By Barry Rubin
Sometimes when one of the better reporters around tries to be fair the result shows up the low quality of Middle East coverage generally. In an article on the Gaza Strip, Israeli policy, and the flotilla of anti-Israel, pro-Hamas activists, the New York Times informs us:
“Israel’s relationship with the foreign news media has grown strained in recent years; the country increasingly believes that foreign portrayals of its conflict with the Palestinians are harsh and one-sided.”
Since Israelis have been quite aware of media bias since the mid-1980s and provided hundreds (thousands) of examples this should not exactly be a discovery. But American newspaper readers or television watchers are rarely informed of this fact by the very institutions that stand accused of bias, ignorance, and just plain bad reporting.
Note the way the sentence (perhaps revised by editors in New York) is written:
–This is an Israeli perception, not a fact nor necessarily a view held by anyone else in the world.
–It is just happening now (“recent,” “increasingly”)
–And the result is Israeli hostility toward the media (that is, the action involved is Israel becoming more aggressive in its treatment of foreign journalists). In other words the problem is framed as Israel challenging freedom of the media, not the media subverting the existence and well-being of Israel. The action that prompted the writing of that article–Israel’s announcing possible sanctions against journalists going on the Gaza flotilla ships–was quickly rescinded. In other words, even though Israel knows there is rampant media bias it does everything possible to give freedom to the foreign media, in sharp contrast to most of the other countries in the region which get far more favorable coverage.
–No examples are provided which thus undermines the claim. Actually, while space is of course limited, it would have been easy to mention in regard to a specific event cited–Israel banning foreign journalists from Gaza durin the 2008-2009 fighting–that Israel was concerned that it might accidentally kill foreign correspondents during operations and that reporters could tip off Hamas (inadvertently or otherwise) about Israeli actions thus causing casualties.
Thus, the hint is clearly–though it is equally quite deniable–that Israelis are irrationally and suddenly believing that the media is biased against it and this makes it take bad actions that restrict media freedom.
In other words, it’s good that this view is being reported but the framework signals the reader to disbelieve it. Here’s a parallel example:
“Israel says that its Gaza blockade is legal and that it will make sure that no boat violates it, even if that means resorting to force again.”
On the surface, this is perfectly correct. But in fact there has been no serious legal challenge to the blockade and various international authorities have said that it is quite legal. Again, the hint is that this is just what Israel claims, in other words, a partisan assertion without merit.
Especially disturbing is this passage:
“Some of the vessels planning to take part this year are bringing construction equipment and humanitarian aid, including medicine, which have been scarce in Gaza because of a siege imposed by Israel and Egypt for the past four years to isolate Hamas.”
Has medicine been scarce in Gaza because of a “siege” (a correct but loaded word)? That just isn’t true since medicine has never been subject to restrictions. Again, the reader is conditioned, this time by the inhumane nature of those evil Israelis. They won’t even let medicine in for those poor Gazans? What a bunch of barbarians! One should certainly hate such people.
Incidentally, a survey of the first flotilla’s cargo shows that the medicine brought was beyond expiration date and pretty random, not exactly saving people suffering from disease.
As for construction equipment and materials, a key factor here is that Israel has charged these have been used to build military installations. In Lebanon, where Hizballah has full access to construction equipment, a network of bunkers, tunnels and other fortifications have been built in the south. Southern Lebanon, you know, the place where the U.S. government and the UN promised Israel that Hizballah would not be allowed to return.
Or take this sentence:
“Thirteen months ago, Israeli commandos boarded a Turkish vessel whose crew and passengers were seeking to break the blockade and, facing resistance, killed nine people aboard.”
Technically accurate and better than most as it indicates there was “resistance” (which could mean, presumably, sitting in a circle and singing a song from the American civil rights movement) but:
–The “resistance” consisted of people with weapons who attacked the soldiers and took some prisoner.
–The “nine people” were members of radical Turkish Islamist groups that had previously proclaimed they intended to be martyrs and participated in chants about massacring Jews.
