge being parachuted into a situation and producing incomplete coverage.... But I am certainly not one to say that the American media is biased against Israel."

AJR also includes this related column on Mideast media bias. As I've written before, sometimes what the public perceives as "bias" in coverage choices is often the result of some entirely plausible breakdown in the newsgathering process - an assignment gets switched to another reporter or photographer, or an editor handling a certain beat is absent from work and another editor unfamiliar with that beat steps up to fill in. These snafus happen all the time.