How Europe's Media Lost Out - Jenin

The U.S and Western European media covered the Jenin "Massacre That Wasn't" in radically different ways over the past month. The American media came out way on top and the European media, especially state-run broadcasting outlets, came out by far the losers.

This was not an anticipated outcome on either side of the Atlantic. It was, in fact, a further humiliation for Western European governments and left-leaning media leaders. They were already reeling from the humiliations of seeing a virtual fascist make the last two in France's presidential election and the assassination of radical political leader Pim Fortuyn in The Netherlands. That was the kind of violent political outburst that most Western Europeans have long comfortably believed could only happen in America, not to them.

Not every press or news organizations in Western Europe came out badly from the controversy over what the Israeli army did or did not do in Jenin. Media outlets like the London Sunday Times, Il Foglio in Rome and Le Monde in Paris that refused to be swept away by the hysteria gained in credibility greatly.

Even other media outlets like The Guardian of London newspaper or the Associated Press in the United States that at first reported the exaggerated claims, but then took care to present the counter evidence when it came in, showed their basic integrity. Papers like the London Times and Independent, which did not do remotely as much as The Guardian in running pieces documenting their own, and others, factual failings, fared far less well.

The affair of the Jenin "Massacre Myth" did not debunk the basic credibility of the Western media. The truth emerged at the end of the day. But the U.S. media overall were winners by far at the expense of the Western European ones.

Time magazine's in-depth reporting, for example, proved to be by the end of the day a model of how to reconstruct complex events far away under the pressure of intensely tight bylines. Its May 13 reconstruction of the battle of Jenin is likely to prove a major resource for future historians

The credibility of state-run or supported national broadcasting organizations took a huge hit. The principle of having a free market in broadcasting as well as print media outlets in order to ensure more fair and balanced overall coverage got a big boost. This was humiliating to the Europeans, who have long sneered in their dominant broadcast media culture at what they regard as the crass commercialism and vulgar pursuit of profits of competing U.S. broadcasting networks.

It was also a blow to those who would like to expand National Public Radio's small-scale radio news operation in the United States into a radio-TV news empire on the lines of the BBC or other European outlets. The reporters and editors of NPR appeared far more prone to swallow the wild allegations about Jenin than most of their U.S. media colleagues did.

The controversy also underlined the value of having widely read and circulated columnists who can act in the media like the Senate does in Congress or other "upper" houses of parliament do in Western Europe and Japan. Such columnists at their best can act like deliberative parliamentary chambers not subject to the pressures of repeated re-election campaigns. They can take a longer term view of things. They can act as cautious, more thoughtful voices expressing caution or doubt about emotional hysteria sweeping the news pages. William F. Buckley's May 4 editorial "Did the Israelis Do It?" serves as a model for this kind of writing.

Some European columnists did not do nearly so well. A.N. Wilson's willingness in the London Evening Standard to accuse the Israelis, without any credible evidence, of poisoning Palestinian water supplies showed the way columnists could break every restraint of decency and common sense. Wilson's article would have been at home in the pages of the Nazi propaganda sheet "Der Sturmer."

The U.S. and Western European media coverage of the Jenin Massacre Myth raises troubling and far-reaching questions about the reliability of mass media and press in conflict situations.

The practice of war reporting is a dirty, complicated business at the best of times. War, as wise figures from Carl Von Clausewitz to the fictional Capt. James T. Kirk of "Star Trek" have repeatedly noted, is a messy, unsure business. War is chaos incarnate both for those who wage it and for those who cover them. Military history flourishes, and no doubt always will do, by reflecting at leisure on events imperfectly understood when they were being experienced.

But even allowing for this inherent condition of uncertainty and chaos -- what Clausewitz called the inevitable and unavoidable "friction" of war -- Western media coverage of Jenin, especially in Western European newspapers, stood out for its wild and remarkably uniform hysteria. An overwhelming number of reports were published or broadcast in outlets, more especially of the left but also of the right, appearing to document in great detail the massacre of hundreds, possibly thousands of Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli Army.

Official spokesmen of the Palestinian Authority supported and confirmed these estimates and fed these reports, yet PA spokesmen themselves later heavily revised these estimates downwards and eventually acknowledge that no massacre at all had taken place. The PA's final estimate of Palestinians killed in the Battle of Jenin was 66, while Israel said that 23 of its own troops were killed.

Given the disparity in firepower involved, the Palestinians understandably hailed this as a great morale-boosting victory for their cause, even though attacking forces normally suffer far higher casualties than defending ones in such intense street fighting.

