MediaBloodhound blogger Brad Jacobson has a disturbing story (1/7/09) of one reporter’s diligent efforts being excised from articles that eventually then appeared under distorting headlines. Jacobson provides transcripts of the Associated Press‘ Matthew Lee doggedly trying to pin down the Bush administration reasoning for refusing to support a temporary cease-fire in Gaza “that doesn’t have to be sustainable and durable if, during the pause that you get from an immediate cease-fire, something longer-term can be negotiated.”
Jacobson writes that, “according to a LexisNexis and Google News search, Lee didn’t publish a report after this briefing on Monday” and after another day of similarly “pointed” questioning, “Lee wrote up and filed his story. With the misleadingly hopeful headline ‘Rice Traveling to U.N. to Push Gaza Cease-Fire.'”
The article opens: “Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will travel to New York and the United Nations on Tuesday in a bid to broker a sustainable cease-fire as soon as possible to end the crisis in Gaza.” Lee knows there’s a stark difference between a “cease-fire” and the administration’s “sustainable” or “durable” cease-fire. Most of his back and forth with [Deputy Secretary of State Sean] McCormack for two days pivoted on these semantic but very consequential points of distinction. AP editors surely know this as well.
Yet the AP–America’s leading newswire service–either carelessly or willfully misled its readers and all the news providers it supplied with this headline, many of which, as is often the case, then use it to frame this unfolding story. A headline much closer to the truth would’ve read “Rice Traveling to U.N. to Push Conditional Gaza Cease-Fire.” Omit “conditional” or some such synonym and the headline gives the false impression that Rice is coming to the Palestinians’ rescue. Lee and his editors at the AP realize as well that Rice is coming to the Palestinians’ rescue like she came to the Lebanese civilians’ rescue in 2006.
On that peculiar form of “rescue,” listen to the Deadline Pundit condemn Rice’s “immortal statement that ‘it would be premature to call for a cease-fire'” on FAIR’s radio program CounterSpin: “Ian Williams on U.S. Diplomacy” (8/18/06)
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