http://www.miamiherald.com/851/story/261021.html
Posted on Fri, Oct. 05, 2007
Reporting the (bad) news
By FRIDA GHITIS
JERUSALEM -- Who can blame Europeans for hating Israel? In Britain, the University and College Union has just announced it has to cancel plans to boycott all Israeli academics and promote Palestinian views because the boycott, surprise of surprises, would break anti-discrimination laws.
The British government, as well as academics around the world, criticized as immoral, inappropriate and counter-productive the one-sided approach to the complicated Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But who can blame Europeans for trying, really? After all, when you look at the news, it is clear that Israel is a country run by vicious and malevolent thugs.
Placid Netherlands?
News coverage from Israel in the European press is often little more than a parody of honest journalism. Israelis have complained about this for decades, but more evidence of what you might call atrocities against journalism surface every day in European court rooms and in the work of scholars.
To highlight at least one of the techniques used by European -- and some American -- news organizations, one Israeli has launched his own news parody. ''Bad News from the Netherlands,'' run by Manfred Gerstenfeld, reports on the Netherlands focusing exclusively on negative news. By the time you run through the clippings -- all real news stories -- the usually placid Netherlands sounds like the abode of the devil himself: Dutch soldiers suspected of torturing prisoners and killing civilians; soldiers beating an immigrant to death; Dutch politicians guilty of incitement against foreigners. The list goes on, with items pouring into Gerstenfeld inbox every day from his fans in the Netherlands and from the Dutch newspapers he reads.
His point? You can make any country look bad by the way you report about it. Focusing on the negative is one way to do this, failing to show context and willingly distorting facts or falling for hoaxes from one side of a conflict is another.
Staged killing
In Paris, a court has given television network France 2 until next month to release the raw footage of an incident that shows Israelis as brutal killers and appears to have been staged. The September 2000 killing of 12-year-old Muhammad al-Dura in Gaza has been cited by terrorists, including Osama bin Laden and the killers of Daniel Pearl, and it has been immortalized with the help of commemorative postage stamps and countless memorials. Al-Dura's killing was shown around the world in a one-minute edited video by France 2, a heart-breaking montage that shows him cowering behind his father, both caught in a cross-fire between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian gunmen.
The edited video shows Israelis killing him, but those who have seen the uncut material say it was filled with scenes obviously staged for the cameras and shows the boy was killed by Palestinian bullets. Several investigations have shown it would have been physically impossible for Israeli fire to hit Al Dura.
France 2 for years refused to release the video, but a judge now says it must.
Last April, the BBC -- already embattled for other violations of journalistic standards -- won a hard-fought battle to suppress a report on its Middle East coverage. The Balen Report is believed to detail the British news organization's systematic anti-Israel bias. The BBC spent hundreds of thousands of pounds to prevent its release, which Jewish groups and others had eagerly sought.
''The American media are not as bad as the Europeans,'' says Gerstenfeld, adding it is not always free of bias. One organization he notes is my former employer, CNN, whose recent documentary, God's Warriors, angered Israelis as distorted and unfair. Israeli newspapers have carried articles from people interviewed by CNN, telling how their words were manipulated. According to Gerstenfeld, ``CNN placed the actions of a tiny minority of Israelis -- many of whom have expressed regret for what they did -- on a par with the extreme violence [of large numbers of Muslim extremists].''
Harsh spotlight
Journalists here insist they do the best they can to explain a complicated situation. But often you see the bias without having to look very far. A few weeks ago, Israeli forces uncovered a plot to send a suicide bomber to kill civilians in Tel Aviv during the Yom Kippur holiday. On satellite television I saw all about the incursions into Palestinian territory. Lost in the images of mayhem and devastation was the fact that a real plot to murder Israelis was, in fact, stopped. The suicide belt was found in an apartment only a few miles from my hotel.
Many times Israel does deserve a harsh spotlight. The country and its leaders make grave mistakes for which they should be held accountable. But, like anyone else, anywhere else, they deserve the full story be told before the guilty party is declared. Without that, how are passionate European activists supposed to know which side they should boycott?
Frida Ghitis writes on global affairs.
© 2007 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.miamiherald.com
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Dr. Daphne Burdman: Thoughts on the “Bad News Movement”
As background to “Bad news from the Netherlands”, one must recall that one-sided adverse news has virtually turned Israel into a pariah nation predominantly emanating from both politically inspired prejudice of non-involved nations, and self-proclaimed victim-hood of Arab nations.
