Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #710, 8/10/14

To: Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From: Jerry Verlin, Editor (jverlin1234@verizon.net)
Subj: Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #710, 8/10/14

This Week Again Not In The Inq: The Attacks On Israeli Civilians

Our hometown paper, the Philly Inquirer (“Inq”) headlined its front-page Israel article yesterday (Inq, Sat, 8/9/14, A1, Washington Post):

Gaza Conflict: Mideast Truce Ends; High-Level Talks Stall

[1] It’s Not “the Gaza conflict” exactly: The first disturbing inaccurate aspect about that Inq headline Saturday is that the fighting between Israel and Hamas is not “the Gaza Conflict,” but a war in which Israel as well as Gaza is the battlefield. Thousands of rockets are launched into Israel by Hamas from Gaza. Indeed, Iron Dome – deployed to protect civilians in cities, not IDF soldiers on the front-lines – has struck down the most civilian population-threatening, but the sirens go off and civilians rush with just seconds to get there to shelters or crouch by their cars at the roadside. And now Hamas is attacking Israeli civilians from below as well as from above. The trauma to Israeli civilians, not least young children, is real and intolerable. No nation could live with this nightmarish double-threat to its people.

Western newspapers like our Inq are obligated to convey this necessity of Israeli action in Gaza, along with damage in Gaza, through their photo selection. Yet last week, as we counted in BSMW Alert #709, the Inq ran 8 photos of damage in Gaza and zero depicting the rocketing’s effect on civilians in Israel. This week the Inq ran two more photos depicting damage in Gaza – Tuesday, 8/5/14, A5, “Palestinians pass the bombed-out rubble of buildings ….”, and Wednesday, 8/6/14, A6, “Palestinians inspect rubble ….” – and again none of civilians in Israel.

Is it any wonder that Western publics, predisposed to Inq-like hair-triggers of moral recoil at people harmed by IDF action, especially when the necessity of that action is downplayed, are up in arms to the point that The Guardian [!] warns of anti-Semitism?

[2] “Mideast Truce Ends”? Not exactly: Yesterday’s Inq’s headline conveyed a second misimpression – “Mideast Truce Ends.” That much-internationally-sought-after truce didn’t just “end.” As the Inq’s so-headlined Washington Post article led:

GAZA CITY – A brief three-day peace crumbled Friday after Gaza militants fired dozens of rockets at Israel and Israeli forces responded ….

Informative headlining would have been: “Hamas Fires Dozens of Rockets at Israel, Ending Ceasefire.”

Inq’s Friday Headline “Hamas Threatens More War” Should Have Been “Hamas Threatens More Terror”

The Inq headlined its McClatchy Israel article Friday (Inq, Fri, 8/8/14, A6) “Hamas Threatens More War.” The article’s paragraph 7 quoted “a Hamas official” (repeated in the Inq’s own photo caption) that

Our fingers are on the trigger, and our rockets are trained on Tel Aviv.

But then, our beloved hometown Inq has always had a problem distinguishing war and terror when it comes to Israel and Hamas. Back in 2001, the year I started this media watch, the IDF in a pinpoint attack took out an Hamas terrorist it said had had a hand in numerous mass-murder bombings of Israeli civilians, including the infamous Dolphin Disco and Sbarro Pizza atrocities recalled to this day. Under the headline “Israel Defends Assassination,” our Inq (11/25/01) ran a Knight-Ridder news article leading: “An unrepentant Israel yesterday defended the assassination of the radical Hamas movement’s military leader [emphasis added], with Foreign Minister Shimon Peres calling Mahmoud Hanuod ‘a professional terrorist’ who was planning more attacks.”

Perhaps we should see our particular media balance problem as part of a broader problem. It is a shonda on the American Constitution’s First Amendment that the city in which that history-shaping document was written should today have one major daily newspaper. If a second newspaper, functioning not as an amplifier but an antidote, as did the brief return of The Bulletin, should come to our Fair City, we should do a better job of supporting it than we did for The Bulletin.

Regards,
Jerry