Even when the article includes “balancing” material the phrasing is somewhat misleading or, more accurately, leading toward a specific conclusion:
“But the real purpose of the flotilla is less to deliver goods and building supplies, which are increasingly available in Gaza now, than to challenge Israel’s control over Gaza’s borders. The American vessel, for example, will not be loaded with any goods.”
Aside from the question of Egypt opening the border with Gaza, this sentence is really a response to one of Israel’s main talking points. How can this flotilla be portrayed as humanitarian if it is bringing virtually no goods? The answer is that it is political, but the phrase used is “to challenge Israel’s control over Gaza’s borders” as if there is nothing on the other side but people short of construction materials and medicine.
Here’s the real answer: to help Hamas’s control of Gaza. The main organizers are Islamists allied with Hamas; the other organizers are people who, like Hamas, want to see Israel wiped off the map. They view Hamas–a terrorist group that is openly antisemitic and genocidal, represses women, and expels Christians–as better than Israel.
We thus have three groups:
–Islamists who are allies with Hamas and want to help it.
–Western leftists who think that Israel is evil and shouldn’t exist and who ignore Hamas or even supportive of it.
–Western readers of newspapers and watchers of television who are given news that ignores or systematically challenges Israel’s side of the story. Thus, they are driven toward the conclusion that Israel is wrong and the Palestinians are right.
As I said earlier, this is one of the better stories by a journalist who is consciously trying to be fair. For example, it points out that Israel defended itself in 2008 against the firing of thousands of rockets from the Gaza Strip. And in another article he points out how well much of the Gaza Strip is economically.
Moreover, this is a short article whose goal is to discuss Israel’s warning to reporters not to go on the flotilla ships. But often it is the shorter pieces, that try to summarize and explain events, which most clearly demonstrate how coverage is skewed. And again, by attempting to be balanced this piece shows how unbalanced is much of the other coverage.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and a featured columnist at PajamasMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is http://www.gloria-center.org.
What you fail to acknowledge, Dr. Rubin, is that if the NYT says up is down, black is white, and water is not wet, and more than 88.2% of their fellow “news” organs agree in a dutifully-administered survey, then all of your so-called “evidence” means nothing. The NYT knows what the truth is, even if they help to fashion it, and if you dare to disagree, you must be a teabagging rightwinger who’s not smart enough to realize that all important decisions and determinations are made by your intellectual and moral superiors at the NYT (or at the UN, as the case may be).
See? Glad I could help.
[BTW, great article!]
The NYT still employs Tom Friedman as it’s primary Middle East pundit, which is as probably the most bitter indictment of that paper’s accuracy, objectivity, and professionalism.
Ken Besig, you will appreciate what Latma has to say about Tom Friedman:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UK7wwxkcQvU&feature=relmfu
The NYT also featured an article this weekend (sorry, don’t have citation), which, while acknowledging that new cars and new building projects are being seen all over Gaza, it still remains nevertheless a hellish Israel-caused gulag. While the Muslims of Gaza live in undesirable circumstances, they still enjoy a far far better standard of living than most Muslims do in the rest of the Muslim world. Consistently, better per capita income, more access to healthcare and technology, amounts to a “gulag” imposed by the Israelis. Population density is also often very distorted. Gaza is often referred to as one of the densest populated areas of the earth — and yet Manhattan is far more dense, as is any city in the world. But the meme exists to perpetuate the image of a seething cauldron of human suffering despite the new cars, massive building projects, access to goods and technology. And of course the heinousness, barbarity, and intolerance of Islam is never cited as the primary cause for the inevitable degradation of the Muslims of Gaza, (or any other Muslim sewer on earth). No matter what, Islam and the Muslims must never be blamed for their disgusting civilization.
WRT: “Note the way the sentence (perhaps revised by editors in New York) is written…”, don’t you wonder how Ethan Bronner feels about this? Where does he stand and how much, in order to keep his job, he is willing to accept the NYT editors twisting the truth, if he report it. Or does he twist it in order to please them?
The New York Times criticized here is Ethan Bonner, whose son was recently serving in the Israeli Army, how is that for bias?
