Stuff like this just makes me want to cry...
New Rules" For Mideast Reporting
When you read about Israel in the newspaper, be sure to read between the lines.
by Lenny Ben-David
Every media outlet has its own stylebook, designed to be as fair and impartial as possible. These days, however, it often seems like the Palestinian Minister of Information is publishing and distributing his stylebook to dozens of newspapers and media outlets.
Since September 2000, a new de facto "stylebook" has emerged for reporters covering the Palestinian violence against Israel. In some cases, the "new rules for reporting" are based on actual policies promulgated by news organizations and editors.
Though elements of "pack journalism" are evident, there are probably no conspiratorial hands behind the emergence of this stylebook. For the most part, reporters and correspondents have informally, perhaps even subconsciously, adopted these guidelines.
Invariably, the new rules are biased against Israel. While not a "conspiracy," an anti-Israel press "convention" has emerged, and clear biases are evident.
For now, the bias appears to have had little impact on American public opinion regarding Israel. In Europe, the stronger, more strident anti-Israel tone of much of the media may be having a different impact.
Following are eight new "rules" for reporters covering the Middle East, as distilled from hundreds of articles covering the recent violence:
Rule 1. Sensationalize the intensity and scope of Israeli military actions.
Call the Israeli actions "aggressive," "devastating" or "intensive." Refer to Israeli incursions into Palestinian territory as "deep," even when they involve only 300 yards. [The New York Times, April 14, 2001]
On the other hand, refer to Palestinian mortar attacks as "ineffective" or "falling harmlessly," even though the intent of the mortar teams is malevolent.
Rule 2. Whitewash Palestinian acts of violence.
Do not label Palestinian bombings and shootings of Jewish civilians as "terrorism," nor the perpetrators as "terrorists" -- even bombs planted in the middle of Israeli marketplaces. Label the perpetrators as "militants" or "activists."
Reporters may make exceptions to the rule when their own "ox is being gored." For example, in referring to Irish bombers as "terrorists," BBC explains: "It has long been the policy of the domestic service to refer to terrorists in Northern Ireland... but the policy of the World Service is not to refer to anyone in those terms."
Rule 3. Blame it on the settlements.
Mitigate Palestinian aggression and attacks by labeling Israeli victims as "settlers" and the locations of the attacks as "settlements" or "occupied territories." Label the Jerusalem neighborhoods of Gilo and French Hill as "settlements" and "settler enclaves" -- even though they have been part of Jerusalem for 30 years and house tens of thousands of middle class Jewish families. When possible, call Israeli towns within the Green Line, such as Sderot, "settlements," as well. [The UK Guardian, April 17, 2001].
Further, refer to all Jewish victims in the territories as "settlers" -- whether a 14-year-old boy or a 10-month-old baby.
Label Israeli residents in areas of Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza as some new non-civilian entity, as in The New York Times' reference to Israeli "soldiers, settlers and civilians." [March 10, 2001]
Rule 4. Deprecate Israeli leaders; sympathize with Arafat.
Always refer to Ariel Sharon as "hard-line," "war criminal," "vilified by Arabs," or "The Bulldozer."
Never refer to Yasser Arafat as "the former terrorist" or bellicose, corrupt, or despotic. Whenever possible, solicit sympathy by referring to Arafat's old age or as "Parkinson's-haunted" [The Independent, UK, April 17, 2001]
Rule 5. Blame Israel for all Palestinian casualties.
Blame Israel, whether for "work accidents" in Palestinian bomb factories, Palestinian demonstrators hit by Palestinian snipers aiming at Israeli soldiers, or Arabs injured in Israeli crowds during suicide bombings.
Also include the hundreds of Palestinian collaborators, lynched by Palestinian vigilante gangs, or executed by Arafat-appointed firing squads.
