Posted on 12/31/2002 4:44:53 PM PST by Jean S
Apparently it's not just a U.S. senator abetting terrorism: An Israeli official charges that CNN, CBS, ABC and other members of Big Media are conspiring with terrorists to promote the Palestinian cause.
The director of Israel's Government Press Office, Daniel Seaman, accuses the Associated Press, Reuters (the ailing British company notorious for refusing to identify terrorists as terrorists), BBC (infamous for its anti-U.S. and anti-Israeli biases) and the above-mentioned networks of hiring directors and producers appointed by the Palestinian Authority who conspired with a prominent Palestinian terrorist to spin - and even fabricate - reports in favor of the Arabs.
"Three senior producers" working for foreign networks, Seaman charged, were "coordinat[ing] with [terrorist] Marwan Barghouti" to make up news stories. According to Seaman, Barghouti would call these producers and tell them where his gunmen were going to stage an attack on Israelis so that the cameras would record the Israeli response but not the Palestinian provocation, making Israel look like the attacker.
Seaman's charge implies that journalists advised Barghouti on how to stage these attacks and even chose to let Israelis die for the sake of a photo opportunity.
Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the objectivist Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif., said Monday that the charges should be investigated.
"If these charges are true, what we have here is not only an egregious example of non-objective journalism, but criminal behavior on the part of mainstream media: an active role in aiding and abetting terrorism," Brook said. "It is bad enough to have the media biased against Israel, the innocent victim of terrorism - but it is immoral to have the media, on which we depend for objective news, actively collaborating with terrorists."
The networks have recalled several of the Western journalists allegedly involved, said Brook, "but those news organizations should publicly announce that collaborating with terrorists is unethical and that any journalist in their employ doing it will be fired and would face criminal charges. This won't solve the problem of media bias against Israel, but it may help reduce non-objective reporting on the Middle East situation."
Footnote: A search of the news wires yielded no information about Seaman's allegations. This tip came from the Ayn Rand Institute.
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