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Just Journalism Newsletter 24 April 2009

Analysis of Durban II Coverage - PRESS On Monday, delegates representing 23 countries, including Britain, walked out of the Durban Review Conference in Geneva during a speech by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran. He described the creation of Israel as a result of, 'exploiting the holocaust and under the pretext of protecting the Jews' and labelled Israel, 'the most aggressive, racist government'. Read the text of his speech here. The vitriolic speech combined with the dramatic walkout generated wide media coverage, analysed below. Whilst news-reporting of the event in the broadsheets was generally impartial and consistent across the publications, there was real division on the comment pages over the interpretation of Ahmadinejad's words and whether the walkout of delegates and the boycott of the conference by some nations were appropriate. Monday's editorial in The Telegraph made a pre-emptive attack on the 'jamboree' and condemned Britain's decision to attend. It also described the original conference held in South Africa in 2001 as 'an exercise in anti-Semitic racism directed at Israel' and called Ahmadinejad 'the world's most famous Holocaust denier'. On the same day, Rosemary Righter at The Times described conference as a 'charade' whose aim is 'to silence critics of Islam'. Like The Telegraph, she also criticised the previous conference for 'absurdly associating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with racism.' In contrast, Wednesday's editorial in The Guardian contained more criticism of Israel than of Ahmadinejad. Whilst the Iranian leader was identified as a 'crude anti-semite', the piece construed as the down side of this attitude that it 'colours how people see his remarks on the establishment of Israel.' This is noteworthy for two reasons. First, it implies that The Guardian's real problem with Ahmadinejad's speech was that people might not listen to his arguments, rather than the fact that a head of state was espousing prejudice in an international forum; second, it demonstrates that The Guardian does not think that the antisemitism and the attitude towards Israel are connected. It goes on to lament another possible outcome of the speech, asking rhetorically, 'What greater vindication of Mr Netanyahu's view that the Iranian programme represents an existential threat to Israel can there be than the sentiments just expressed by the Iranian president?' This cynicism extends to the allegation that Netanyahu 'uses the threat of Iran as a way of avoiding having to deal politically with Hamas as a Palestinian resistance movement' and how '[I]t is grist to the mill of UN haters, whose lobbying scared the US away from the conference'. Two other articles on the comment pages ran counter to the line taken in The Telegraph and The Times. Most notably, Adrian Hamilton's opinion piece in Thursday's Independent, 'Walking out on Ahmadinejad was just plain childish' denied that the Iranian leader's speech was antisemitic and implied that he was not wrong in asserting that 'Zionists' control America. 'In fact,' he asserted, 'Ahmadinejad's speech was not anti-Semitic, not in the strict sense of the word. Nowhere in his speech did he mention his oft-quoted suggestion that Israel be expunged from the map of the world. At no point did he mention the word "Jews", only "Zionists", and then specifically in an Israeli context. Nor did he repeat his infamous Holocaust denials, although he did reportedly refer to it slightingly as "ambiguous" in its evidence.' Hamilton demonstrated clearly that he is closed to the possibility that 'Jews' might be substituted for 'Zionists' for political expediency. On allegations of disproportionate Zionist power in America, the writer informed his audience that, 'There are now books by Western academics arguing that the pro-Israeli lobby wields an influence in the US out of all proportion to its numbers. If the Western walkout in Geneva did nothing else, it rather proved the point.' On Ahmadinejad's charge that Israel is a racist state, Hamilton more-or-less agreed, saying it is 'the only country in the world that defines itself and its immigrants on racial grounds'. Seumas Milne at The Guardian picked up on the race theme in, 'What credibility is there in Geneva's all-white walkout?' Posing the question, 'What do the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Italy and Israel have in common?' he answered, 'They are all either European or European-settler states.' Unlike Adrian Hamilton, he poured scorn over the 'poisonous phrases' and 'antisemitic tropes straight out of the Tsarist anti-Semitic forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion'. However, he was no less critical of Israel and its supporters. TOP BROADCAST: BBC and Channel 4 The Durban Review Conference was also covered widely in the broadcast media, especially on the BBC. Various