Arab auto accidents may also be blamed on Israel. In early October 2000, several stories blamed Israelis for the beating death of Issam Judeh Mustafa Hamed. On November 2, pathologists brought in by the Palestinian Authority, concluded that Issam Judeh died in a traffic accident. It is unknown how many of the Palestinian "martyrs" died of natural causes, accidents, or intra-Palestinian fighting.
In addition, refer frequently to Palestinian children as traumatized, orphaned, killed or severely injured -- even if at the hand of Palestinians' own bombs and bullets. Make no mention of Israeli children also victimized by Palestinian attacks.
Rule 6. Active and passive verb usage.
Use active verbs to describe Palestinian casualties -- i.e. Palestinians are "shot dead" or "gunned down" by Israeli soldiers.
On the other hand, use passive verbs to avoid blaming Palestinians for Israeli casualties. Say that shooting "broke out." The headline reporting 10-month-old Shalhevet Pass, shot and killed by a Palestinian sniper, read: "Jewish Toddler Dies in West Bank." [Associated Press, March 26, 2001]
When possible, juxtapose two deaths, blaming the Israeli's for one death, and leaving the Palestinian blame unstated. For example: "During clashes near the West Bank village of Dura, an 11-year-old Palestinian boy was shot dead by Israeli troops. One report said the boy had been watching Israeli soldiers and Palestinian gunman exchange fire when he was hit in the chest. On Monday, a 10-month-old Israeli baby was killed by gunfire in nearby Hebron." [BBC, March 27, 2001]
Rule 7. Offset an Israeli death by mentioning some unrelated Palestinian death.
Offset a Palestinian atrocity such as a bus bombing, by reporting on the tragic Palestinian death of an elderly woman or child, even if the Palestinian death occurred long before.
In reporting on the shocking discovery of two butchered Israeli teens near Tekoa, a CNN article entitled "Two Israeli teenagers found dead" carried a photo underneath the headline of a Palestinian baby shot and buried earlier in the week. [May 9, 2001]
On May 1, 2001, CNN reported: "An Israeli was killed and another injured in shooting attacks on West Bank roads Tuesday. The attacks followed explosions and clashes in Gaza and the West Bank which claimed seven Palestinian lives." This was reported even though the fatal explosions in Gaza were a "work accident' in a Palestinian bomb factory.
Rule 8. Invoke Arabic terms for holy sites.
Use Arabic terms for holy sites, even if the Jewish term is standard reference in any encyclopedia, university textbook, diplomatic document, or other acceptable Western source.
Avoid referring to the Temple Mount as "Judaism's holiest site," or "as the Jewish capital for 3,000 years." References to the Temple Mount should be qualified as mere claims, e.g.: "which Israel claims to have been the site of the First and Second Temple."
Preferably refer to the Temple Mount as "Haram al Sharif, the third-holiest Moslem site," or "the holiest Moslem site in Jerusalem." By contrast, never refer to Hebron, where the Jewish matriarchs and patriarchs are buried, as "Judaism's second-holiest site," nor to the Tomb of Rachel near Bethlehem as "Judaism's third-holiest site."
When necessary, drudge up obscure Arabic terms, such as referring to Jaffa Gate, the main western entrance to Jerusalem's Old City, as "Bab al-Khalil." [CNN, January 8, 2001]
If you are offended... then good! This should offend you and should be outraged by the newspaper media today!!!!
13 comments:
David,
I want you to know that I did my best not to respond to your post. But alas, I am weak-willed and need to find ways to pass time at work. So, a few comments on media objectivity and critical reading.
1) KNOW YOUR SOURCE: Lenny Ben-David, according to his bio, was the number two Israeli diplomat to the United States during the Clinton Administration. He was appointed by Benjamin Netanyahu, a hard line Likudnik even further to the right (although the article you're quoting was written before 2005) than Sharon, with whom he split over Gaza disengagement. This makes him to the right of most Israelis on this particular issue, and therefore can not be said to speak for Israeli public at large, but only a small portion of it. He is also a senior member of AIPAC (American Israeli Political Action Committee), a lobbying group whose purpose is to further Israeli interests in American foreign policy. This makes him pretty much the Israeli counterpart to the Palestinian Minister of Information. None of the above mitigates against the potential truth of his arguments, but it also means that this person has a large Apache helicopter shaped axe to grind, and is not someone to whom one would trust for an objective or balanced account of the situation.