Such one-sided news represents a distortion of the actual picture, but is sufficient to convince unwary bystanders.
Repeated Israeli attempts to negotiate peace programs have failed to achieve Palestinian reciprocity. Instead they have led to constant upgrading of demands by Palestinian Arab Muslims. Historically-documented attempts at “partition”, Oslo Accords, Gaza withdrawal etc. are misrepresented, ignored or denied by the international media, with growing international anti-Semitism. This has encouraged appeasement policies of recent and current Israeli governments into a “cycle of appeasement”.
This appeasement is in ignorance of, or massive denial of openly expressed hatred and desire to destroy Israel. Indoctrination programs in Arabic on Arab television, newspapers and elsewhere, publicly proclaim this and are freely quoted by Israeli NGOs such as Palestinian Media Watch and MEMRI.
The “Bad News from the Netherlands” blog is partially a “grass-roots” inspired activity. A selection of negative true newsprint items deliberately chosen, announced, and disseminated as such, about the Netherlands by Manfred Gerstenfeld prompted requests from Netherlanders to establish a blog. This has achieved great success, acquiring a steady stream of contributors and arousing general interest.
This blog demonstrates how easy it is to represent or misrepresent a country.
So one has to question why do people want to reprocess already-printed material?
Brief review of 50 consecutive items printed indicated the following topics:
issues of public safety; community rights; functioning of the Justice System; criticism of various government measures, bureaucratic inefficiency and failures; increasing criminality e.g. among the elderly, children carrying weapons to school, domestic violence, decreasing street safety.
Problems associated with increasing influx of immigrants; “police-free” no man’s lands,
particularist Muslim behaviors – female circumcision, Muslim women refusing treatment by male doctors. These are all concerns regarding public welfare.
So what can be deduced about this self-selected group of concerned citizens who contribute to the blog? That they feel the need to express themselves in these days of increasing “political correctness” is self-evident. In light of recent events in the Netherlands this is not surprising.
The political relativism of the Netherlands is considered to be among the worst in Europe, expressed by a laissez faire policy and “no-go” zones avoided by the police. Within the past 5 years, Pim Fortuyn, a conservative politician concerned about rising social tensions due to Muslim immigrants, was murdered, (2002); and Theo Van Gogh the film-maker of “Submission”, who criticized Islam, was particularly brutally murdered by numerous stabbings and a near beheading. Such assassinations of prominent figures have been virtually unknown in other core countries of Europe (i.e. those prior to the recent expansion of the European Union).
This combination of provocation and inadequate government action results in general anxiety, fear, and anger and may well contribute to the public reaction and ready interest in the “Bad News....” blog. The situation of growing immigrant unrest and thrust for autonomy may be of concern contributing to overall societal anxiety, which reflects also on other aspects of the public good, as noted in the selection of fifty items represented in the review mentioned above. The present emphasis on multiculturalism encourages all to pursue their own group autonomy, a clear threat to the indigenous population. This contrasts with societal pluralism which sustains the human rights of all for freedom of expression and religion except when it impinges on, or threatens, to undermine others or overthrow the host country. European multiculturalism is beginning to be perceived as a future existential threat to European society, as we know it.
Any charismatic leader and protest movement must have a support section from society e.g. Nazis in Germany, terrorist leaders and group survival. This notion has been proposed by Hannah Arendt, Sigmund Freud, T. Adorno, and Heinz Kohut among others, and is based on deep-seated emotions which resonate between leaders and followers.
It applies to sinister movements, but is also applicable to constructive movements.
Accordingly one can assume that the blog responders welcomed the leadership which permitted more critical discussion than that imposed by the “code” of “political correctness” and that they represent a much larger segment of the population.
Major newspapers, Miami Herald, Volkskrant (Netherlands), Jerusalem Post, and Ha’aretz have shown interest in the reaction to this deliberately one-sided blog and may sense this to be a revolt against the politically correct “dumbness” imposed by currently acceptable thinking, and adopted by the media.
That virtually autonomous regions of foreign virtual sovereignty herald increasing Islamization of Europe, is doubtless of concern to many citizens. Some European governments are beginning to react to counteract these tendencies, but in small, hesitant doses and with slow implementation.
The clash between the call for human rights in democracies, and that engendered by the need for security of a given population is complex, not easily solved, and yet urgently demanding of attention.
