The study, undertaken by the Jewish Community Relations Council, examined 63 Mideast-related articles that ran in the San Francisco Chronicle between January and February, as well as the paper's 13 editorials relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that ran between October 2001 and April 30.

The JCRC claims its analysis uncovers a "pattern of both substantive deletions by Chronicle editors from original sources" as well as "material changes in the original stories' headlines" resulting in "a misrepresentation of the original stories' factual integrity."

"We wanted to do a serious analysis and look at the results and see if the results bear out what we're feeling. And I think they do bear out what we're feeling," said Yitzhak Santis, the JCRC's Middle East affairs director and the study's principal author. "Whether by omission or commission, the end result is this pattern of bias."

Not so, say Chronicle editors. While ready to acknowledge mishandling Mideast coverage in the recent past — including the paper's much-publicized failure to cover a pro-Israel rally in San Francisco attended by at least 5,000 people April 14 — editors emphatically deny the Chronicle employs an anti-Israel tilt.