Harry's Place

This is piss poor.

Of 18 reports on the Today Programme, one made reference to Hamas’ Charter

Would that one report be the interview with Sir Jeremy Greenstock – the one in which he claimed that Hamas has never adopted their charter since 2006?

Which is untrue. Hamas specifically invoked its Covenant while campaigning in the last election.

All of this needs saying again and again, and none of it is new. The BBC is a total disgrace, and Bowen is allowed utterly free rein to spout his personal propaganda, his seething hatred of Israel, without any managerial supervision or control whatsoever.
The BBC either doesn’t understand the first thing about the difference between reporting and editorial opinion, or it wilfully chooses to ignore reporting and only do editorials. So, either they are incompetent amateurs, or they are dishonest through and through (in terms of organisational culture – I am sure that some individuals are incompetent while others are dishonest).
As I say, this is not new. There is a strong antisemitic streak running through the BBC. The BBC website has carried glaring falshehoods about Israel for many years. And as to ‘reporting’ – it’s been going on since at least 1982, when a ‘reporter’ standing in front of a Beirut house delivered a personal condemnation of Israel’s supposed intentions – which is unprofessional on 2 separate counts.

I should expand. Doubtless there are biases in news coverage, and personal sympathies creeping into reporting. It’s not hard to understand why people sympathize with the party getting shelled rather that with the party doing the shelling and that might mask a clear-eyed analysis. And yes, it would be nice if the press paid more attention to Hamas culpability etc. etc.

But what’s piss poor is this pretense of objective data gathering. No matter how much data you gather, you have no idea whether the distribution you uncover is biased unless you know what the unbiased distribution would look like, and your assumptions about that are likely just to reflect your own biases. What are you assuming here? Please describe what you think the data would need to look like, if it were unbiased?

Your “simple index” of “facts” you run a search for to identify bias, is risible. Where the search for indicators of pro-Israeli bias? What about some “facts” about Israels past conduct in this conflict, that were also omitted while the press was busy reporting on Palestinian civilians and Hamas fighters getting blown to smithereens by the Israelis.

In my biased opinion, this is another post that serves to diminish HP’s reputation.

Looks like one of Luis Enrique’s shibboleths is challenged and he doesn’t like it.

“In my biased opinion, this is another post that serves to diminish HP’s reputation.”

Hey genius, its a guest post.

More importantly i think the Just Journalism piece does make some good points. Bowens reporting during the conflict was very, very poor. The BBC reporting was attrocious and, in my view, biased. I say that as someone who watched Al Jazeera throughout the conflict and found their reporting pretty decent and watchable.

MattG

Good article. Your use of Jeremy Bowen as an example of bias is spot on.

Now, what are you going to do with your findings?

Luis Enrique – Did you ever have a high estimate if HPs reputation or is this a bit like the people who say they “hold Israel to higher standards because it is a democracy” then when you try and find something they had said that was positive about Israeli democracy or indeed anythiong at all about Israel – lo and behold you draw a blank!?

yep, it’s a guest post.

It is quite possible to make some goods points in the course of a bad argument. I don’t think you should give a pass to shoddy arguments just because they make points you sympathize with. This site took apart many bad arguments against the invasion of Iraq. I presume you would have regarded it as a good thing if sensible people who also opposed the invasion of Iraq, which in retrospect looks like a “good point”, had joined HP in rejecting bad arguments, rather than saying “I think they make some good points”. If you post too many bad arguments is support of a good point, you just discredit the good point.

Mark2, no, I’m not one of them. See here for example.

The point that the BBC does not do a very good job of informing its audience about Hamas stands in its own right, and cloaking it in the pretense of an objective survey does it no favours.

Oh, I’ve over done it. This posts not that bad. I’m going to recant, and retreat. I should have paid more attention to my dear departed mother: if you haven’t got anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.

“Oh, I’ve over done it. This posts not that bad. I’m going to recant, and retreat. ”

Indeed. Cheerio.~~

AS Mitnaged says, these things are well and good…but where do you go with them.