Such one-sided news represents a distortion of the actual picture, but is sufficient to convince unwary bystanders.
Repeated Israeli attempts to negotiate peace programs have failed to achieve Palestinian reciprocity. Instead they have led to constant upgrading of demands by Palestinian Arab Muslims. Historically-documented attempts at “partition”, Oslo Accords, Gaza withdrawal etc. are misrepresented, ignored or denied by the international media, with growing international anti-Semitism. This has encouraged appeasement policies of recent and current Israeli governments into a “cycle of appeasement”.
This appeasement is in ignorance of, or massive denial of openly expressed hatred and desire to destroy Israel. Indoctrination programs in Arabic on Arab television, newspapers and elsewhere, publicly proclaim this and are freely quoted by Israeli NGOs such as Palestinian Media Watch and MEMRI.
The “Bad News from the Netherlands” blog is partially a “grass-roots” inspired activity. A selection of negative true newsprint items deliberately chosen, announced, and disseminated as such, about the Netherlands by Manfred Gerstenfeld prompted requests from Netherlanders to establish a blog. This has achieved great success, acquiring a steady stream of contributors and arousing general interest.
This blog demonstrates how easy it is to represent or misrepresent a country.
So one has to question why do people want to reprocess already-printed material?
Brief review of 50 consecutive items printed indicated the following topics:
issues of public safety; community rights; functioning of the Justice System; criticism of various government measures, bureaucratic inefficiency and failures; increasing criminality e.g. among the elderly, children carrying weapons to school, domestic violence, decreasing street safety.
Problems associated with increasing influx of immigrants; “police-free” no man’s lands,
particularist Muslim behaviors – female circumcision, Muslim women refusing treatment by male doctors. These are all concerns regarding public welfare.
So what can be deduced about this self-selected group of concerned citizens who contribute to the blog? That they feel the need to express themselves in these days of increasing “political correctness” is self-evident. In light of recent events in the Netherlands this is not surprising.
The political relativism of the Netherlands is considered to be among the worst in Europe, expressed by a laissez faire policy and “no-go” zones avoided by the police. Within the past 5 years, Pim Fortuyn, a conservative politician concerned about rising social tensions due to Muslim immigrants, was murdered, (2002); and Theo Van Gogh the film-maker of “Submission”, who criticized Islam, was particularly brutally murdered by numerous stabbings and a near beheading. Such assassinations of prominent figures have been virtually unknown in other core countries of Europe (i.e. those prior to the recent expansion of the European Union).
This combination of provocation and inadequate government action results in general anxiety, fear, and anger and may well contribute to the public reaction and ready interest in the “Bad News....” blog. The situation of growing immigrant unrest and thrust for autonomy may be of concern contributing to overall societal anxiety, which reflects also on other aspects of the public good, as noted in the selection of fifty items represented in the review mentioned above. The present emphasis on multiculturalism encourages all to pursue their own group autonomy, a clear threat to the indigenous population. This contrasts with societal pluralism which sustains the human rights of all for freedom of expression and religion except when it impinges on, or threatens, to undermine others or overthrow the host country. European multiculturalism is beginning to be perceived as a future existential threat to European society, as we know it.
Any charismatic leader and protest movement must have a support section from society e.g. Nazis in Germany, terrorist leaders and group survival. This notion has been proposed by Hannah Arendt, Sigmund Freud, T. Adorno, and Heinz Kohut among others, and is based on deep-seated emotions which resonate between leaders and followers.
It applies to sinister movements, but is also applicable to constructive movements.
Accordingly one can assume that the blog responders welcomed the leadership which permitted more critical discussion than that imposed by the “code” of “political correctness” and that they represent a much larger segment of the population.
Major newspapers, Miami Herald, Volkskrant (Netherlands), Jerusalem Post, and Ha’aretz have shown interest in the reaction to this deliberately one-sided blog and may sense this to be a revolt against the politically correct “dumbness” imposed by currently acceptable thinking, and adopted by the media.
That virtually autonomous regions of foreign virtual sovereignty herald increasing Islamization of Europe, is doubtless of concern to many citizens. Some European governments are beginning to react to counteract these tendencies, but in small, hesitant doses and with slow implementation.
The clash between the call for human rights in democracies, and that engendered by the need for security of a given population is complex, not easily solved, and yet urgently demanding of attention.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)