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October 8, 2010
Monitoring biased reporting
In conflict’s narrative, Israel is seen as Goliath: Fegelman.
PAT JOHNSON
Toronto’s classic rock radio station Q107 last month posted a quiz on its website, for which participants could receive points toward concert tickets and other swag. The question itself – and the three multiple-choice responses – quickly caught the eye of Michael Fegelman, executive director of Honest Reporting Canada.
“UN officials have described Israel as being uncooperative as they attempt to probe whether Israeli commandos were justified in the May killings of nine Turkish pro-Palestinian activists attempting to deliver aid to Palestinians in Gaza,” read the poll. “What do you think?”
The choices listeners could select were: “Israel needs to be held accountable for the psychotic way in which it conducts itself in the world. Unfortunately, the United States will ensure that that never happens”; “Israel doesn’t have to admit investigators if they don’t want to. How many times does Israel have to tell people to get out and stay away before they start pulling triggers?”; and “They’re Israel. Uncooperative and violent is what they are.”
When Honest Reporting Canada and hundreds of citizens protested the biased poll, the radio station removed it from its website, blamed a third-party content provider and made a full on-air apology. (For the record, results from an unknown number of participants before the poll was removed were, respectively, 58 per cent, 26 per cent and 16 per cent.)
This was an example presented by Fegelman, whose organization monitors anti-Israel bias in media, during a presentation before about 100 people at Congregation Beth Tikvah in Richmond Sunday night. And, while the poll may have been ludicrous and extreme, Fegelman credits his group’s 25,000 members for bringing to his attention this and other examples of misleading or outright false reporting. The range of anti-Israel reporting worldwide is diverse and some instances cross lines not only journalistic but moral, he said.
The Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet ran a story several months ago alleging that Israel was harvesting the organs of Palestinians. Even though the reporter has acknowledged that he did not corroborate the allegations in his story and had no evidence for what Fegelman termed a “vicious, disgusting blood libel,” the newspaper continues to stand by the reporter, Fegelman said.
Closer to home, a British Columbia community newspaper, the Al-Ameen Post, this past January ran a story from the Iranian government’s Press TV newswire alleging that Israel had abducted 25,000 Ukrainian children in order to remove their organs. The B.C. paper, when confronted, apologized and removed the article from its website.
These are particularly blatant examples of seemingly deliberate efforts to destroy the reputation of the Jewish state, but Canadian media is among the least of the world’s problems, Fegelman said.
“In Canada, we’re lucky that our media are very responsible,” he said. “I don’t believe they have an axe to grind or an agenda toward the state of Israel.” But, he said, there are systemic biases in journalism that put Israel at a disadvantage.
“The news process is biased against Israel,” Fegelman said, purporting that the set narrative is of a David-versus-Goliath story. “That’s the kind of dynamic we often see,” he said.
Time magazine received one of Honest Reporting’s biggest responses last month when the news weekly enflamed passions with the cover story, “Why Israel doesn’t care about peace.” The article, which depicted Israelis as affluent, decadent people enjoying the good life and not concerned with the well-being of their neighbors or a permanent peace, inspired a landslide of complaints, though Fegelman does not expect a retraction for what he believes was a blatant attempt to boost sales with a controversial cover.
Fegelman offered some ideas as to how to identify biased reporting in stories about such things as home demolitions or other apparently harsh actions by the Israeli military. If the outcome of the action is reported – as in a photograph Fegelman showed of a Palestinian woman in front of a concrete portion of the security barrier spray-painted, in something akin to English, with the message “Stop kill Palestin,” while holding a picture of her demolished home – but the explanation of Israel’s motivation is absent, this is an example of bias.
The cropping of photos can also alter the truth of a situation, he said. One photo, run in some media to show a young man holding a Palestinian flag in one hand and throwing a rock with the other, told a different story when a wider shot of the same photo indicated that the act was essentially a photo op, with a coterie of photographers carefully set up within inches to capture the image.
What is not seen can be relevant in stories as well as photographs. When Fegelman confronted one editor about the lack of coverage on the incessant barrage of rockets fired against Israeli civilians in towns like Sderot, he got a lesson in journalistic priorities.
“How come I’m not seeing stories about a rocket landing next to a kindergarten?” Fegelman asked.
“Why is that newsworthy?” the editor is said to have replied. “That’s routine.”
Fegelman refers to the “manufactured, staged news” created to support the anti-Israel cause as “Pallywood,” a play on Hollywood and Bollywood.
“Israel’s enemies are very adept at manipulating media,” he said, citing the “Al-Dura affair,” in which a Palestinian child was allegedly killed on camera by Israel Defence Forces bullets, when later reports indicated that the trajectory of the bullet must have come from Palestinian terrorists, and still other reports suggested that the entire event was a ruse and that the boy remained alive and well.
Among the enduring falsehoods, Fegelman said, is the Jenin “massacre.” In 2002, the IDF executed an operation in the West Bank town – a community reportedly referred to by Palestinians as “Martyrs’ Capital” – with door-to-door precision intended specifically to minimize Palestinian loss of life. Because of the dangers inherent in any door-to-door sweep, 23 IDF soldiers were killed in the booby-trapped town. In the end, 54 Palestinians were killed, most of them combatants. But this did not deter “false, malicious, egregious allegations” that a mass slaughter – rather than a tragically routine military operation against terrorist infrastructure – had taken place, said Fegelman.
Senior Palestinian Authority figure Saeb Erakat told CNN on April 10, 2002, that Israeli troops had killed “more than 500 people,” an allegation he repeated two days later on the same network: “a real massacre was committed in the Jenin refugee camp.” Erakat alleged – and media worldwide repeated the unsubstantiated claims – that 300 Palestinians were being buried in mass graves. Despite this, Fegelman said, Erakat is still welcomed on Western media as a legitimate spokesperson.
Summarizing the anti-Israel strategy, Fegelman quoted a figure rarely spoken of in such venues.
“Make the lie big,” said Adolf Hitler, “make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.”
Pat Johnson is, among other things, director of programs for Hillel in British Columbia.
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