I’m not sure how having a son in the IDF makes Bronner more biased than Fares Akram who lost his father in an IDF airstrike. In practice, the open left-wing milieu that Bronner works in means he’s far more likely to post a poorly sourced story from Haaretz on IDF misdeeds, than Akram is to criticize Hamas or any of the militia’s that dominate Palestinian society. That said, Bronner’s economic reporting has been consistently at or above par (even when it contradicted the leftist narrative) and Akram was brave enough to report one incident of the militas firing rockets from the edge of a civilian area.
Ethan Bronner rehashing an Israeli newspaper story, would be a clear sign of bias in favour of Israel. I would have thought that was obvious, unless you are suggesting the Israeli press is somehow anti-Israel?
I generallly don’t believe the bias towards Israel I read in newspapers by
some columnists. In particular, I am disppointed in the New York Times and don’t
subscribe. Barry Rubin’s article on these distorted truths is brilliant.
Something everyone should read.
@T34 Ethan Bronner rehashing an Israeli newspaper story, would be a clear sign of bias in favour of Israel. I would have thought that was obvious, unless you are suggesting the Israeli press, is somehow anti-Israel?
NY TIMES : “ALL THE DISTORTIONS FIT TO PRINT”
I always enjoy reading anything Barry Rubin writes. His pithy articles and no nonsense style are invariably correct and strictly based on fact and not conjecture or opinion.
That is why I was disappointed to see Mr. Rubin cut the NY Times so much slack recently and treat the Times with “kid gloves” trying not to speak overly harshly of the NY Times’ “reporting” of the Middle East.
He even tries to point out examples in which the NY Times is sometimes just a tad bit honest and occasionally injects a few crumbs of “truth” in their coverage regarding the State of Israel.
As Mr. Rubin and others, for all the most understandable reasons, do not want to scream out the message for fear of being perceived as “fanatical extremists” with some over the top “Jewish agenda”, allow me to do it for them.
Fortunately, I am not in a position where I need be concerned with offending the “infinite sensibilities” of the media world nor do I much care that some will call my views “a little extreme”.
“Extreme” is actually the correct term that should be used when speaking of the NY Times. At least for some people, twisting the facts and misrepresenting the truth is “Extremely” wrong- especially if one is claiming to be honestly reporting news events.
For the better part of the past seventy years the NY Times, in spite of its original Jewish ownership- or better said- BECAUSE of it being owned by members of the Jewish Faith- has always bent over backwards to prove to the world that the NY Times should never be thought of as a “Jewish” publication.
On the contrary the NY Times has always made every effort to present their version, (I call it spin), of the “news” in a fashion that reflects the least bit of sympathy for the State of Israel as possible.
The subtle tilt is always in favor of those who would prefer to see the world “free of Jews”.
Witness if you will, for example, that when the Nazi killing machines rolled across Europe, into country after country, the general populace went out of their way to rise to the occasion and prove that their hatred for the “Eternal Jew” was, if anything, even greater than that of the SS murderers. This is all too well known to require further comment from me.
Mr. Rubin, who I consider one of the best observers of current events around, I believe is incorrect when he points out that the NY Times does sometimes, occasionally, get the facts (the words) partially correct.
Well bravo to the NY Times for such an achievement! They do not reflect their well known bias one hundred per cent of the time in their coverage of the news when it comes to Israel.
Perhaps Nazis in the death camps who occasionally spared a prisoner’s life or gave some prisoner one extra piece of stale bread or more frequently- one less beating- should be awarded the “Victoria Cross” and maybe a Nobel Prize or even two, for proving how outstandingly humane they could be when they felt so disposed.
For over a century the NY Times has supposedly set the bar and served as the standard by which all the other newspapers in the world should and must be judged.
It is, to a very great extent, that very fiduciary responsibility which the NY Times has so unforgivably betrayed, that has thus made it so easy for all the rest of the world’s media, including, print, television and now the Internet, to follow suit and simply imitate and parrot the example/s set by the NY Times.
Oh yes- if the NY Times printed it, then it must be so !
During the Holocaust, the manner in which the NY Times played down the enormity of the Nazi crimes against the Jews and the true numerical extent to which the Jews of Europe were being brutally exterminated, is a “publishing crime” that will live in infamy. Everyone today knows this to be true.
