Honest Reporting
How ideology taints the news on the Gaza War
It’s a challenge keeping up with events, as encampments spread on Canadian campuses and contradictory news is pushed out on ceasefire negotiations and the beginning of an Israeli operation in Rafah. Today’s article looks at an ongoing issue: the way ideology distorts news coverage of Israel and especially its struggle against the ongoing campaign of violence, disinformation and vilification pursued by Israel’s enemies.
Allegations of Pro Israel Bias in Canadian Media (May 2021)
On May 14, 2021 a document appeared on line, entitled “An open letter to Canadian newsrooms on covering Israel-Palestine”, with the signatures of hundreds of Canadians who work in the news industry. This letter circulated in TV news rooms and newspaper offices and purported to be calling for greater fairness in Canadian news coverage of “Israel-Palestine.”
The publication of the letter coincided with an escalation of violence three years ago. This escalation was provoked by a Hamas inspired occupation of the Al Aqsa Mosque which is located on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Details of these events can be found here.
Rioters desecrated the mosque by stockpiling stones there and throwing them at Israeli police and at Jewish worshippers in the Western Wall Plaza below. Police entered the mosque to evict the rioters, provoking demands from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) for the withdrawal of the Israelis from the Temple Mount, which they call the Haram al Sharif. When Israel ignored the ultimatum, the terror groups, Hamas and PIJ, launched a large missile barrage at Israel from Gaza. Eleven Israelis were killed by the missiles, including two children.
Israel retaliated with air strikes on Gaza. One such attack destroyed a high rise building in Gaza City which housed the offices of major media organizations, but which was also used by Hamas for command and control. The UN Office for Coordination of Human Rights (OCHR) reported that 256 were killed, of whom half were combatants and half were civilians.
From the letter:
Unfortunately, newsroom leaders are skittish, fearing the deluge of complaints that often follows coverage. The deep reluctance to cover the ongoing nature of the Israeli occupation leads to urgent breaking news coverage that never includes the context that surrounds the issue. This content almost always centres around Israeli politicians and organizations, and representatives of the Israeli government and military; rarely are Palestinian voices ever centered or featured.
The paragraph above, excerpted from the open letter alleges that Israeli voices are given priority and that Palestinian voices are seldom heard from. If that was true then, the situation has certainly changed. But as we will see in the next section, the complaint that Palestinian voices are not centered is really a demand that a particular anti-Israel narrative be used to steer the story and that Israel’s point of view of should no longer be treated as legitimate. Seen in that light, the fact that so many Canadians working in the news business signed the letter is troubling and may help explain the misleading and inadequate coverage of the current war.
Documenting Anti Israel Bias in Western News Coverage from Gaza (June 2021)
In 2022, in his book “Can the Whole World Be Wrong”, Richard Landes included a chapter on how the western press reports news from Gaza. Landes’ position is clear from the title of the chapter: “Compliant, Lethal, Own-Goal War Journalism: The Bane of the West in the Twenty-First Century”.
I wrote in an earlier article inspired by Landes' book. Landes told about the viral dissemination of a false story of Israelis deliberately murdering a Palestinian child, Mohammed al Durah. Landes describes how this story was manufactured and propagated by western journalists, who seemed to believe that while reporting fake news, they were somehow conveying a deeper or higher truth. Landes says the publication of the al Durah story in September 2001 was the spark that started the Second Intifadah. During the second intifadah, over 1000 Israelis and 3000 Palestinians died.
The idea of “Own-Goal War Journalism”, in which journalists report the propaganda of their country’s enemies as truth, was discussed in an earlier article by Landes, entitled Lethal Own-Goal War Journalism. Much of the material was reused in his 2022 book.
Landes shows that western reporting from Gaza follows an unwritten Palestinian media code:
This code requires that:
Palestinians be depicted as noble resisters an Israelis as cruel oppressors.
Palestinians should be depicted as victims and never as aggressors while Israelis should be depicted as aggressors and never as victims.
Palestinians not be depicted unsympathetically and that Israelis not be depicted sympathetically.
Palestinian claims should be reported as truth and not challenged, while Israeli claims should always be reported as just claims, which may or may not be true.
Examples of the code in action can be seen when journalists refrain from reporting on how Palestinian terrorists use hospitals and schools for military purposes and how they endanger Palestinian civilians by operating in their vicinity, drawing Israeli fire in their direction. The reporting instead focuses on Israeli strikes on schools, hospitals, refugee camps and mosques. Reports may sometimes say that “Israel claims” that Palestinian terrorists were operating there.
We also see the code in action when the press gives prominent coverage whenever Palestinians blame Israeli attacks for causing deaths of civilians, which are later revealed to be caused by their own misfired rockets, but gives much less coverage when the false report is exposed. In this war, the total death toll compiled by Hamas is prominently reported as presented with no attempt to distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Landes writes at some length to explain why western journalists would submit to a code which obviously runs counter to the principles of good journalism. There are two factors at play. The first is the infiltration of the ideological view that journalists ought not to be neutral, but instead ought to be on the side of those who are deemed to have less power. We see this idea in the letter signed by the Canadian journalists:
Our industry rallied to properly cover the Black Lives Matter protests after the brutal police killing of George Floyd, and the disproportionate impacts of the pandemic on marginalized communities at home and around the world. We are learning to report on Indigenous experiences and issues in a nuanced way that recognizes the long historical impact of colonialism. Why shouldn't Palestinians be afforded the same nuance?