Listen to the interview from Today this morning; its linked to in the ‘Disproportionate’ thread.

Listen to the female interviewer, I have no idea who she is. She ain’t gonna be convinced by anything.

Interviewing Mark Regev like he is some sort of Nazi war criminal. A very bizarre interview. “Don’t you, Mark Regev, you monstrous jew, in your more human moments, see how murderous evil and immoral you zionists are….”

She ain’t gonna be interested in a Just Journalism survey. Mark Regev tries to tell her that the Jabalya school bombing never happened and she swats him away as if the BBC hadn’t (wrongly) reported this War Crime for several hundred hours during the month of January.

‘I dont want to talk about that’ she says.

And anyway its your fault because you didn’t let Jeremy Bowen in to tell the truth (tee hee)

And there you have it. Israel is a colonial, murderous monster. The Beeb just wants to you to explain how that feels.

Auntie doesn’t want to hear that you are not a monster …because you are.

MattG

“To their credit, the BBC’s news journalists did regularly report what life in Sderot was like and show images of rockets falling, one landing perilously close to Jeremy Bowen himself.”
Well, but for Jeremy Bowen, different from the Sderot residents, this was friendly fire.
Luis Enrique writes: “It’s not hard to understand why people sympathize with the party getting shelled rather that with the party doing the shelling” — right, some 3000, that is: three thousand rockets and mortars were launched from Gaza on Israeli towns and villages in 2008, i.e. in a year when we had a 6 month ceasefire — eh, were you sympathizing with us then?

I agree there are some very good points mixed in with some that don’t prove anything.

“Looking at the images in the media, only 4% of all the photographs published about the conflict in the first week depicted Hamas militancy and only one photograph of a rocket launcher appeared in the broadsheets. And in cartoons, more than 75% of all editorial cartoons published over the three-week conflict period depicted Israel as the aggressor, whereas only a quarter even featured depictions of armed Hamas fighters.”

I think this is key. When watching the BBC coverage of the war in Gaza or in Lebanon, the image cutting went something like…
Israeli army mobilizing–Israeli war planes bombing–dead Palestinians/Lebanese.

The other thing I think is crucial is how conflicts with Israel are covered versus any other conflict. Now, every conflict is different of course, but I watch a lot of news and whle conflicts with Israel have hours and hours of say…footage of father’s carrying injured/dead babies, this is something I almost never see in any other conflict. One of the fundemental problems with the coverage of Gaza is how much of it there was. It was a very important story, but every single time I turned on BBC World for three weeks, it was always, and I mean always, the number 1 story for the first 10-15 minutes of the half hour. Afghanistan, for example, had something like 2, 000 civilians killed last year in a conflict that British troops are involved in, to a fraction of a fraction of the coverage.

I don’t really like the argument that everything has to be covered equally, because no conflict is the same. However, I think the rabid obsession when it comes to Israel is dangerous. The reality is that war is brutal and violent and if you cover any war as much as Israel’s wars are covered (especially when you go from PG to R, from a blanket over a body to close-ups of the dead), people will get riled up. If every day on the news, people saw pictures of dead Afghanis killed by the Taliban, there would be a lot more support for the war. If they showed daily pictures of dead Afghanis killed by Coalition troops, people would be more anti-war. The media obsession with Israel definitely has an effect of making Israel looking more brutal than it is. The total number of civilians killed in Lebanon and in Gaza is about 1, 500 or so which in world terms in paltry (3, 000+ dead of Cholera in Zimbabwe for example) yet those deaths received more media attention (10X? 50X) than the 10, 000 or so killed in Iraq last year or the 2, 000 or so dead civilians in Afghanistan-both conflicts which Britain is involved with.

I think, for me, this attitude can be summed up by what was happening furing the blockade of Gaza. Gazans were suffering (and they suffer under the best of circumstances) but they were not starving to death. Yet, there were more articles detailing the suffering of Gazans: diaries, features, profiles on TV and in the newspaper than there were of the millions who actually died during this period and it was not even close. The siege of Gaza deserved to be covered and the war in Gaza even more so, but this insanely explicit coverage while ignoring pretty much everything else leaves me very uneasy. (Serious question-do you think there was more BBC world coverage of Gaza in the past two months than there will be of the entire continent of Africa this year?)

