Posted on 05/28/2002 8:01:31 AM PDT by RCW2001
WASHINGTON, May 26 (AFP) - An intense pressure campaign by several pro-Israel groups is seeking to influence US news coverage of the Middle East, with tactics including boycotts of several top media outlets and massive phone, e-mail and letter-writing campaigns.
The ad hoc campaigns are directed at both large and small news operations, with a cascade of e-mails, letters and phone calls pouring in to editors and ombudsmen at newspapers, broadcast outlets and cable news channels across the United States.
"No one has ever seen pressure like this before," said Jeffrey Dvorkin, the ombudsman for Washington, DC-based National Public Radio (NPR), a US-wide radio network.
"In the last three months I've received 14,000 e-mails and 9,000 of them deal with the Middle East," he said. "E-mail traffic in the last month has overwhelmingly accused us of having a pro-Palestinian bias."
Such campaigns are said to be motivated by a concern that media coverage of the Middle East -- especially articles and broadcasts deemed sympathetic to Palestinians -- could weaken public support for Israel and influence what is generally seen as a historically pro-Israel US policy.
The Boston-based public radio station WBUR, which relies on private donations, corporate sponsorship and some government funding for its operating budget, reports losing one million dollars so far in cancelled funding since the campaign began -- seven percent of its annual financial support.
Subscription boycotts also have been launched against the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle and the Chicago Tribune.
About 1,000 subscribers to the Los Angeles Times newspaper suspended delivery for a day to protest its Middle East coverage, while a Chicago Tribune official said that since October, 47 readers had canceled subscriptions outright for the same reason.
A boycott of the Washington Post is planned for mid-June, sponsored by a group charging that the newspaper "favorably reports the position of terrorists".
Washington Post ombudsman Michael Getler, who like others with his title, is charged with assessing the fairness and accuracy of his newspaper's coverage, refuted the charge of bias.
"Is it possible that so many major American news organizations are getting this story wrong -- that some sort of national media conspiracy is at work here?" he asked in a column appearing earlier this month in the newspaper.
"That, of course, is not the case, and news organizations will persevere in reporting this story in an unflinching, unintimidated fashion that reports the news in the most accurate way possible for their entire readership," he wrote.
That viewpoint was echoed by other media executives.
"It's a little bit like 'you're with us or against us'," said James Naughton, former executive editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer and now president of the Florida-based Poynter Institute for Media Studies.
"What I found was that the more insightful and human the stories were, if they portrayed Arabs positively or Israelis negatively, then there was hell to pay," Naughton said.
But Michael Kotzin, executive vice president of the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago, disagreed, insisting there was "a basis for legitimate criticism and finger-pointing".
"Justice and truth is on Israel's side," he said. "Newspapers and other media outlets don't help when (they create) sympathies for those who would destroy Israel."
Andrea Levin, executive director of the Boston-based Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), said her group's efforts -- targeted at NPR and at WBUR, her local public radio station -- aim effect "balanced" Mideast coverage.
"We've been trying to get a balanced presentation of this conflict over a long period of time, and the network has been unresponsive to our concerns, which has driven us into other efforts," she said.
Newsroom officials said pro-Palestinian groups now are beginning to expand their own lobbying and public-relations efforts.
"People who are pro-Palestinian have gained a fair amount of sophistication in the communications efforts," said Phil Bronstein, executive editor of the San Francisco Chronicle.
"The Israelis have always been quite effective and the balance has shifted, and I suspect that has been worrisome to those who see their opponents being more effective."
While the lobbying efforts in pro-Israel circles is extensive, the Jewish community does not speak with one voice on the issue of Mideast coverage.
One prominent detractor, Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of the San Francisco-based Tikkun magazine, said the pressure campaigns are a form of "McCarthyism that is attempting to prevent the American media from telling any part of the story from the perspective of what is happening to Palestinians."
"In the long run this will produce more anti-Semitism and less security for Jews," Lerner said. "This is counterproductive."
'cause NPR does have a bias, you pompous twit.
Arab groups seek to influence US media coverage of Mideast by killing US reporters (i.e., Daniel Pearl).
IOW, the "who's who's" of leftist rags. No suprise they're pro-pali.
This is news? Those French are on the ball all right.
And since when is Michael Lerner the spokesman for anybody? You know, the "politics of meaning" guy.
The < smirk >Rabbi< /smirk > who believes that Hillary Clinton is the Messiah.
Does the author suggest that American Jews are not afforded the right of free speech? Should they be afforded the right to express their dissenting views from a mass media which is clearly bent on coloring the news to favor a pro-Arab position. Moreover, the author neglects to mention all the work pro-Arab lobbies have been doing in justifying terrorism against the Jewish state.
This article in itself is transparent liberal propaganda meant to revise the positions of the parties.
Yet a relative handful pro-Israel minded people show some solidarity and it is implied that there is some massive Jewish Conspiracy(TM)
Another example of fine journalistic ethics at work....
The point is to further the perception that the e-mails and public opinion, since they differ from the leftists, must be motivated not by personal discovery, but dark forces. "Lobbies" control peoples thoughts, and self-examination of the media's own behavior is deflected with a "fairness" argument.