2) The THESIS here--that since 2000 American news sources have become more pro-Palestinian in their coverage--is highly controversial, in fact it is the opposite of what is generally thought to be the case: namely, that the mainstream American media is pro-Israeli in bias. Given the controversial aspects of the thesis you'd expect him to write with INTERPRETIVE CHARITY, especially by considering and debunking the counter-arguments (and not just that, the BEST counter-arguments) to his thesis. You'd also expect a lot more sourcing for his claims and a far wider spectrum of news sources. Of the tens of thousands of articles printed in America and Britain about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the time he is considering, we get a few references to articles by CNN, one by the NY Times, and one each by The Independent and The Guardian (which are owned by the same company, the latter of which is a former socialist paper and surprises no one with its leftwing slant, making the choice alone something of a strawman). No Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Financial Times, or Times of London.
3) I think the most delicious irony of all is that what what Ben-David is calling a stylebook is pretty much what Noam Chomsky and Ed Hermann called a "propaganda model" in their analysis of the American media called _Manufacturing Consent_.
Ben-David is very careful to qualify what he means by the Palestinian-biased stylebook, because, if you read carefully, it's his own invention, or if you like, his hypothesis. The one currently in existence is de facto it has "rules" and "conventions" (in scare quotes) which have been adopted "informally" and "subconsciously" by media outlets that opperate under the group think conditions of "pack journalism." Not a single one of these claims are verifiable of which, Ben-David is of course aware (hence the qualifiers), but of which an uncareful reader, already sympathetic to his point of view, might easily pass over (hence the rhetorical value of words like rule, convention, de facto, which have the resonance of presumed truth). Given that there is no smoking bias gun, you'd expect him to conduct a far more extensively supported argument to show that anti-Israeli bias is really as "invariable" (this time the scare quotes are mine) as he claims. But his argument is not, in my opinion, satisfactorily extensive (see above).
Certain statments want for explanations. For instance, "the bias appears to have had little impact on American public opinion" (prefaced by the foreboding "for now" which does all a lot of work in this sentence). Well, that's true, but why? The fact that anti-Israel bias has little impact on public opinion could be interpreted as a sign that the bias isn't in fact there, and could thus be a potential fact that contradicts his hypothesis. But no explanation what so ever is provided for this potentially argument-damaging phenomenon.
Nor is there an example cited of to illustrate the difference between the American and the more "strident" European press bias. This might make us wonder what criteria are being used here for differentiate degrees of bias. But of course none are provided. (One suspects the reason for this is because compared to European reporting, American doesn't look as pro-Palestinian as Ben-David claims). Thus there is no baseline that one might set up as an example of objective, balanced reporting.
All in all there is a lot of methodological fudging going on here. I'm not going to get into the particular claims he makes here--you can make up your mind about those. What I'm interested in is critical reading, skepticism, and rational questioning--going through a critical process by which you come to your conclusions. Make them earn your trust. Even if you end up agreeing with the conclusion in the end, it's important to feel that you weren't pandered to. And lastly, be dispassionate: it's hard to read with tears in your eyes.
Ryan
1-Just because someone has an axe to grind does not mean his arguments are without merit, but it is good to know about the axe when reading the article.
2-I think Americans, in general are pro-Israeli, but the American press, in general is not.
3-The anti-Israel press bias has less impact on American public opinion in general, but in some areas, say like college campuses, the impact is greater.
4-Everyone has their biases, and noone is totally dispassionate, but I understood "this makes me want to cry" as a metaphor, not as a literal impairment to truth and common sense.