In my biased opinion, this is another post that serves to diminish HP’s reputation.

But not your puffed-up self-importance. A post that happens to run counter to your blinkered view does not diminish HP’s reputation.
Highlighting the non-stop bias of the BBC et al is perfectly reasonable. Highlighting the unprofessional behaviour of journalists in delivering a personal rant in the guise of reporting is perfectly reasonable.

These demonstrated a clear sympathy with the Palestinian case

What is meant by the “Palestinian case”?

The only one I can see (in the context of the Gaza war) is that Israel should be wiped off the map and replaced by a Palestinian state with an Islamic orientation.

How can you monitor Just Journalism when Israel didnt allow the Journalists into Gaza?? Yes the reports coming out of Gaza were biased because they were sent by Palestinians. Whose fault was that??

So is this actually going to change anything? Or will the AP just turn its noses up at this. I can hardly see Bowen taking any of this on board.

Neither can I. His job is to report on the middle east as objectively as he can, not to be bullied by lobbyists from either side of the divide.

Excellent work. Well done.

His job is to report on the middle east as objectively as he can

If this is the best he can do objectivity-wise, he shouldn’t be in journalism because he is disgracing the profession by his stupidity. He might just make a trainee speech-writer to some African dictator.
If he can do better, he shouldn’t be in journalism because he is disgracing the profession by his bias.

Jeremy Bowen has New York Television Festival, Royal Television Scociety, and Sony Gold awards for his jorurnalism. I hope you’ll forgive me if I find these bodies more qualified to judge his various qualities as a journalist than your good self.

Appeal to Authority, Mike S?

Jeremy AL-Bowen

Jeremy Bowen has New York Television Festival, Royal Television Scociety, and Sony Gold awards for his jorurnalism. I hope you’ll forgive me if I find these bodies more qualified to judge his various qualities as a journalist than your good self.

Yes, appeal to authority. Have you even been to Israel? Do you have the slightest feel for what goes on there?
Awards given by media to people to media people don’t impress me one little bit. When I look at his reports, and I see the lack of balance about facts that ultimately nobody disputes (e.g. 1000s of rockets on Israeli civilians, which he basically dismisses as unimportant), I engage my brain (which you don’t) and see that this is hugely biased.
It is also instructive to read his blog – which is passed off by Al Beeb as journalism – and see how often it’s about him, what he feels, not about the subject he is writing about.
The man’s a disgrace.

MITNAGED
6 February 2009, 12:22 pm

Good article. Your use of Jeremy Bowen as an example of bias is spot on.

Now, what are you going to do with your findings?

It’s probably the basis on which JJ will lodge a complaint with the Beeb’s ombudsperson. Seems to me this was done on another occasion and the Beeb made some kind of tepid acknowledgment that there was a problem. However, I can’t recall exact context or timing.

Luis Enrique
6 February 2009, 11:52 am

[...] Doubtless there are biases in news coverage, and personal sympathies creeping into reporting. It’s not hard to understand why people sympathize with the party getting shelled rather that with the party doing the shelling and that might mask a clear-eyed analysis. [...]

Really Luis? I sure haven’t encountered much sympathy towards the citizens of Sderot and other southern Israeli towns who have endured 8 years of shelling of areas that are civilian targets.

No, by and large, we only hear about the ‘homemade’ rockets and low kill/injury rates, but very, very little about the psychological torture and economic strangulation of a population that’s largely comprised of Jewish refugees from countries like Morocco, Yemen, etc.

“Awards given by media to people to media people don’t impress me one little bit.”

Well, we’ll have to agree to differ. Similarly accusations of bias against journalists by extreme partisans of one side and single-issue pressure groups don’t impress me.

“Appeal to Authority, Mike S?”

Introduction to Philosophy evening classes, Modernity?

