On September 11, Palestinians at the Ein el-Hilweh refugee camp near Sidon, Lebanon, celebrated the news of the attacks by flashing the victory sign and waving Palestinian flags. AP / Wide World Photos

A certain degree of bias was involved in the reporting as well. Arab Americans in particular disliked the numerous replays of an anti-American protest in the Gaza Strip. There actually were people who celebrated in the streets when they heard of the terrorism that had visited the United States. Nobody would have expected the media not to show these pictures either in print or in television. Still, people were upset about the number of times these images appeared, again and again, on the screen.

Often media bias can better be found by looking at what was not covered. In contrast to the celebrations by Palestinians that were replayed again and again, similar outbursts by people elsewhere were either not reported on or were underreported. I want to share one example. Shortly after the attacks on the United States, a soccer game took place in Athens, Greece. It was the European Cup, a very important game for soccer fans in Europe. When it was announced that there would be a minute of silence to remember the events in New York and Washington, the Greek fans broke out into anti-American demonstrations. They even tried, but failed, to set fire to an American flag. The New York Times, within a report on the sports page, ran a few lines about this protest. In my search of practically all the newspapers in the United States, I found only a few examples of reporting on this incident, all of them hidden in a few lines on the sports pages.