But the small scale in casualties in Jenin, ultimately confirmed by the PA itself, underlined the remarkable loss in perspective across the European media in both reporting what was happening and then analyzing it. The initial decision of the Israelis to keep the media out of Jenin while the fighting raged does not account for this. The most hysterical and inaccurate accounts and the wildest, unsubstantiated claims came not while the international media was barred from Jenin but after it was allowed in.

Yet, compared with conflicts of the past half-century, and even of merely the past 10 years, the death toll on both sides, including Palestinians, in Jenin was tiny. Scores of thousands of people were killed largely at the hands of Bosnian Serb paramilitary groups from 1991 to 1995. The total death toll of that conflict, unquestionably Europe's bloodiest since 1945, has been estimated as at high as 250,000.

While it was ranging, 1 million people were killed in less than a month when majority Hutus slaughtered the generally more educated and more prosperous Tutsi minority in Rwanda in 1994. The killings were deliberately coordinated. The death squads usually had no heavier weapons than machetes but it ranks behind only the Cambodian Killing Fields of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge in 1975-78 as the biggest genuine genocide of the past half-century. And it was carried out without any advanced weapons or technology -- even machineguns -- at a rate of slaughter comparable to the operations of the Auschwitz gas chambers during the Nazi annihilation of 6 million Jews during World War II.

In each of these cases, the Western media were remarkably fast to record indications of what was going on, but Western opinion lagged far behind. The Clinton administration in the United States proved exceptionally indecisive, slow and inadequate to act in any decisive diplomatic or military way to deter the slaughters in either Bosnia or Rwanda, even though it could easily have done so.

The United Nations far from preventing either of the slaughters taking place, actually magnified them by the egocentric insistence of its officials in the region on approving deterrent military or rescue operations in Bosnia, most notably at Sebrenica.

They also catastrophically underrated the imminence and scale of the danger in Rwanda. Indeed, the U.N. official most criticized for his alleged incompetence in failing to prevent the Rwanda horror was one of the most outspoken critics of Israel in the case of The Massacre That Wasn't -- current U.N. Secretary-General and Nobel Peace Prize winner Kofi Annan.

When these genuine massacres took place, there were certainly no mass rallies or protests across Western Europe and certainly no retaliatory physical attacks on Serb or Rwandan residents in Britain, France or Germany.

Yet media reports teemed in those countries with -- as it turned out -- highly exaggerated or just plain wrong descriptions of the violence allegedly inflicted by the Israelis on the Palestinians in Jenin. And as these reports ran, they were quickly followed by attacks -- largely, it appears, from young immigrant Muslim gangs -- on easily identifiable Orthodox Jews in both Britain and France.

Press reporting is far from a precise science and experienced reporters, especially war correspondents, have a universal contempt for pressure groups of both the left and the right that claim they are always inherently biased, corrupt, incompetent and just plain wrong. More often than not, the accusations of media bias made by such groups are discounted because they are either the result of unavoidable human error, insufficient data available, or the accusations themselves are just plain wrong.

Even when they are right, the multiplicity of media organizations with dozens, sometimes hundreds, of reporters competing to get the edge on each other on the same story has long been comfortably -- and usually correctly -- taken as the free media's equivalent of the free market. That competition serves as a healthy leveling mechanism in which self-interest serves as the motivation to expose incompetence or direct dishonesty on the part of others. But as this series has documented, it did not work that way in Jenin. And we have explored the reasons why this was so.

In an ideal world, the appropriate lessons would immediately be learned. But in practice, things may well go on very much as before. That is, as the legendary London Daily Telegraph columnist Michael Wharton, writing as Peter Simple, might have put it, "The Way of the World."

The already worrying gaps in politics, diplomacy and mutual perceptions between the United States and its old European allies is likely to grow in the media field as well. The common media culture and dialogue across the Atlantic may be another loser of the Jenin Massacre Myth.