“Philosophy evening classes?”

no Mike S, I am a badly educated member of the under classes :)

But I still recognise a fallacy when I see one, and I’d hope that an educated man such as yourself would avoid them!

JJ’s report is important, but sadly hardly surprising.
In every conflict that I can remember the tone has been similar.
Re. the BBC, I think it is also important to acknowledge that these reports go out all over the world on it’s World Service. Many of those watching may be unaware of the subtleties of English, but they see the pictures, and those are what really make the impression.
Watching BBC World coverage of the 2nd Lebanon war (whilst in the middle of it) I noticed that as far as the BBC was concerned there were no ordinary people in Israel. We saw images of politicians, spokespersons and uniformed anonymous soldiers, but no people, no civilians. One million people spent over 4 weeks in air-raid shelters, but I never saw a BBC interview with even one of them, despite the fact that they were reporting from Haifa. The border town of Kiryat Shmona was especially badly hit, but I never saw one picture of the ruins and rubble.
In contrast we saw ample images of Lebanese rubble and wailing displaced citizens.
It is no wonder in my mind that world sympathy swings in the fickle way it does – how can one demand sympathy for a land with no ‘real’ people?

So Mike S, in your opinion Jeremy Bowen was correct to sneer at and insinuate that what he called the Israeli narrative was a bad faith narrative while never once mentioning the term narrative in association with Hamas, PIJ, PFLP-GC, PRC, Al Aqsa Martyrs, or any of the Al Qaeda type militias?

And Mike S, am I correct in assuming you believe the two examples demonstrating Bowen’s breaches of the BBC Editorial Guideline on impartiality provided in the justjournalism post weren’t really breaches, or were justified even if they were breaches?

And from your post am I to assume that you object to this analysis of Jeremy Bowen’s conduct during his reportage about the Cast Lead operation because he has in the past received 3 awards for journalism?

And as to ‘reporting’ – it’s been going on since at least 1982, when a ‘reporter’ standing in front of a Beirut house delivered a personal condemnation of Israel’s supposed intentions – which is unprofessional on 2 separate counts.

Orla Guerin reported on an Israeli incursion with tanks to arrest some Palestinian terrorists. As they pulled out she said “No doubt they will return”

Here for your perusal is a recent editorial about Gaza from a Gabriola Island, British Columbia newspaper (where I resided for 20 years) penned by editor and owner Ms. Chris Bowers. Since I left Gabriola, a local director staged the controversial and ISM glorifying play ‘My Name is Rachel Corrie’ at a local theatre and more recently a second local theatre has been soliciting funds for Gaza from Gabriola residents although I am unclear at this time as to where the money will be sent. I’d be interested to hear some sober reactions to this editorial. Additionally, if you’d like to respond with a letter to the editor directly to the paper (800 word maximum) the contact e-mail is: editor@FlyingShingle.com

Editorial
When enough is finally enough
Wednesday, January 14 2009

“The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.” Moshe Yaalon, Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, 2002.

Perhaps one of the most irritating things about writing about the war in Gaza is the need to begin by stating the obvious. Obviously, we stand against anti-Semitism. And, at the same time, obviously we stand against Zionist imperialism. There are no solutions in hatred and exclusion.

Obviously, it is categorically wrong to respond to Israel’s violence with violence. Towards anyone. Period.

Obviously, we can be against Israeli imperialism and be a friend to Jews. Friends tell friends when they are making a mistake.

And obviously, and despite the power of the pro-Israel lobby in Canada and the US (evidenced, in part, by the necessity for the irritating length of this introduction), many Jews stand steadfastly against the treatment of Palestinians by Israel.

So then at what point does the world finally stop allowing Goliath to convince itself it is David? When do Westerners stop allowing our shame at our own past racism, which resulted in the suffering and death of hundreds of thousands of Jewish civilians, from preventing us from taking a stand against the suffering and death of Palestinian civilians?

Who is responsible?

There is a growing international “boycott, divestment and sanctions” (BDS) campaign against Israel’s apartheid system, as ordinary citizens position themselves against Zionist colonialism. Meanwhile OUR government has shamefully blamed this war on Hamas.