Roberta,
1. Agreed. Which is why I wrote, "None of the above mitigates against the potential truth of his arguments..." I do however think that his ax gets in the way of his thinking. For instance, no self-respecting media organ would refer to Jerusalem as "the Jewish capital for 3,000 years." Mostly, because it isn't true (except in the fantasies of partisans like Ben-David). Jerusalem has been the capital of Israel--a multiethnic semisecular state--for almost 60 years. Before that, going all the way back to 70CE, it wasn't the capital of anything except perhaps some other state's colony. It's comments like this one that makes the reader think that Ben-David isn't really interested in the most objective media possible, but rather in a biased media that favors his side. Which makes him a hypocrite.
2/3: Polls show that Americans aren't just "generally" pro-Israeli, they're overwhelmingly pro-Israeli. And while I would agree that anti-Israel bias, if you want to call support for Palestine that, is higher on college campuses then in the population at large, it is nonetheless not, in absolute standards, generally the case for the university population at large. Only when compared with the overwhelming support of Israeli policy in America at large does it even look like there is any anti-Israeli bias on college campuses. Which makes me reiterate my previous point, namely that what some people really want is not true diversity of opinion, but rather use the rhetoric of diversity to mask the desire for bias in the service of their own opinions.
Suspending judment on the question of whether the American press is pro- or anti-Israeli for a moment, let's just say that Mr. Ben-David's article, for the reasons I listed above, is not likely to be convincing to anyone who doesn't already agree with him.
I don't think that any argument that the American press is anti-Israel will be a good one unless it comes to explain how the American public got so be so overwhelmingly pro-Israel.
btw, Ryan...what's your axe to grind on this issue. It is important for me in assessing your comments to know where you are coming from.
I suspect that the American public being 'overwhelmingly' pro-Israel may be a backlash to the major media's pro-Palestinian reporting. I have no data to support my opinion, I am just theorizing. I'm not even sure I agree that they are overwhelmingly pro-Israel. Can you direct me to the poll data that you refer to?
Roberta, I'm glad you asked. I'll happily oblige on both points.
1) I believe that a two state solution effective immediately in which Israel pulls back to its pre-1967 borders (including pulling out of East Jerusalem and dismantling all settlements east of the Green Line) is in the best interests of justice and regional peace. I believe that any future Palestinian government ought to recognize the state of Israel and that it should be organized secularly and democratically. I believe that Palestinians with the proper documentation should be able to be compensated for property from which they were removed in 1948. I believe that Jordan, where a large number of Palestinian refugees live, should yield some of its territory on the East Bank to enlarge the future Palestinian state.
I also think that the level of discourse on the Israel/Palestine issue in the United States is particularly devolved because people on both sides, to paraphrase Martin Amis, tend to think about it with their blood. Which helps nobody and frustrates me.
These are my axes to grind.
2) If you type in the words "support of israel poll" into google, you get a number of results that illustrate the overwhelming support to which i'm referring. the link below is a catalogue of gallop and harris polls (the most reliably impartial polls around) from 1967 to the present that compares American support of Israel versus American support for Arabs/Palestine.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/polls.html
See what I mean?
i am gonna go ahead and agree with ryan on this one
-m
How can a Jew, in good conscious, give up the capital of their nation? The place that Great Temple once stood and where kings like Solomon and David ruled? Israel should not have to give up land that they fought for... Israel was attacked and won the war so why should Israel be punished? Why can't they make room in Jordan? Or Syria? Or Lebanon? Or Egypt? Why does it have to be Israel? Why are Jews being forced to give up the most among all the nations in the area? Surely that is a biased against Israel Ryan...
You've raised a number of issues here, David, that I want to address. If I miss any, do let me know and I'll try to get to them in a subsequent post.
1) As I understand it, there are two arguments for the existence of Israel as a specifically Jewish state (as opposed to a purely secular democracy like the US). The first is that in a post-Holocaust world it is necessary for the existence of a state where Jews, an historically persecuted minority, can not under any circumstances be stripped of their citizenship rights on the grounds of their ethnicity (as was the case in Nazi Germany, which was the legal prelude to the horrors of the Holocaust). The second justification is the one you provided, which is a religious argument based on historical continuity with the Kingdom of Israel that is spoken of in the Bible.
