"In his book Science of Logic, the German philosopher Friedrich Hegel examines the transition from quantity to quality - that is to say, the moment when a gradual quantitative process brings about a significant qualitative change.
The terms "quantity" and "quality" are central to understanding the effect that media coverage of Israel is having on how the country is perceived.
Let's take the Guardian for example: the paper's homepage for Middle East and North Africa (presumably covering more than 30 countries) usually contains approximately 13-15 news items.
...If the reader were interested in the alleged victim of the war Israel wants to start, he need not despair.
Iran does appears on the homepage - the country currently under Security Council-mandated sanctions for developing nuclear weapons, which hangs gays from cranes and jails bloggers, and sponsors countless terror groups, is represented with a touristic photo tour of a historic Tehran neighbourhood.
...But maybe the wider point here is not the bias or skewed reporting, but the simple, sheer volume of coverage.
When over a third of the news out of the Middle East (not exactly an uneventful region) on an influential website consists of coverage of Israel, is it not time we understood that an intentional choice is being made, to dictate what we should know, think and feel about the Middle East?
How should we regard this selective coverage?
Medical science has a name for "a compulsive, often unreasonable idea or emotion" - it's called obsession.
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