Those who have access to news from anywhere but North America know this is preposterous. Quoting Uri Avery, one of those steadfast Jews mentioned above:

“…the cease-fire did not collapse, because there was no real cease-fire to start with. The main requirement for any cease-fire in the Gaza Strip must be the opening of the border crossings. There can be no life in Gaza without a steady flow of supplies. But the crossings were not opened, except for a few hours now and again.

“The blockade on land, on sea and in the air against a million and a half human beings is an act of war, as much as any dropping of bombs or launching of rockets. It paralyzes life in the Gaza Strip: eliminating most sources of employment, pushing hundreds of thousands to the brink of starvation, stopping most hospitals from functioning, disrupting the supply of electricity and water…

“…Then there came the small provocations, which were designed to get Hamas to react. After several months, in which hardly any Qassam rockets were launched, an army unit was sent into the Strip “in order to destroy a tunnel that came close to the border fence”. From a purely military point of view, it would have made more sense to lay an ambush on our side of the fence. But the aim was to find a pretext for the termination of the cease-fire, in a way that made it plausible to put the blame on the Palestinians. And indeed, after several such small actions, in which Hamas fighters were killed, Hamas retaliated with a massive launch of rockets, and — lo and behold — the cease-fire was at an end. Everybody blamed Hamas.” http://www.straightgoods.ca/2009/ViewFeature.cfm?Ref=13

In creating the State of Israel the world made Israelis and Palestinians into dance partners. Thanks to the support of the US – particularly in the last eight years – Israel has persuaded itself that it can subjugate and subdue the people of Palestine through might and the military. Any reader of the history of colonization – or even of Aesop – knows they are self-deluded. No one does Israel any favours by allowing it to continue in its blindness.

The truth of the dance of the Middle East is that in order for anyone to win, everyone must win. Which in this case means that everyone must lose.

Hamas is a fairly and democratically elected government. Rather than trying to depose it, Israel would be far better off noting that Hamas gained power because it takes care of the needs of Palestinians. It is a government elected on the promise of continuing to provide what no-one else does.

Those who love Israel, those who are not blinded by the borrowed power of the US, continue to courageously speak this truth of peace to the lie of war: bombs and selfishness create enemies. Food and generosity create friends. Though unbelievably difficult, in the end it is really that simple.

Bowen never entertained the possibility that the film which “showed a young Palestinian father kissing his dead baby son goodbye”, had been staged by Hamas, after all Bowen’s is just the sort of reaction they aim for. I expect that should anyone have suggested it to him, his reaction would have been highly emotional, and not the rational consideration of the possibility that he had been duped. Such was the reaction of Charles Enderlin when powerful evidence was presented that the film he endorsed of the Al Durah shooting was in fact Pallywood at its most egregious.

Gaza’s “overwhelmed” hospitals (Bowen)

Except that they were not. The Rafah hospital had plenty of space, and Hamas prevented any wounded being moved to Israeli or Egyptian hospitals, where better treatment was available. Bowen is a f***ing disgrace. The trouble is, so are nearly all the rest. If it is raw facts untainted by Hamas distortions or anti-Israel sentiments, you can trust the Jerusalem Post, Tom Gross, Michael Totten, Richard Landes, Pierre Rehov, Harry’s Place, and very few others.

Good for HP in keeping up the pressure on this issue.

LBnaz–the Yaalon quote is spread by Khalidi; most recently, he tried it in the NYTimes, which was forced to acknowledge that it can’t be sourced, i.e. it is fabricated. Details here:
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=35&x_article=1587
and some more commentary on Khalidi’s NYT-article here:
http://blog.z-word.com/2009/02/what-you-dont-know-about-rashid-khalidi/
Otherwise, I’d simply wish the writer of this editorial that s/he will have a chance to live under a regime that takes care of his/her needs as well as this writer believes Hamas takes care of the needs of the people in Gaza.

