News journalism always addresses the past, present and future in its coverage, whether explicitly or not. The coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is no exception. However, neither historical references nor causal explanations are absolute truths. They are angles, chosen by journalists, correspondents and editors, and have consequences for our understanding of the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians.Based on our interdisciplinary interest in both Journalism and History we decided to examine how history is used in the news media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in the period from the 1th of July to the 26th of August. To answer the research question, we choose TV Avisen as our case.We take our theoretical starting point in Friedrich Nietzsche’s early thoughts on history: History is not just previous events and persons isolated in time and space. It is rather an incorporated part of the present and our culture, society and worldview. To find out how history is used, we analyse all coverage of the conflict with help from framing- and metaphor theory by Shanto Iyengar and George Lakoff and Mark Johnson.We found out that the use of history in TV Avisen is expressed in three ways: in explicit historical references, causal explanations and pre-understandings. While the historical references rarely are unfolded, the causal explanations refer only to two events, both of them in near past - the killing of the three Israeli teens, and the dangerous underground tunnels excavated by Hamas. The pre-understandings are widespread. They reflect an implicit use of history, hiding in our language. They are terms of the ways we think, expressed through metaphors that contain our experiences and our western worldview. An example is the understanding of Israel as a western ally in the war against terror, thereby suggesting Hamas are terrorists. Israel is deliberate and rational while Hamas is primitive and sensitive. In spite of the comprehensive use of pre-understandings, the journalists are in all probability not aware of their everyday use of history in TV news. When they don’t know the historical content in their production, the journalists risk reproducing the existing authority structures in the society - ideas of good, evil, right and wrong - without ever challenging them or making counter arguments.
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