I find the first to be highly compelling and the second to be not at all compelling, because the former is in accord with our classical liberal intutitions about the protection of minority rights while the latter strikes me as nationalism based on theology. Perhaps you don't mind the latter justification and, if so, there will be little I can do to convince you otherwise. Which I think is problematic when trying to broker an equitable solution to a political problem--theocrats (of all stripes) are notoriously resistant to compromise.
2) On the question of history and national identity. UN resolution 242 provides for two states--one Arab and one Jewish--in the space that we now call the pre 1967 borders, which has not been fulfilled. The areas currently known as the West Bank and the Gaza Strip were between 1948 and 1967 the national territories of Egypt and Jordan respectively. In the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, a large number of Arabs (Christian and Muslim) then living within the pre-67 borders were, in the course of the fighting, displaced (some by direct force and some by flight) to the surrounding Arab countries (mostly in Jordan and Lebanon) where they lived in refugee camps. These are the people whom we call the Palestinians. No one in the current political debate is asking Israel to return that land to Egypt or Jordan from whom it was conquered but are rather asking Israel to come into some accord with the UN resolution that was instrumental to its founding.
So I think it's wrong to view the creation of a Palestinian state as a punishment for Israel's legitimate self-defence in the Six Day War. And, as I stated above, I think that Jordan, the home of the largest number of exiled Palestinians, should also provide land on the East Bank for the future Palestinian state.
Nor do I personally think that it's "only Israel." The other relevatly-similar situation in the region is that of the Kurds, currently a subject people of eastern Turkey (and until recently of northern Iraq). I think that the Kurds should have their own state should they desire it and that part of that state should be carved out of the territory that is currently under Turkish rule. I am also in support of the Quebecois' right to secede from Canada should they achieve a majority in a secession referendum. And so on. Not everybody who supports Palestine in this debate shares my views on this, which is a shame, since it's a position that's required to be minimally intellectually consistent. As long as you're debating me, however, I hope you take into consideration that I'm not being partial to the Palestinians as a cause celebre, but that I really do believe in national self-determination as a value full stop.
3) The other part of your post that I find highly problematic is the following quote "Why can't they make room in Jordan?...Why does it have to be in Israel." This sentence seems to suggest that the Palestinians aren't really a people, that they are really just undifferentiated Arabs who have no claim to a national identity and a state of their own. This view, which I hope I'm falsely attributing to you, is tantamount to saying, with only the most minute exaggeration, that we should disolve the national boundaries between Taiwan and China because they all look Asian to me. It's a view that, as I've said in a previous post, verges on racism, and is one that I would encourage all who hold it to discard, whatever their other feelings on the issue are.
Let us presume that, like the Israelis, the Palestinian people were created in 1948. If so they are differentiated from their fellow Lebanese, Jordanian, Syrian, and Egyptian Arabs, by the common experience of having been expropriated from their land by force, and made to live in refugee camps or in exile as the subject population of a nation whose government they never recognized as their own. Yes, the Palestinians are an artificial creation, but so are all nation states. The best example of this fact is the history of the founding of our own country--I ask you to consider what differentiates an Englishman from an American on July 4, 1776. Not very much perhaps--a few signatures beneath a list of grievances--but enough to matter.
CORRECTIONS:
I'm sorry...I wish to correct a few factual errors I made in the history section above. The UN Resolution to which I meant to refer is resolution UN181 which was made in November 1947; that area does include Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and was not confined, as I had claimed, to the pre-67 borders. The planned Arab state of 1947 includes a larger version of both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as well as other territories in the north and along the Red Sea (Jerusalem being under the control of an international protectorate). The pre-67 borders were established in the Armistice Argreements of 1949 that ended the Arab-Israeli War and established what is today known as the Green Line giving the most of the West Bank to Jordan and the Gaza Strip to Egypt.
