Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #718, 10/5/14

To: Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From: Jerry Verlin, Editor (jverlin1234@verizon.net)
Subj: Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #718, 10/5/14

WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: The AP and Philly Inquirer were up to their usual stuff this week in the Inq, but help me first with a bit of market research. If you could share breakfast each morning not just with the AP in the Inq but as well with a home computer printer-delivered supplement featuring a non-AP-mentality competitor Israel news source, would that aid your digestion? Take a moment and email me back whether the concept summarized below would have your subscriber support.

A Bit of Market Research

A lot of ifs here, but If a supplement, not a substitute, to your hardcopy morning news arrived at your house, on your computer’s printer instead of your driveway, in time for breakfast, in form of a short newspaper with Israel news from a source like but unlike the AP, would you give it a place at your table?

Has the mainstream media mellowed toward Israel at all since this millennium’s early years of “millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants from Israel’s creation” (see BSMW #1 et seq)? If nothing yet had convinced you that it has not, this summer’s miscoverage of the Israel-Hamas war – still reverberating this week in the Inq (see below) – must surely have done so.

The question that ought to be in your mind is what can we do about it? Until now, my answer has been at least appreciate that what the media says about Israel – from years ago’s “millions of Palestinian refugees” to “the vast majority” of Gazans killed in this summer’s war “were civilians” (AP This Week In The Inq) – ain’t necessarily so. And let us ourselves stop mouthing the very expressions designed in our time to delegitimize us – “West Bank … East Jerusalem … 1948 Creation/Founding of Israel … 1967 Borders … Jewish Settlements adjacent to Palestinian Neighborhoods and Villages … even Palestinian Arabs as The Palestinians, etc.

But now, at last, pieces may be in place to inject into first ourselves and then others a daily antidote to the media’s endless daily stream of injustices perpetrated upon Israel and us through imbalanced reporting. I say “may be in place” because it will take some doing, perhaps not all of it attainable, to put them together.

A couple years ago, a non-profit was started in Israel to be a news article-originating news agency, like the AP, but free of the mainstream media’s imbalanced reporting on Israel. This organization has made significant strides in print on multiple continents toward establishing itself as a fully competitive Israel news coverage competitor to the AP. It’s critically important that this effort succeed.

But you and I live in a This Week In The Inq realm of one home-delivered daily newspaper sharing citizens’ breakfasts. It would be very difficult in this time of declining, though still heavily influential daily newspapers to start up a similarly structured competitor to the Inq. But what if, at negligible printing and delivery cost, a brief single-news-subject – Israel – newspaper could appear on your computer’s printer each morning? If it had breaking news stories from this second news source, commentary on mainstream coverage, brief legal or historical background on what’s going on, and a bit of editorial and op-ed, along with a few ads, would you pay a modest – well less than an Inq – subscription? Technology and other issues have aspects yet to be clarified, but if a for-profit enterprise could offer you such a breakfast supplement to the MSM’s daily portrayal of Israel news, would you go for it? jverlin1234@verizon.net

This Week In The Inq: “The vast majority of them civilians”

Algemeiner had an article Thursday (10/2/14) titled “Leading American Journalist Slams AP Claim That ‘Vast Majority’ of Gazan Dead Were Civilians.” In an interview with Algemeiner, Forbes.com contributor Richard Behar, whom the article called “a leading American journalist and political commentator,” offered “trenchant criticisms of American media coverage” of this summer’s Israel-Hamas war, in particular expressing “grave concern about the AP’s reporting of the conflict.” Behar:

“AP has enormous power and influence in the media world …. As long as they keep shooting this stuff out, they are doing damage. They should not be saying in their stories that the vast majority of casualties are civilians. They could at least mention that there are other sources reaching different conclusions.” (emphasis added)

AP, that very day, Thursday, This Week In The Inq (10/2/14, A4, AP, “U.S. Criticizes Israel’s New Housing Project”):

More than 2,100 Palestinians – the vast majority of them civilians – and more than 70 Israelis were killed during the 50-day war in Gaza. (emphasis added)

What’s the truth of the matter? Thursday’s Algemeiner article:

Data gathered on the ground in Gaza remains sketchy, and certainly doesn’t provide a solid basis for the assertion that the “vast majority” of Palestinian casualties were civilians. As the Washington Post’s William Booth reported at the end of August, UN figures – which are based on numbers provided by the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry in Gaza – maintain that 69 percent of those killed were civilians. The Israeli government, however, calculates that 52 percent of those killed were civilians, Booth wrote.

Thursday’s Algemeiner article went on to cite Behar’s comparison of Gaza Health Ministry figures that “did not provide any breakdown of combatants and civilians – just names, ages and gender” against “detailed research” by Israeli think-tank Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, which “reaches very different conclusions based on the same lists of names collected by the Gaza Health Ministry” – 49% “terrorist operatives” and 51% “non-involved civilians” of the 49% of Gaza fatalities which it has so far identified.

Algemeiner concluded:

Such findings, Richard Behar said, should persuade media outlets like the AP that unambiguous references to civilians as the “vast majority” of the dead does a serious disservice to accurate reporting. “Do journalism,” Behar urged. “That’s what AP customers pay for.”

Regards,
Jerry