Only during the latter years of WW II did it become impossible for the NY Times to continue the charade- just as it became increasingly difficult if not impossible for the White House to pretend it did not know the full extent of what was happening to the Jews.
Indeed, near the end it was Mr. Morgenthau (I believe) who approached President Roosevelt and cautioned him in the strongest terms that after the war was over the true dimensions of the Holocaust would become common knowledge and that the White House knew at the time that it was happening and that therefore it was absolutely imperative that the White House begin to appear publicly, to be more actively involved in trying to rescue the remaining Jews of Europe.
Alas- it was of course, an effort that was heartbreakingly too little and far too late to be of much use or do much good.
To a huge extent, (not a small degree), the NY Times, along with decisions made in the White House, contributed to the gargantuan numbers of victims of the Shoah.
It has been demonstrated over and over, with historical facts and documentary evidence, in the form of books and even a documentary film about the NY Times, that the NY Times willfully, with knowing and premeditated intent, made every effort possible to “play down” the enormity of Hitler’s “Final Solution”, as it was unfolding, at every opportunity and with all the mechanisms at the Times’ disposal- just as did the White House.
It simply was not to be entertained and certainly would not do, that it might be perceived in polite society, in the White House and in the rest of the world’s various media, that the great NY Times was a newspaper that was overly sympathetic with the plight of the Jews.
And thus, very sadly, even to this moment, nothing at the NY Times has changed. It is what it always was, has always has been and likely always will be.
That is to say a “news organization” that chooses very selectively what will get published and what will not get published (AKA-swept under the rug) according to the self determined and private agenda of the NY Times.
For Mr. Rubin, who I have only the highest respect for and truly admire, or for that matter for anyone, anywhere not to tell it like it is- that the NY Times has for half a century betrayed the cardinal and first rule of reporting- “never to hide and/or distort the truth or show any bias, at any time”, is an error of the greatest magnitude in my opinion.
In fact if anyone will research the veracity of what I have said here and author a book on the topics discussed herein, I will be pleased to preorder a dozen copies of the book, at full cover price right now.
Let us all stop the obligatory hero worship of the NY Times and feel always compelled to overlook their journalistic transgressions in general as long as they do not always transgress.
When a twenty-five cent gutter tabloid continually insults and lies about the facts, we fully expect it and even forgive to some extent. After all there is the old saying:
“When you get kicked by a mule– consider the source.”
But when a news organization, like the NY Times, so distorts the truth, and cherry picks only the facts and even words that fit its agenda and clear bias in a given situation, that is not something that deserves an occasional pass, except in the worst instances, so long as they do not do it every day.
Those who run and control the NY Times are guilty of decisions and acts in the world of journalism, that are not only believed and accepted by the gullible but the crime is then compounded by the fact that other news organizations mimic the NY Times as being their model and example.
Let me say it more plainly in a way that Mr. Rubin et al has not- and likely never will.
The New York Times has the blood of my extended family on their ink covered hands.
At Yad Vashem rest the records and proof of the ninety three “Pakters” who perished in the Shoah because the vaunted New York Times chose NOT to publish “All the news that’s fit to print”.
The NY Times remained silent when its voice and influence might have saved countless Jewish lives during the Holocaust.
The deaths of at least some of my relatives, ages two years to eighty two years, can be left at that newspaper’s front doorstep.
It has been said that silence equals death. It can also be said, with an equal degree of truth, that a reporter’s bias and a news organization’s bias can also be the cause of the death of innocents- whether one or millions.
I have not purchased a copy of the New York Times for fifty years. And though some may consider my views extreme, certainly that is as nothing compared to the NY Times’ obscene violating of its fiduciary responsibility to leave personal bias aside when reporting all the news dealing with the Middle East and the State of Israel.
Perhaps some may feel I am being too tough on the New York Times. And most likely there are some, in the Flotilla in particular, that truly believe there is a humanitarian crisis in a place called Gaza that far exceeds all the other humanitarian crises in this world.
And then again, there are probably some people who think pigs can fly – though thinking it so does not make it so.
_____________________________
David Pakter
New York City
27 June 2011
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