If there is controversy about who won the recent war in Gaza, there is no question that Ramattan News Agency of Gaza City won the war to broadcast it. It was Ramattan’s images that beamed Israel’s 22-day “Operation Cast Lead” into millions of households across the globe, capturing the indelible visual moments of the war. Ramattan’s images were broadcast uncensored around the clock and only stopped on the few occasions the staff had to evacuate the studios fearing the 11-story building was about to be bombed. Toufic Haddad reports for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about Ramattan's war: The world's eyes into Gaza
Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani16 February 2009
CAIRO (IPS) - Coverage of Israel’s recent war on the Gaza Strip by regional news stations has reflected longstanding political divisions within the Arab world. Qatar-based Al-Jazeera’s reporting drew a particularly angry response from Egypt. “Coverage of the Gaza conflict by certain Arab language news channels aggravated the rift between the Arab ‘moderate’ and ‘rejectionist’ camps,” Mohamed Mansour, professor of mass media at Cairo University told IPS. Read more about Egypt on offensive after critical Al-Jazeera coverage
Legitimate criticism of Israeli policy is suppressed through journalistic crimes of omission and commission. The public is presented with images and stories of Arab violence and aggression while the notion of Israeli restraint and victimhood is piously maintained. Israeli actions are thus “responses” and never belligerence. Nate George comments. Read more about Selective reporting from Lebanon
Recently, the UK-based Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), which comprises many aid agencies including the British Red Cross, Islamic Relief, Oxfam and others, called on all UK news broadcasters to broadcast a public appeal for Gaza. The BBC and other broadcasters refused, stating that “Along with other broadcasters, the BBC has decided not to broadcast the DEC’s public appeal to raise funds for Gaza.” The Electronic Intifada contributor Jinan Bastaki tests the BBC’s argument for refusing to air the appeal. Read more about BBC violates its own principles by not airing Gaza appeal
Given that “unconditional support” for Israel remains the official policy of the ruling coalition government of Social and Christian Democrats, a position that has been given particularly crass utterance on several occasions by Chancellor Angela Merkel (Christian Democratic Union), a recent opinion poll suggests that the gulf between government and citizens on this issue is vast and growing. Raymond Deane analyzes for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about Are Germans getting fed up with Israel?
US corporate media coverage of the Israeli military attacks that have reportedly killed more than 900 — many of them civilians — since 27 December has overwhelmingly failed to mention that indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets are illegal under international humanitarian law. Israel’s recent aerial attacks on Gazan infrastructure, including a TV station, police stations, a mosque, a university and even a United Nations school, have been widely reported. Yet despite the fact that attacks on civilian infrastructure, including police stations, are illegal (Human Rights Watch, 31 December 2008), questions of legality are almost entirely off the table in the US media. Read more about Study: International law seldom newsworthy in war on Gaza
WASHINGTON (IPS) - As the war in Gaza approaches its third week, a chorus of influential voices in the United States media has cast the conflict as a proxy war in which the real enemy is not Hamas but Iran. The result has been a growing tendency in the US to view Gaza as simply one battleground in a larger war between Iran and the West, and to dismiss the stated concerns of the Palestinians as a mere smokescreen for Iranian influence. Read more about In Washington, all roads lead to Tehran
WASHINGTON (IPS) - Consumed by coverage of the 4 November presidential election, US mainstream media ignored a key Israeli military attack on a Hamas target that some Palestinians claim marked the effective end of the ceasefire between the two sides and set the stage for the current round of bloodletting. While the major US news wire Associated Press (AP) reported that the attack, in which six members of Hamas’s military wing were killed by Israeli ground forces, threatened the ceasefire, its report was carried by only a handful of small newspapers around the country. Read more about US media didn't report Israeli ceasefire violation
In the first three days of the Israeli offensive from 28-30 December, editorials and op-eds from five major US papers overwhelmingly adopted the official US and Israeli government talking points on the conflict — even where this version was clearly contradicted by the legal and historical record, widely available to the public. Shervan Sardar presents the findings of a special study for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about EI investigation: The US media and the attack on Gaza
To establish evidence of the BBC’s journalistic malpractice one often has to do no more than pick a random sample of news related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict currently on its website. In a time of conflict BBC’s coverage invariably tends to the Israeli perspective, and nowhere is this reflected more than in the semantics and framing of its reportage. Muhammad Idrees Ahmad analyzes for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about The BBC: Eyeless in Gaza
