You can learn a lot from reading the Corrections box in the New York Times–often because going back to read the story that is being corrected reveals more than the correction itself.
On October 20, the Israeli navy intercepted another boat attempting to reach the Gaza Strip to deliver supplies in defiance of the Israeli blockade. In the October 21 edition of the Times, Jodi Rudoren filed a story about this news. But it was what she remembered about an earlier flotilla that was most revealing.
In 2010 Israeli forces launched a deadly assault on the Mavi Marmara boat, killing nine people on board the ship. According to the Times:
After the Mavi Marmara raid, a United Nations panel found that Israel’s naval blockade was “legitimate self-defense and that Israel’s decision to intercept the flotilla was indeed legal under international law.” Activists have disputed the panel’s conclusion.
That didn’t sound right to me. Actually, it’s partly correct; activists did criticize the UN investigation, for other reasons. But is that really what the Palmer Report said? The Times didn’t think so, because it issued a correction on October 28:
An article last Sunday about Israel’s seizure a day earlier of a European ship headed to the Gaza Strip misidentified the source of a quotation about Israel’s fatal 2010 Mavi Marmara raid on a Turkish flotilla headed to Gaza. The comment, which called Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza ”legitimate self-defense” and said ”that Israel’s decision to intercept the flotilla was indeed legal under international law,” was from an Israeli government statement concerning a United Nations report about the raid; it was not from the report itself. (The report had said that although Israel was entitled to enforce the naval blockade, its decision to board the vessels ”with such substantial force at a great distance from the blockade zone and with no final warning immediately prior to the boarding was excessive and unreasonable.”)
So the U.N.’s Palmer Report–which activists and the Turkish government found too accommodating to the Israeli position–didn’t actually draw the conclusion the Times attributed to it. That assessment came from…the Israeli government.
The Palmer Report did judge the Gaza blockade to be legal, which is contradicted by other investigations, most directly another UN fact-finding mission working under the auspices of the Human Rights Council, which found the blockade to be illegal under international law. Relying on the judgment of the Palmer Report is a curious journalistic decision, since its assessment of the Gaza blockade is so at odds with an array of other legal judgments on the same issue, including the Red Cross.
So the new version of the Times story reads like this:
After the Mavi Marmara raid, a United Nations panel found that although Israel was entitled to enforce the naval blockade as a security measure, its decision to board the vessels ”with such substantial force at a great distance from the blockade zone and with no final warning immediately prior to the boarding was excessive and unreasonable.”
An Israeli government spokesman later characterized the United Nations report as having found that Israel acted in ”legitimate self-defense and that Israel’s decision to intercept the flotilla was indeed legal under international law.”
Activists have disputed the panel’s conclusion.
That is certainly more accurate. But it’s a little puzzling that the paper managed to confuse a UN report about Israel with an Israeli government statement defending its actions.
Sometimes it’s helpful to imagine people saying what you really want them to say, even if they won’t say it:
After the Mavi Marmara raid, [only one of a pair of ] United Nations panel[s] found that Israel’s naval blockade was “legitimate self-defense and that Israel’s decision to intercept the flotilla was indeed legal under international law.” [Another report went further, arguing that the pressing humanitarian crisis combined with a “a deliberate attempt by the Israeli authorities to destroy evidence” constituted “a series of violations of international law, including international humanitarian and human rights law.] [Israel] disputed the [first] panel’s conclusion.
Well said, Lewis. Lots of toadying to those Israelis.
I like FAIR, but I find the writing style of the last line disingenuous. How is it at all puzzling or surprising when the NYT decides to promote an Israeli version of something over the original? You’ve been writing on the NYT and Israel for a while, so it must be familiar.
Also, they keep saying it was a “Turkish flotilla” but it really was an international flotilla comprised of several ships.
I have to say that the continuous use of the term “puzzling” to define corpress complicity is itself puzzling.
FAIR has listed innumerable examples of that litany of collusion, so to persist in claiming to be nonplussed about the reasons behind it seems disingenuous.
Perhaps it’s meant to present an tone of “objectivity”, but calling a spade a spade is a hallmark of honest journalism.
So, risking the consequences of copyright infringement, I must entreat you to
Just do it.