angles were covered, ranging from the implications of the speech for peace in the region, to whether or not ministers were justified in staging a walkout. BBC Radio 4 The most substantial coverage of the events was on Monday's edition of The World Tonight. BBC presenter Ritula Shah conducted several interviews, addressing both the nature of Ahmadinejad's speech, and controversy surrounding the walkout by Western diplomats. On the first issue, BBC Tehran correspondent John Leyne said, "these are [Ahmadinejad's] beliefs, and they are ones that resonate, really, with a lot of people around the world' who believe that 'the problems of poor people around the world are really caused by this kind of conspiracy of Zionists'. Shah briefly picked up on this during an interview with Michelle Montas, the spokesperson for the Secretary General of the UN, when she pointed out that the conference 'has ended dividing along accusations that President Ahmadinejad has made remarks that were essentially racist and antisemitic' and reminded Montas that the President of Iran had 'famously remarked that Israel should be wiped off the face of the map'. However, a discussion with the Pakistani ambassador to the UN, Zamir Akram, and US pro-Israel jurist and academic Alan Dershowitz brought a number of issues to the fore. First, Shah took a markedly more combative approach with Alan Dershowitz, who supported the walkout, than with the other guest. She also interrupted him on several occasions to challenge his position that a failure to engage with the President of Iran could be beneficial. When interviewing Akram, who did not support the walkout, Shah did not challenge a single one of his answers. Of particular note was the fact that the BBC journalist did not challenge the Pakistani ambassador's contention that the walkout was wrong on the grounds of free speech, in view of the fact that his own country recently proposed a Human Rights Council resolution to limit criticism of religion in UN member states. The BBC Editorial Guidelines require interviewers to 'rigorously test contributors' and this principle was clearly applied inconsistently. BBC Six O'Clock News Paul Adams' short report focused on how the speech highlighted the divisive position of Israel in the international community, rather than the controversial aspects of the speech itself. Adams remarked that 'the question of Israel and the Palestinians [is] one that utterly divides the international community,' citing how 'Israel's recent assault on the Gaza Strip was described as 'genocide' by President Ahmadinejad' against footage of Israel bombing Gaza. The report contained no discussion of the president's repeated denouncements of 'Zionists'. When Adams ended his report 'not for the first time, racism a subject of bitter international dispute' he implied here that it was Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, rather than Ahmadinejad's speech, that had caused the controversy. BBC Ten O'Clock News BBC Middle East Editor Jeremy Bowen, continued the focus on how Israel is perceived internationally, and went on to discuss how President Ahmadinejad's speech was emblematic of the division between Iran and the West, especially regarding its nuclear programme. While initially stating that 'many people, in the Middle East especially, believe that Israel's treatment of the Palestinians is racist', the report soon shifted to the wider issue of Iran's relationship to the international community. Bowen emphasised that its 'nuclear ambitions could put it on a collision course with America and its allies' and that the speech represented 'another ratcheting up of the crisis', while Huw Edwards reiterated that Ahmadinejad  had 'said this kind of thing, and much worse' before. Channel 4 News Channel 4 News coverage of Ahmadinejad's speech and the subsequent walkout was markedly more critical of the Iranian leader than the BBC. Jon Snow introduced Lindsey Hilsum's report with the quote, 'Outrageous and anti-Semitic: Mr Ahmadinejad is trying to take this conference hostage', before stating that 'the UN summit turned to farce today'. Hilsum's report continued in the same vein, concentrating on the nature of the speech, and of the international reaction to it. She described how the president's introduction was punctuated by protests by demonstrators, before 'Mr Ahmadinejad got onto his favourite subject: Zionism'. After the walkout, Hilsum recounted how 'the Iranian president railed against Zionism and America for half an hour'. In contrast to Paul Adams on the BBC, who ambiguously claimed that non-attributed 'racism' was responsible for the political disarray, Hilsumdescribed the conference as 'terminally mired in the dispute over President Ahmadinejad's attitude to Israel.   For more information or to contact us, please visit www.justjournalism.com Just Journalism does not endorse the views and opinions presented in the articles, documentaries and programmes referred to above.