Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #716, 9/21/14

To: Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From: Jerry Verlin, Editor (jverlin1234@verizon.net)
Subj: Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #716, 9/21/14

This War In The Inq: Where There’s Smoke, to an Exclusionary Obsession, There’s Bias

WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: Lee and I updated our media bias Powerpoint slideshow over the summer to include American media miscoverage of fighting between the IDF and Hamas. We gave our first talk on it to a great group in Bucks County this morning. This week’s BSMW #716 singles out one aspect of our hometown Philly Inquirer’s imbalance – its carrying its obsessive selection of “smoke rises over Gaza City,” etc., photos to news articles focusing on very different aspects than Israeli airstrikes in Gaza.

Start with appreciating that the vast majority of photos the Philly Inquirer (Inq) ran over the course of this summer’s IDF-Hamas fighting were of damage inflicted in Gaza, as opposed, e.g., to Israeli civilians rushing with literally seconds’ warning to bomb shelters, and those who could not reach them crouching with their little kids beside cars on the roadside, lying on the ground covering their heads with their arms, etc.

On July 10 (A14), the Inq even ran a “Thanks to Iron Dome, Tel Aviv is a World Apart”-headlined Washington Post article, sub-headlined “Despite sirens, missile shield maintains the calm,” not entirely in-synch with the article’s text, which reveals that citizens professing calmness were putting on a show of bravado: “… the latest barrage of rockets aimed at this city [not exactly a military target, not that that seems to bother the media] . . . rockets farther into Israel than ever before . . . [ Tel Aviv’s deputy mayor] declared that despite the rockets, which had intermittently sent residents running for shelter throughout Tuesday and Wednesday morning, ‘tonight the restaurants, bars and pubs will be packed as usual.’”

In the last week of July, for example, the Inq ran 8 photos of damage in Gaza versus 3 of Israelis, two of which were of IDF tanks and the third a snapshot of a soldier who’d been killed in the fighting.

But the Inq’s damage in Gaza photo obsession went far obsessively far beyond illustrating news articles focused on Hamas-IDF fighting. E.g.:

*** On July 24, 2014 (Inq, A16) the Inq ran an op-ed by the Washington Post’s Jackson Diehl, titled “A Way Out of Mideast Stalemate,” in which the WP’s deputy editorial page editor concluded that “one set of Palestinian leaders dodged multiple peace proposals and the other engaged in futile wars.” The photo the Inq embedded in this op-ed: “Smoke from an Israeli air strike rises over Gaza City this week.”

*** On July 23, 2014, the Inq ran a top-of-A1 headline: “Gaza Fight Takes New Turn: Flight Ban,” about a lone Hamas rocket that landed about a mile from Israel’s international airport, in response to which much of the world temporarily suspended air flights to Israel. The Inq’s top-of-A1 photo illustrating this above-the-fold front-page news of Israel’s airport being shut down? “Smoke and fire rise over Gaza City” [emphasis added, but just a little]

*** On 8/18/14 (A16) the Inq ran an op-ed discussing armed conflicts all over the world, Inq-headlined: “Joy or Horrors, All a Roll of the Cosmic Dice.” Maybe so, maybe not, but it wasn’t a roll of the cosmic dice that chose the Inq’s illustration for this all-the-world’s-conflicts op-ed: “Smoke and fire rise over Gaza City.”

*** 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 1for 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]

This Week In The Inq

*** This Friday’s Inq (Inq, 9/19/14, A7, AP) carried an AP news article stating that during the 50 days of fighting Israel launched thousands of air strikes at “what it said were Hamas-linked targets,” which had killed “more than 2,100 Palestinians, the vast majority civilians … according to U.N. officials.” Backed by documentation, Israel maintains that about half of those killed were conflict participants, a higher than typical non-civilian percentage in conflicts including urban areas. Balanced reporting demanded informing the Western public of the Israeli civilian casualty contention alongside the U.N.’s “the vast majority civilians.” And reporting this would have imbued some credibility into what the AP charming called Israel’s targeting of “what it said were Hamas-linked targets.”

*** A Los Angeles Times piece included in the Inq’s Wednesday “Around the World” squibs (Inq, Wed, 9/17/14, A6) reported that “Israel’s 50-day military assault on Hamas and other extremist groups in Gaza came to a halt Aug. 26 when both sides accepted an Egyptian proposal to hold their fire ….” The LA Times (which revels in telling readers Israel “seized” land in 1967) could have described this summer’s under-border tunnel and incessant rocketing of Israeli civilians-featuring conflict as more two-sided than “Israel’s 50-day military assault on Hamas.”

*** There are weeks when I wonder whether Palestinian Arabs realistically appreciate that, e.g., the reason that the West is supporting in “refugee camps” (including one referenced by the Inq’s photo caption Friday as “near the West Bank city of Bethlehem”) great-grandchildren of Palestinian Arabs who never left Palestine is that keeping these generations after generations “refugees” perpetuates the Arab-Jewish Palestine conflict, and that should the “Palestine Liberation Organization” ever succeed in Liberating the pre-1967 “Occupied Territories” it was formed in 1964 to Liberate, the West’s, and likely others’, obsessive support of “The Palestinians” would quickly wither.

Perhaps a distant warning of that probability appeared in the Inq Tuesday (Inq, Tue, 9/16/14, A6) in what made all of a from-Switzerland “Around the World” AP news-in-brief squib. The IOM (International Organization for Migration) reported that “About 500 Syrians, Palestinians, Egyptians, and Sudanese [being smuggled to Europe] are feared dead after their boat was rammed [apparently by competing smugglers] and sunk off Malta last week.” These 500 fleeing news-in-brief-reported people were cold-bloodedly intentionally murdered. Imagine a Mavi-Marmara-infatuated Inq getting wind that Israel had intentionally rammed to death a boat-load of 500 Arab refugees on the high seas. Coverage wouldn’t have been “news-in-brief.”

*** During our talk’s Q&A this morning, an attendee asked what developments could achieve balanced coverage of Israel. My answer: In news gathering, full establishment of an alternative to the AP et ilk Mideast mindset, such as by the growing Israeli news agency Tazpit. In news distribution, establishment in essentially one-main-newspaper American cities like Philadelphia of a thump-in-your-driveway morning daily alternative to such cities’ Inqs.

Our warmest High Holidays wishes to our Jewish subscribers.

Regards,
Jerry