It’s a little puzzling why it’s a little puzzling that it’s a little puzzling that the NYT would prefer a phrase from and favorable to the Israeli government to a phrase in a UN report a little less favorable to the Israeli government. I guess facetiousness isn’t much appreciated by some readers.
I don’t see FAIR challenging the left wing media when it comes to Obama. Only Israel. Isn’t that your job? Your purpose? You wouldn’t be just another group of anti-Semites like the Gaza activists, would you? Hmmm … Sure.
Dear Greg;
I think you have confused something, regarding “challenging Israel.” I think People are challenging Mr. Netanyahu and his followers more than they are challenging Israel. We rarely get to hear from the people in Israel; mostly we just hear what Mr. Netanyahu thinks and even what his kid says on facebook.
There are a lot of people in Israel who think that treating people in Gaza the way they are being treated sort of makes a joke out of “Never forget,” because how could a country treat other people as badly as they were treated, and act like they weren’t doing anything wrong? Lots of people on the flotillas were Israeli, including some Holocaust survivors.
The whole term anti-semetic is very confusing anyway. The people of the Middle East are all mostly Semites ( Arab) I had to look that up and it seems that a German man in the 1870s first used that term for Jewish people, but really, it seems more correct to apply that to a large area of people and not just one. Besides, isn’t Mr. Netanyahu Polish? How can he be semetic?
Anyway, Greg, I think that the world had better get together and start figuring how to work together, because this thing called Climate Change is not going away not matter what a person’s race or religion is.
My original question was related to FAIR’s practices of “fairness and accuracy in reporting” as it relates to the media’s left wing slant. Every morning I see articles on Google but never one about the misrepresentation of press related to Obama, by an article from FAIR. My question is not about climate change. It’s about why I never see a prominent article from FAIR related to the media’s reporting of the political landscape. What is FAIR’s stance on this?
gregorylkruse,
I know this pattern isn’t puzzling to FAIR, but saying that it is puzzling is a sort of annoying rhetorical tic that could be done without. It’s surprising that it’s being employed. I am myself facetious to a fault; that line, however, just didn’t land for me.
I have a similar reaction sometimes when I see remarks to the effect that the media aren’t doing what it is supposed to. The harsher truth is that the media is doing what it’s supposed to, and that’s the problem.
I kind of lumped the puzzlement above in with that. I feel that FAIR basically subscribes (as do I) to some elaboration of the Propaganda Model, and wonder whether these occasional remarks are meant to make their analysis more palatable to a general audience that does not share this view.
Greg, have you checked FAIR’s archives? Try it. You may have to do some work, some digging. Most people either don’t care about the news “too depressing” or “have better things to do” ans of those who do care the majority is for local news. National is next in line and international is hardly registered. Unless you are like me and dig in places most people have never heard of like FAIR, MSNBC and Democracy Now etc. Best if don’t have a spouse or GF/BF etc, since it takes time.
Once your mind set is in place then you can go about sorting the news. But even so I still can get fooled by not being skeptical or analytical enough.
We have a record of the US government supporting Israel for “strategic” reasons, going all the way back to the Truman memo from the CIA. Those companies are not only advertisers in the New York Times, and main contributors to both parties, but are confessedly aligned with US military policy by both Obama and the head of NATO. So I think it’s much more about supporting US policy to control the people and therefore the oil. Taking that as a starting point explains much more than a particular fondness for Israel because otherwise the papers are also “toadies” for a different country every year second. Yes, reporters sometimes feel a (perverse) sense of honor in tipping the scales on an issue (a great excuse to hide sources for political gain), but I think these myths are not the starting point, but the typical recycled instruments of US propaganda (see Chomsky and Herman’s studies in Manufacturing Consent for other examples), and not very much a question of any particular country’s meaning.
No final warning????Im at a loss to interpret what that means.The running of the blockade by that ship was talked about in the Arab press for weeks before the ship sailed.It was open knowledge that if interdicted, there were those on the ship who would not go peacefully.In fact some boarded for the express reason of defying the Israeli blockade.It was rumored they would fight to the death.
The Israeli blockade is illegal, but the UN gives hands off as per US instructions, so they treated the commandos as pirates boarding. Even so they had little in the way of weapons.
Israel was just waiting for the end of the US election. Obama has won and the war propaganda has started