This article was originally published as a sidebar with "Reporting Israeli Assault Through Israel's Eyes." In the aftermath of the deadly Israeli assault on the international flotilla bringing humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, the establishment press has repeatedly distorted the political positions of Hamas, the Islamist movement that governs Gaza. The New York Times’ Ethan Bronner (6/5/10) reported that Hamas “rejects Israel’s existence.” USA Today’s Oren Dorell (6/7/10) wrote that “Hamas has been designated a terrorist group by the United States and European Union and seeks the destruction of Israel.” A New York Daily News editorial (6/5/10) referred [...]
Jul
01
2010
Gaza's Ongoing Crisis Is Not News
Routine killing, hunger off TV’s agenda
By Alex Kane
Since the Islamist movement Hamas won democratic elections in the Palestinian territories in January 2006, Israel has been waging what it has referred to as “economic warfare” (McClatchy, 6/9/10) to collectively punish Gazans for their choice. The economic sanctions increased after Hamas’ June 2006 capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit; a full-blown air, land and sea blockade was imposed by Israel (and Egypt) in June 2007 after Hamas routed an attempted coup by the rival, U.S.-backed Fatah party and took control in the Gaza Strip. The blockade against the coastal strip has had devastating consequences for the one-and-a-half million Palestinians [...]
Apr
01
2010
Covering a Son's War at the NYT
Editor rejects call for Jerusalem chief’s reassignment
Can a journalist neutrally cover a conflict that his child is fighting in? That’s the question posed by the news that the son of New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner joined the Israeli Defense Forces. The Times’ policies acknowledge that family members’ activities might require a journalist to “to withdraw from certain coverage”; their example is a business reporter or editor with “a brother or a daughter in a high-profile job on Wall Street.” If a child’s livelihood might color one’s reporting, wouldn’t that child’s life itself do so even more? When activists asked New York Times public [...]
Oct
01
2009
'Law-Abiding' Israelis, 'Unwelcoming' Palestinians
U.S. journalists sympathize with Israeli colonists
By Julie Hollar
The Obama administration’s push to freeze Israeli construction of illegal colonies in the West Bank has brought the settlement question back to the fore of media coverage. On July 27, Time published a rather long piece by Nina Burleigh on Israeli settlements under the headline “Two Views of the Land.” The first view was Israeli: The Katzes, very normal, gentle people readers can identify with (they’re even from New York!), “consider themselves law-abiding citizens” and do earnest and upstanding things like “publish a small community magazine and take part in civic projects. Sharon raises money for charity by putting on [...]
Mar
01
2009
The 'Right to Exist' as an Arab Israeli
U.S. papers of record regularly erase Israel’s Palestinian citizens
On January 11, 2009, a Washington Post article (“The View from Israel: Victors in a Necessary War”) declared that “Israelis have been . . . resolute” in their support of Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s three-week assault on Gaza. What the piece did not mention was that some 20 percent of the citizens of Israel are Palestinians. While a common criticism of Palestinian political groups is their refusal to recognize Israel’s “right to exist,” U.S. corporate media repeatedly fail to recognize the existence of Palestinian Israelis. During Cast Lead, from December 27, 2008, until the tentative cease-fire unilaterally declared by Israel [...]
Jan
01
2008
Get Carter
NY Times punishes an ex-president for criticizing Israel
By Howard Friel
Though the New York Times ignored Jimmy Carter’s book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid when it was first published--it didn’t review the book until it had already been on the Times’ bestseller list for five weeks--that didn’t stop the paper from running an article about a former Carter employee who didn’t like the book. The December 7, 2006 article began by reporting that Kenneth W. Stein, a former executive director of the Carter Center in Atlanta, had resigned, “citing concerns with the accuracy and integrity of Mr. Carter’s latest book.” It quoted Stein charging the book was “replete with factual errors, [...]
Aug
01
2006
Mid-East Blame Game
Leading papers ignore Israeli contribution to conflict
In the wake of the most serious outbreak of Israeli/Arab violence in years, three leading U.S. papers—the Washington Post, New York Times and Los Angeles Times—have strongly editorialized that Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon were solely responsible for sparking violence, and that the Israeli military response was predictable and unavoidable. These editorials ignored recent events that indicate a more complicated situation. Beginning with the Israeli attack on Gaza, a New York Times editorial (6/29/06), “Hamas Provokes a Fight,” declared that “the responsibility for this latest escalation rests squarely with Hamas,” and that “an Israeli military response was inevitable.” [...]
Feb
01
2005
No Children in Palestine
By Julie Hollar
On January 4, NPR’s Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep noted that Palestinian presidential candidate Mahmoud Abbas had described Israel as the "Zionist enemy." But the NPR anchor didn't tell listeners the context of Abbas' remark: Seven Palestinian children working in their families' strawberry fields had just been killed by Israeli forces. Abbas referred to the children as "martyrs who were killed today by the shells of the Zionist enemy in Beit Lahiya." NPR reported Abbas’ comment, but did not report on the killings themselves. Media critic Ali Abunimah of the website Electronic Intifada wrote to NPR about the piece, and [...]