Otherwise, I’d simply wish the writer of this editorial that s/he will have a chance to live under a regime that takes care of his/her needs as well as this writer believes Hamas takes care of the needs of the people in Gaza.

Thanks Petra, I was aware of the bogus quote and the NY Times correction after publishing Khalidi’s citation of it. It seems to me that Bowers’ egregious sanctimony, her conviction, nay faith that nothing could possibly be worse than US or Zionist Imperialism and her bigotry of low expectations for Palestinian civil liberties, shields her from ever considering the possibility of her actually living under a regime like Hamas and what it really would be like for her.

Lbnaz

There is a growing international “boycott, divestment and sanctions” (BDS) campaign against Israel’s apartheid system, as ordinary citizens position themselves against Zionist colonialism. Meanwhile OUR government has shamefully blamed this war on Hamas.

This exposes the complete biasness of the writer of this article.

‘I’m struck by the constant Israeli message that ‘any other country in the world would do the same’. Would they?

Well I’m darned sure of how the Yookay would react: If the rockets were landing anywhere north of Watford Gap or any of the chavvy areas of London, there would be a deathly media silence and if the natives dared complain they would be swiftly condemned as racist scum. If, however, the rockets were endangering the Islington types they would do what they did in the last war, pile their kids and themselves on a boat to a safe, faraway country and leave the lower orders to die on their own.

Similarly accusations of bias against journalists by extreme partisans of one side and single-issue pressure groups don’t impress me.

Well, I am not impressed by the huffing and puffing of people so obviously biased as you are – people who don’t allow documented facts to stand in the way of their hysterical propaganda.

Claphammer, for me, of all the objectionable crap in Bowers’ editorial, and there was no shortage of objectionable, sanctimonious, bogus and ignorant crap, it was the following passages which I found the most disturbing.

The shades of Bishop Williams bit (”the suffering of hundreds of thousands of Jewish civilians”) which falsely and insultingly – pace Norman Finkelstein – alleges that Westerners are being prevented from being sympathetic to Palestinians because of guilt over the Shoah:

When do Westerners stop allowing our shame at our own past racism, which resulted in the suffering and death of hundreds of thousands of Jewish civilians, from preventing us from taking a stand against the suffering and death of Palestinian civilians?

The bit falsely alleging that Palestinians are privileged to have a Hamas government demonstrating both her woeful ignorance about Hamas and her woeful bigotry of low expectations for Palestinian civil liberties:

Israel would be far better off noting that Hamas gained power because it takes care of the needs of Palestinians. It is a government elected on the promise of continuing to provide what no-one else does.

The bit that uses Soviet era (Zionist imperialism and Zionist colonialism) and libelous (apartheid) sloganeering (which I’m not sure Bowers even comprehends) to promote, or boost the discriminatory BDS campaign which has repeatedly failed:

There is a growing international “boycott, divestment and sanctions” (BDS) campaign against Israel’s apartheid system, as ordinary citizens position themselves against Zionist colonialism.

And last, but not least, the bit which – pace Walt, Mearsheimer and Counterpunch – falsely alleges that on behalf of some unnamed collective “we”, Bowers was in some mystifying way coerced to write that she and “we” aren’t antisemites, because of a nefarious Canadian and American pro Israel lobby and that this is what she, as an owner and editor of a newspaper, finds to be “one of the most irritating things about writing about the war in Gaza”:

And obviously, and despite the power of the pro-Israel lobby in Canada and the US (evidenced, in part, by the necessity for the irritating length of this introduction)

Has there been a comparable study of the American media?

Just journalism are a bunch of extreme neo conservative paranoid journos.
Cohen one of it’s founders has backed up the views of extreme conservative views such Jonah Goldberg and Frontpage.
Men who have defended apartheid, torture and shoot to kill policy of unarmed illegal Mexican immigrants.
David T you must come clean.
You are like Cohen a believer in the conservative agenda.

Also why has this idiot not sent this report to OFCOM.
I would love to see the evaluation.
Most of you are paranoid nut jobs.
Also what about John Ware’s BBC panorama on Hamas. Was that biased.