UN Security Council Resolution 242 was unanimously passed (and subsequently much debated) in the wake of the 1967 Six Day War, which states that Israel must withdraw from the territories they occupied in that war. Hence the ground on which people base their complaint that Israel is giving back territory they rightfully conquered. My argument is thus that Israel should comply with 181 by providing for a Palestinian state in the lands they occupied in 1967, a smaller state than originally planned in 1947, but nontheless, given the current circumstances good enough. Sorry for the errors.
Here is the map to which I was referring in the above comment that shows the changes in territory between the 1947 Plan and the 1949 Agreements that established Israel's Pre-67 Borders.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:1947-UN-Partition-Plan-1949-Armistice-Comparison.png
1) To the need of a Jewish state I agree with you on that there is a need, of course, because of the Holocaust. The desire to have it in where historically Israel has been is part of National Determination! Jews want to have their country in the land that has HISTORICALLY been theirs. So I do not see how that is not compelling.
2) I believe Israel was in accordance to the 1949 Armistice agreement until they were attacked... So Israel was in accordance, then they were attacked by countries who were unhappy with this agreement because they did not get exactly what they wanted. So why is Israel forced to give up they earned after being attacked to countries who only want to see Israel wiped off the face of the planet? Israel has compromised a lot of land to supposed "peace" and yet there is still no peace because peace is not what Palestinians want... They want the complete and utter destruction of Israel. If they were happy with peace, then they wouldn't have attacked Israel in 1967...
3) To your point on National Determination why is it that only the Palestinians can have national determination? If Israel wants to exist where it has existed for thousands of years then why should they have to give it up for a group of people who want the destruction of Israel?
This is all the time I have to post because I have school! Take care
Shavua Tov
Actually the Six Day War was actually started by a preemptive strike by Israel against the Egyptian Air Force, but that's neither here nor there.
The reason I don't find it compelling is I tend to think that historical arguments, like scientific ones, aren't justified by religious texts. In point of fact that land is disputed by two groups who have equally legitimate claims to it, a fact that is recognized by UN181. Many Palestinians can produce deeds to their family's land that was expropriated during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Call me Yankee, but despite what the Bible says, I think we'd all agree that State expropriation of private property is, to put it mildly, bad policy.
The sentence I don't understand is the following: "why is it that only the Palestinians can have national determination?" The answer is that they're the only group under present consideration that doesn't have a nation because it's being occupied by a foreign power. (Unless of course you want, as I do as well, to extend national self-determination to Lebanon, whose internal affairs are currently being manipulated by the Syrian government.) Imagine hearing the same complaint from a 19th century Russian politician: "Why is it that only the Poles can have national determination?"
Why isn't the Jews historical/religious connection to the Land of Israel a compelling argument for its existence? Isn't the Palestinians connection to this same land a historical/religious one?
I think one of the reasons the Palestinians do not have their own state is due in part to a failure on their part--since they could not have everyting they wanted they chose no state and to keep on fighting, not because they are occupied by a foreign power. I think the Palestinians are entitled to their own state which justly could include land that is now part of Jordan. Jordan is after all part of historical/biblical Palestine, and much of the Palestinian population comes from what is now Jordan.
Palestinians deserve to be compensated for land they were forced or fled from during the 1948 War for Independence. I don't think that means that they should be returned to the exact plot of land they owned before the war, for obvious reasons. However, I also think Jews who were forced out of Arab lands and their property confiscated should be compensated also.
It could be said that the closing of the Straits of Tiran to Israeli ships or ships bound for her port in Eilat as well as the build up of Egyptian and Syrian troops near the borders of Israel were the beginning of the Six Day War.
Resolution 242 calls for a "just and lasting peace", "withdrawal of Israeli forces from territories occupied during the 1967 war" and "termination of all claims or states of belligerency and the right of EVERY (emphasis added)state in the area to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries"
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