For a dose of truth:
WSJ: The Massacre That Wasn't - Part I http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/668601/posts Non-evidence and Pali fabrication of evidence	Steyn: The UN is running out of blind eyes to turn http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/669411/posts Interesting link on UN backpedaling
WSJ: The Massacre That Wasn't - Part II http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/669632/posts Palestinians drop their hyped-up "massacre" charges	The Massacre That Never Was http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/668572/posts The testimony of pathological liars
WSJ: The Massacre That Wasn't - Part III http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/672189/posts Jimmy "International Fiasco" Carter, has an opinion	There was No Massacre in Jenin http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/668650/posts The Elite, The Paid, The Gullible all accept Pali lies
WSJ: The Massacre That Wasn't - Part IV http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/672160/posts Yet more non-evidence and Pali fabrication of evidence	NY POST: THE MASSACRE THAT WASN'T http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/667529/posts Peres: There wasn't a house that wasn't booby-trapped
WSJ: The Massacre That Wasn't - Part V http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/673145/posts The Pali's contradict themselves and blame it on Israel	Steyn: It's time to snap out of Arab fantasy land http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/669063/posts Some great Oriana Fallaci quotes/links as well
WSJ: The Massacre That Wasn't - Part VI http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/678521/posts Pali grave digging and UN jury rigging	Jenin's 'Massacre' Death Toll Reduced to 56 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/675752/posts Say it slow: Israelis told the truth, Palis told lies
An interesting juxtaposition of tales:
Message From An Israeli On The Front Lines http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/673234/posts "Entire families exploded themselves! It was horrific."	Palestinian Fighter admits: No Massacre in Jenin http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/671903/posts 2,000 bombs and booby-traps placed in the camp
Pediatrician: terrorists used children in Jenin camp http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/670962/posts Doc: IDF did everything possible to avoid civilian harm	Palestinians Booby-Trap Wheelchair in Jenin http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/670810/posts NOTE: The wheelchair was occupied!!
Jenin War Diary of a Hasidic Soldier - Part I http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/672951/posts Israeli citizen-soldier describes what went on in Jenin	Massacre Claims Unsupported by Pali Fighters http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/675129/posts Pali eyewitnesses all support the Israeli version
Jenin War Diary of a Hasidic Soldier - Part II http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/678298/posts There is no army as humane as the IDF	Palestinian fighter's version of the Jenin battle http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/672896/posts Pali Plan: Trap Israeli soldiers, then blow them up
Yellow Journalism: Sensationalism, Yes! Truth, No!
How the L.A. Times and CNN Distorted Jenin http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/681552/posts First, you start with an agenda...	Jenin: The Big Lie. Fighting the Media War http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/667296/posts World media falls for Goebbels's 'Big Lie' ... Again
The Media and 'The Massacre' http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/668719/posts Quick to report fantasy, slow to correct errors	Atrocities of the British Press http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/669206/posts Huge amounts of ink devoted to unverified Pali tales
Reporters Back Down From 'Massacre' Reports http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/668509/posts World press forced to face the truth: No Massacre	The Big Jenin Lie http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/679694/posts Putrid Pali Propaganda Promptly Panned - GO FR!
We're from the UN. We're Here to Help.
The Overseers of Jenin http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/675737/posts Camps run by UN are centers for terror bombings	U.N.'s Point Man In Jenin http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/673541/posts Arafat's militia gangs rely on Mr. Roed-Larsen
Guilty Until Proven Guilty http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/675043/posts Surprise! The UN has a not-so-hidden agenda	The Jenin Probe Ends http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/675737/posts UN unhappy about Israel's possible exhoneration
And so, in conclusion:
The 'Jenin Massacre' Hoax http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/677148/posts Living in a world of monstrous moral inversion	The Phantom Massacre http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/672761/posts War Crimes in Jenin were committed by the Palis
Terrorists admit they carried out atrocities http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/679306/posts Fanatics brutalize women, children, old men	Jenin's War Criminals http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/675340/posts What the Palestinians did was the real war crime

Outstanding trilogy of articles! Thanks so much for posting these.

My latest pet idea is that we should be able to sue the media for malpractice just like you can sue doctors. You say it's freedom of speech that they're exercising? I agree, but... People vote and protest and they do so largely because of what the media does or doesn't tell them. There is a certain range that any presentation of the facts can fall into and remain more or less objective. But when reporters go out looking for the facts to corroborate what they want the story to be about- well obviously things can get muddied awfully quickly. When the media outright lies or unfairly demonizes someone as they did with Pim Fortuyn bad things happen as a result and as exhibit A I'll post from the article:

>Yet media reports teemed in those countries with -- as it turned out -- highly exaggerated or just plain wrong descriptions of the violence allegedly inflicted by the Israelis on the Palestinians in Jenin. And as these reports ran, they were quickly followed by attacks -- largely, it appears, from young immigrant Muslim gangs -- on easily identifiable Orthodox Jews in both Britain and France.

Clearly the media in this case is complicit in what happened. My proposal would be not to take them to criminal court, but to be allowed to take them to civil court- again like in medical malpractice cases or for instance OJ's wrongful death civil case. The end result would be journalists would have to take out "malpractice insurance", the fees of which, if some cases were successful and had lucrative payouts for the plaintiffs, would be fairly expensive. If jury awards were routinely high, insurance companies would refuse to insure any reporter who routinely presented extremely slanted, biased or down right false news and those they did insure would perhaps feel a little extra incentive to dig up all the facts and present them in as objective manner as possible.

As I am still toying with this idea (and have been for the past year) I would welcome any criticism (of the idea) and/or feedback or embellishments.

Thanks again for the posts, I really enjoyed reading them and have them saved for future reference and argument.

Prodigal Son

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