This guy Larner is everywhere. He's a deceptive person, feeding the media with shallow and reflexive leftist shibboleths substituting for understanding, and validating the media's gullibility.
How many e-mails do NOW, PP, PFAW and the eco-nuts send out daily to influence press, legislation and give the false impression that they represent the "will of the people?"
SPIN IS what the left does....lies, misrepresentations, false accusations, unsound science to promote social change....the Jewish people are only attempting to save their nation by telling the truth...because the press isn't. The press gives a proven liar and terrorist in Arafat free reign to lie and terrorize. And the press complains when the victim cries foul?
Subject: Reporting a story
On April 2, 2002, Palestinian gunmen/militants/terrorists shot their way into the Church of the Nativity, taking as hostage some civilian citizens and members of the clergy.
One month into the siege, Los Angeles Times photographer Carolyn Cole sneaked past Israeli defense forces into the church, along with others described as "activists." She filed a first-person account that incredibly never identified the gunmen as terrorists. Her piece failed to describe how the gunmen entered the church, thus provoking the siege. Nor did she write that the terrorists included a hardcore group of thugs, including a prominent member of Hamas, the radical group behind many suicide bombings. Also, two of the men in this group were wanted for the slaying of a U.S. citizen who was also a resident of Israel.
To say that Cole's first-person report warmly sympathized with the Palestinian gunmen is to engage in understatement. The Washington Times also filed an account of the activities inside the church. Their two stories differ dramatically.
Los Angeles Times: "Men were rushing, trying to grab food. Except for weed soup, they hadn't eaten in three days. The church smelled of burning candle wax and the fried leaves from trees in the backyard. The blackened leaves had the scent of burned popcorn."
The Washington Times: "The Palestinian gunmen holed up in the Church of the Nativity seized church stockpiles of food and 'ate like greedy monsters' until the food ran out, while more than 150 civilians went hungry. They also guzzled beer, wine and Johnnie Walker scotch that they found in the priests' quarters, undeterred by the Islamic ban on drinking alcohol."
Los Angeles Times:
"Those leaves and weed soup had been the staples until we arrived. The leaves tasted like pastry flakes with a hint of lemon but no sugar. In the frying pot, they looked black and crispy. The chef fried them in cooking oil that he got from the priests. The weed soup tasted like weak spinach, but when you were hungry, it was hot and satisfying, especially if it had a little salt in it. When you spoon it down, you think that you're having a meal, but you're not: It's just water and a plant that looks a bit like seaweed."
The Washington Times: "The indulgence lasted for about two weeks into the 39-day siege, when the food and drink ran out, according to an account by four Greek Orthodox priests who were trapped inside for the entire ordeal. A church helper said the quantity of food consumed by the gunmen in the first 15 days should have lasted for six months. As they feasted and boozed, Palestinian civilians subsisted on a meager diet, with barely enough for a single meal a day. Angry Orthodox priests showed two reporters about 20 empty bottles of whiskey, champagne, cognac and French wine on a kitchen shelf and on the floor of two rooms."
What about the sleeping conditions?
Los Angeles Times: "Blankets were spread on the 4th-century stone floor. There were even more blankets on the floors along the walls. In the left arm (of the sanctuary) slept the older men."
The Washington Times: "While in the church, the top Palestinian gunmen slept on comfortable beds in the elegant apartment of Father Parathaious, while others rested on mattresses there and elsewhere under high-quality woolen blankets. The civilians slept on cold tile floors in the main church downstairs."
And the violence?
Los Angeles Times: "The Palestinians said they had promised the Christian clergy in the church compound that they would not shoot out of the church. I never saw a Palestinian in the church fire his weapon. Indeed, I heard only one shot fired in nearly eight days - the one that killed Najezeh (a Palestinian gunman)."
The Washington Times: "Priests pointed to numerous bullet holes that appeared to have been fired from inside the room (belonging to Father Vasareillon). Nabil Abayat, a top militant Al Aqsa leader, was fatally shot. Mr. Abayat had died when a bullet ricocheted off a radiator. Another four gunmen died during the exchanges of fire and sniping, as well as a mentally retarded bell ringer who, the Israelis say, ran toward soldiers, ignoring orders to stop."
Some contrast. Call them two tales of the siege at the Church of the Nativity.
So what do we believe? Which portrayal more accurately represents what likely went on inside the Church of the Nativity? When the Palestinian Authority falsely accuses the Israelis of "massacring" 500 people in Jenin; when Yasser Arafat condemns terrorism while paying off the families of suicide bombers; when the Israelis intercept 50 tons of munitions from Iran heading toward the Palestinian Authority, this tends to diminish the credibility of the Palestinian side.
But apparently news, like beauty, lies in the eye of the reporter.
No one is perfect in this world, including Jews; however, in this conflict it's not too hard to figure out who the real trouble-makers are. The Jews just are not into suicide/homicide bombings, cutting off of heads, throat-slitting, and so on. I don't know how the Jews can live in Israel these days without having nervous breakdowns. However, we can do without propaganda; we just don't need it, especially in this case.
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