#741 Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert

To:       Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From:   Jerry Verlin, Editor  (jverlin1234@verizon.net)
Subj:    Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #741, 3/15/15

Tuesday this week, the New York Observer ran a Richard Behar and Gary Weiss article excerpted in Thursday’s Conference of Presidents Daily Alert.  Here’s that article’s header:

How the AP Botched Its Investigation of Civilian Deaths in the Israel-Hamas War

Posed photographs. Intentional mischaracterizations.  Buried corrections. One-sided sourcing. Cherry-picked quotes. And a just-plain-wrong conclusion about “most” Gaza casualties being civilians.

A damning indictment that led with a chilling evaluation of the impact of the AP’s recent Israel-damning document:

On February 13, 2015, the Associated Press published and distributed an article that stirred the conscience of the world.  It gave its many readers – “AP news content is seen by half the world’s population,” according to the wire agency’s website – a disturbing picture of Israel as a serial violator of the norms of warfare, wantonly and indiscriminately slaughtering civilians during last summer’s war with Hamas in Gaza.

An analysis of the AP at work well worth the attention of pro-Israel media watchers.  But that is not the focus of this week’s Brith Sholom Media Watch, which focuses on the Israel coverage of our hometown Philadelphia Inquirer (Inq).  Including in its presentation of wire service coverage of last summer’s Israel-Hamas war, we have acres of anti-Israel acrimony in our own back yard.

One gross imbalance, totally in control of the Inq, that stuck with me particularly was the Inq’s one-sided selection of photos.  E.g., BSMW #709 of 8/3/14 analyzed that week’s Inq-selected Israel-Hamas war photos.  Of the 15 that graced our Inq’s pages that week, 9 showed damage in Gaza, 2 anti-Israel protests in “the West Bank,” and of the three of Israelis, two were of IDF tanks and the third of a soldier.  Not one of that week’s 15 Inq-selected photos showed intentionally incessantly-targeted Israeli civilians running for cover with seconds to spare, though we cited plenty of them in last summer’s media watches.  And that week’s Inq photo selections were typical.  Indeed, when the Inq ran a 7/23/14 story, “Gaza Fight Takes New Turn: Flight Ban,” about an Hamas rocket that landed a mile from Israel’s international airport inducing Western countries to institute a brief flight ban to Israel, the photo the Inq picked to adorn that article on Israel’s airport being closed was “Smoke and fire rise over Gaza City.”

But the Inq-crafted Israel-Hamas war coverage contrast that has stuck with me as most clearly conveying our hometown newspaper’s own contribution to anti-Israel media bias was the starkly different ways in which it purveyed to its readers the two sides of a two-sided war’s consequence, displacement of both sides’ civilians.

Here is how, at the time, BSMW #716 of 9/21/14 portrayed that Inq coverage contrast:

***  Compare the clarity-versus-vagueness of these two Inq headlines.  On 7/14/14, the Inq ran a front-page Washington Post article it headlined: “Tens of Thousands Flee Homes in Gaza.”  A4-continuation page Inq headline: “Thousands Flee Homes in Gaza.”  On 8/26/14, the Inq ran a page A6 AP article reporting that “tens of thousands of Israelis have fled the area [southern Israel near the Gaza Strip] in nearly two months of fighting.”  If you were expecting an Inq headline of “Tens of Thousands Flee Homes in Southern Israel,” you haven’t been paying attention for these past 716 weeks.  The Inq headlined: “Israelis Leaving Gaza Border,” which ambiguously could have suggested to readers that the IDF was pulling back troops from the border, not that Israeli civilians were fleeing their homes that were as much within Israel, inside Israel, not on “the border,” as Gazans were fleeing their homes not “on the border” but within Gaza.

Our beloved hometown Inq’s photo selection for this page 6 (as opposed to page 1 for Gazans fleeing their homes) article on “Israelis Leaving Gaza Border”?  “Firefighters inspect the rubble of a three-story residential building after an Israeli air strike in Beit Lahiya, in the northern Gaza Strip….”  [I don’t make this stuff up]

That headline contrast of reporting exactly the same phenomenon on both sides of the border – tens of thousands of civilians fleeing their homes on both sides – is a CT scan of the Inq’s heart and mind.  That contrast in headlining

Tens of Thousands Flee Homes in Gaza

[and]

Thousands Flee Homes in Gaza

[vs]

Israelis Leaving Gaza Border

says it all.  Well, perhaps not quite all.  Append the photo that the Inq picked to grace “Israelis Leaving Gaza Border” – “Firefighters inspect the rubble of a three-story residential building after an Israeli air strike in Beit Lahiya, in the northern Gaza Strip….”

The AP has a soul-mate in Philadelphia.

Regards,
Jerry