Readers of the Berkeley Daily Planet have been known to call it the Daily Palestinian. Elsewhere in this website we site metrics which prove that the Berkeley Daily Planet elevates the Israel-Palestine conflict way and above all other world situations.
Contributor, P. Gordis, has provided us with a different way of looking at this problem. It turns out that Palestine is more important to Becky O’Malley than Berkeley’s most neighboring communities, even though she distributes her “local” newspaper in many of them. Gordis writes:
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We know how the Berkeley Daily Planet indignantly rejects the assertion that our local community newspaper is "obsessed" with Israel/Palestine. In that regard, it's worthwhile to compare the number of references to Palestine with the cities neighboring Berkeley in which the Planet is physically distributed.
So, again the total number of search results from the Berkeley Daily Planet’s website for the term “Palestine” as of 05/24/09: 1,460. Total number of hits for Israel, 1,990. Combined search totals for |
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The Daily Planet peddles its papers in front of ACE Hardware in El Cerrito, a neighboring town the DP ignores in favor of Palestine. |
Isreal/ Palestine on the Berkeley Daily Planet website which presumably searches the Planet’s archives back to Dec. 2000: 3450
Note that while there may be more total references for some local city names than “Palestine” or “Israel/Palestine” in the abstract, an examination of the Planet's search results will show that the vast majority of these local city names are in the Events Calendar section or local home sale notices, rather than real news items. For example:
“Berkeley Ballot Tax Measures, a panel discussion at 5 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, 3rd flr., 2090 Shattuck Ave. Sponsored by League of Women Voters Berkeley Albany Emeryville.”
For comparison, the total number of website hits on the Planet for some neighboring communities which the Planet often encompasses (note again that the vast majority of these results are from the “event calendar section” of the Berkeley Daily Planet):
Albany: 4,350
El Cerrito: 2,870
Emeryville: 2,510
Kensington: 2,220
Piedmont: 2,460
Richmond, 4,720
Some other nearby cities in the Eastbay, a little less far afield than Palestine:
San Leandro: 819
San Lorenzo: 156
El Sobrante: 374
Pinole: 456
Orinda: 490
Moraga: 187
Or how about Tilden Park which surrounds Berkeley? 612
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