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Just Journalism Newsletter 25 September 2009

This Week · Read our analysis of media coverage of this week's trilateral meeting between Obama, Netanyahu and Abbas. · Find out how the Goldstone report coverage lacked backround information about Israel's relationship with the UN Human Rights Council. · Glance at our selection of key quotes from media outlets on the UN General Assembly and Security Council meetings. ALSO, Just Journalism Advisory Board member Robin Shepherd has just released his latest book, 'A State Beyond the Pale: Europe's Problem with Israel'. Read about it on Robin's blog here.    Trilateral talks and allocating blame for failure On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas arrived in New York to discuss the future of the Middle East peace process with President Obama. As the first direct meeting between the leaders and with mounting pressure to start serious peace talks, the event attracted the predictable slew of coverage. Jonathan Freedland, writing the lead opinion piece for The Guardian on Wednesday, noted two important features of the recent stalemate. First, the current political stability of both the Israeli and Palestinian premiers: 'local politics on both sides of the conflict has made inaction a safer bet than action.' Second, the failure of American diplomats to secure concessions from either side, with Israel refusing to implement a total freeze on settlement building in the West Bank, and Arab states baulking at implementing 'normalisation' gestures. These two important points, however, were not really addressed in most of the news-reporting. The stalemate between Netanyahu, who only offered a partial settlement freeze of nine months, and Abbas, who declined the offer of peace-talks without preconditions, was not portrayed as a stand-off between two uncompromising leaders. Rather, the coverage emphasised the inability of George Mitchell to secure a shift in Israel's position on settlements. This emphasis was indicated in three ways. First, three out of seven headlines explicitly blamed Israel for the failure of the talks. The Sunday Times claimed, 'Obama stumped by Israel as all world's problems arrive'. The Daily Telegraph asserted, 'Middle East summit in doubt as Israel rejects settlement freeze' and The Guardian said, 'Settlements row throws Middle East peace talks into doubt'. Click here to read more.   Key facts omitted from Goldstone reporting Last week, the UN Human Rights Council published the findings of its investigation into alleged war crimes committed during the Gaza war. Headed by South African Judge Richard Goldstone, the four-person team concluded that there was strong evidence that war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity, had been committed by both Israel and Hamas. The bulk of the report marshalled evidence against the conduct of Israel's armed forces, and came to more far-reaching conclusions than other similar reports published by NGOs and news outlets. For example, the report concluded that 'While the Israeli Government has sought to portray its operations as essentially a response to rocket attacks in the exercise of its right to self defence, the Mission considers the plan to have been directed, at least in part, at a different target: the people of Gaza as a whole.' While the majority of news coverage of the story mentioned that Israel rejected the report, and had refused to cooperate with the investigation, this tended not to be elaborated upon. The Guardian and the Financial Times indicated Israel's position, briefly mentioning that the government regards the UNHRC as 'biased against Israel' and 'fundamentally anti-Israeli' respectively. The Times noted that the body 'has a record of criticising Israel'. However, three key points were not discussed in any of the broadsheets: · The original mandate of the mission had been to investigate only Israel's role in the war · One of the four investigators, Christine Chinkin, publicly prejudged the outcome of the investigation · The UNHRC has criticised Israel more than every other country combined since its inception in 2006 Click here to continue reading.   What the media said about the UN This week saw a frenzy of high diplomatic activity at the UN, with President Obama making his maiden address to the General Assembly and chairing a meeting of the Security Council. Middle East issues were high on the agenda, with the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and nuclear non-proliferation addressed as a matter of priority. Below is a selection of key quotes from the British media on these issues. Iran: 'Some intelligence agencies and Israel's Mr Netanyahu were warning in the 1990s that Iran was close to getting the bomb. Some Iran watchers believe the dangers are still being exaggerated. World leaders have to decide who is right. Mistakes would be very costly.' Jeremy Bowen, BBC News at Ten 'Negotiations should continue, but for the sake of a few more slippery promises of nuclear restraint the US and Europe must not do anything that would give a jot more legitimacy to a fraudulently elected president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who celebrated last week's "Jerusalem Day" by saying that "the pretext" for the creation of Israel - that is, the Holocaust - "is false ... It is a lie based on an unprovable and mythical claim."' Timothy Garton Ash, The Guardian 'The situation in Iran today is, if anything, even worse than when Dr Ebadi won the Nobel prize six years ago, thanks to the fraudulent election in June, the violent crackdown on protesters that followed and Mr Ahmadinejad's continuing rants predicting Israel's demise and claiming that the Nazi Holocaust never happened.' 'Estimates vary, but some experts believe Iran has enough enriched uranium at its Natanz plant to manufacture at least one nuclear warhead and has reportedly resumed work on how to load ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads. That is deeply alarming, and the 3+3 powers - Britain, the US, France, Germany, Russia and China - are right to confront Iran's evasions on the issue on October 1.' Editorial, The Times Click here for more. 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.