The other unmentioned factor at play is that there is no freedom of the press in Gaza, and anyone who defies Hamas is at risk of retaliation. This means that Palestinians who live in Gaza and work as journalists could never safely report impartially. Western journalists who work with them have to accept this in order to be allowed to operate there at all. In particular they cannot admit that Hamas is controlling the information they are allowed to report. To do so would result in dire consequences for everyone involved.
These rules don’t apply only to journalists. From the 2021 Landes article:
Thus, even as “human rights” NGOs, academics and those supporting the Palestinians waxed indignant over the terrible damage, Israel’s 11-day operation actually had a remarkably low number of deaths (10 percent of the 2014 seven-week totals), and a very high proportion of combatant deaths (2:1, when the urban-warfare norm is 1:3). When UNRWA’s director admitted this in an interview with Israel’s Channel 12, he got mobbed by Palestinian propaganda channels and was relieved of his duties.
Distorted Coverage of Israel: Not Surprising Given the Ideological Pressures
When we look at the letter that circulated in Canadian news rooms in 2021 we see that it is in fact a demand that Canadian journalists comply with the Hamas media code delineated by Richard Landes. When we look at the coverage of the current conflict, we find that much of our electronic media seem to have fallen into line.
The message that the petitioners think we should be getting about the Palestinians is made very clear in this final quotation from their letter. In their minds the rights and wrongs of the Israel-Palestine conflict are not complicated and the story that should be told is about Israeli wrongdoing and Palestinian victimhood:
Dispossession is not complicated.
Violence against innocent civilians and children is not complicated.
Police aggression and state sanctioned racism is not complicated.
Journalists cover these issues all the time.
So why do we tip toe around coverage of Israel and Palestinians?
We did see news coverage of the atrocities committed against Israelis in the first few days after they happened, but the muted or nonexistent reaction of human rights NGOs and the UN to Palestinian atrocities, and the immediate loud denunciations from the same groups of everything that Israel did in response, quickly drove the coverage of Palestinian war crimes off of our television screens.
In the first week of the war, the false story of Israel destroying the Al Ahli Arab hospital and killing 500 people was widely reported as true. When it emerged that the story was false, that the number of dead had been greatly exaggerated, that the hospital had not been bombed and that the damage was caused by a Palestinian rocket, the coverage of that was muted and skeptical. The “Gaza Health Ministry” which had reported the false story remains the go-to source for information on Palestinian casualties after seven months of war. The Wikipedia article on the Al Ahli strike still describes the events as “disputed.”
When the Israeli invasion of Gaza began, the CTV news coverage featured interviews with Palestinians, but not Israelis. The Political Scientist they chose to interview hewed to the line that the root of the problem is the Israeli Occupation, and frequently referred to “Israeli war crimes.” Contrary to the complaints in the journalists’ letter from 2021, we almost never hear from Israelis about the conduct of the war. Where Israelis are interviewed, they are generally people criticizing the Israeli government’s handling of the hostage negotiations.
The coverage of Israel in the National Post and the Ottawa Citizen is better, but the broadcast news seems to have succumbed to the pressure “that Palestinians be afforded … nuance”.
Journalism traditionally has its own ideals and value system, dedicated at their best to exposing the truth no matter who is affected and no matter the risk to the journalist. But we see that in our present era, the values of journalism are being subordinated to ideology that tells everyone that they have a duty to be on the side of the “oppressed.” This is bad for journalism and as we have seen repeatedly, it’s bad for the Palestinians who are designated in this context as the oppressed. It prevents journalists from properly covering the atrocious behaviour of Palestinian terrorists, both towards Israel and towards their own people.
Parting Thoughts
Landes documents at great length and to devastating effect how distorted news coverage of Israel Palestine relations has caused immense harm to both Israelis and Palestinians. While we don’t agree with everything he writes, his book is essential reading on the subject of dysfunctional journalism. You can read a review of the book here.
Our thanks our my friends, Terry Glavin and Fred Litwin, who first brought the journalists’ letter to our attention in the summer of 2021. Fred is a contributor here and Terry is the author of a widely followed Substack, The Real Story.
Honest Reporting is the name of an organization which monitors the media for anti-Israel Bias. If you want to support them you can find their web site here.
It appears that a ground operation in Rafah is under way as I write this. I am praying that many hostages will be found and freed in the coming days and that the perpetrators of the atrocities against our people will be brought to account. May God bless and protect the soldiers of the IDF. Crown them with victory and bring them home safely to their loved ones
Image: Leaflet dropped in Rafah Shows Gazans Where to Evacuate ——Source: CTV News website
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My earlier article which referenced Landes’ book was called Blood Libel.
Blood Libel
If you know about the history of antisemitism, the notion of blood libel will be familiar. The blood libel first appeared in Europe in the middle ages and claimed that Jews had murdered a Christian, often a child, and used the blood of the victim to prepare Passover Matzot. Blood libel cases often sparked an outbreak of mass violence against Jews, fuel…
This was a very useful article. But there is so little about media reporting to be optimistic about and I see that there is so much to be angry about.