Media Analysis: Regular briefings on trends in the news
The war you don’t see’: John Pilger on Israel and the media.
The main contention put forward in the Israeli-Palestinian section of the documentary was that all Israeli arguments are propaganda, and that the Israeli government bullies the media into accepting its narrative by threats and intimidation.
Double standards on footage
Palestinian journalist shooting
The first footage shown in the segment was of a man on the ground in desert-like surroundings, appearing to be shot at least three times. Another man could be seen running away while someone shouted in Arabic. The film then cut to a still of a man on a hospital bed with one leg amputated below the knee.
Pilger provided the following narration:
‘This is Palestinian cameraman Emad Ghanem being shot repeatedly by Israeli soldiers. The killing of non-Western journalists is rarely news. Emad Ghanem was 21 and lost both his legs.’
Pilger clearly framed this sequence as demonstrating wanton violence of IDF solders against journalists.
However, he pointedly omitted key facts about the incident which cast it in a very different light:
Ghanem was not wearing clothing that identified him as a journalist and he was shot while covering fighting between the IDF and Palestinians – a combat situation. These facts were even acknowledged by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (which nonetheless condemned the shooting unequivocally).
The fact that Ghanem was not wearing distinctive clothing, as is the norm for journalists in a conflict situation, and that the shooting had occurred during a pitched battle in which one side wears civilian clothing, might have made an audience less inclined to support Pilger’s implicit suggestion that soldiers shot him deliberately because they knew he was a journalist.
This questionable use of footage is ironic, given that Pilger’s staunchest criticism of the media was reserved for its use of Israeli footage following May’s flotilla raid.
Gaza flotilla raid
From the outset of his discussion of the events aboard the Mavi Marmara, during which nine Turkish nationals died during clashes with Israeli soldiers, it is clear that Pilger had no regard for the Israeli perspective on what had happened:
‘In the days that followed, Israeli propaganda set out to manipulate the news agenda.’
For Pilger, this propaganda consisted chiefly of the release of footage by Israel that supported its contention that its soldiers had used lethal force only after being overwhelmed and attacked by passengers upon the ship. Pilger was critical of how the media led with this footage, and claimed that it had been ‘doctored’ by Israel.
By way of contrast, Pilger argued that the media should have instead used the ‘graphic independent video [that] was available on the night of the attack’. At no point did Pilger explain why he considered footage supplied by Cultures of Resistance, a partisan advocacy group, as ‘independent’, while Israeli footage was ‘doctored’ and ‘propaganda’. Nor did Pilger mention that reporting from Turkish journalists who were also aboard the ship corroborated Israel’s version of events.
Pilger also held that the BBC’s use of an interview with Mark Regev, the Israeli government’s spokesperson, constituted ‘propaganda’. While Pilger derisively described Regev as the ‘chief Israeli propagandist’, the BBC head of news gathering Fran Unsworth defended the BBC’s coverage, arguing that all governments ‘are entitled to express their point of view’, and that the channel had promoted a variety of views. When Pilger attacked her for the lack of an ‘articulate’ equivalent of Regev on the Palestinian side, Unsworth replied that it was not the job of the BBC to ‘go out and appoint the Palestinian spokesperson.’
Accusations of Israeli threats
Alongside the issue of propaganda, Pilger also argued that much of the British media is simply too afraid of Israel to produce critical reporting. While he never explicitly stated what exactly it is that British journalists are afraid of, following the footage of Emad Ghanem ‘being shot repeatedly by Israeli soldiers’ he intoned:
‘Ten journalists have been killed by Israeli forces since 1992, and many more have been wounded.’
Having implied that journalists are afraid that they will be physically harmed, Pilger then explicitly made the wider point that the media is intimidated in general by Israel. He addressed this accusation to Fran Unsworth:
‘A certain state of fear exists about who the Israelis will complain to…will they complain at Director-General level, or will they just simply ring the news room…the point is this sense of intimidation, almost.’
Unsworth made the counter-argument that neither BBC correspondents in Jerusalem nor producers in the UK ‘fear’ the complaints of Israeli authorities. This is borne out by the high levels of reporting, often critical of Israel, that appears on the conflict every week in the British media.
Following Unsworth rejecting Pilger’s assertion that the British media ‘fears’ Israel, the documentary then cut to Professor Greg Philo from the Glasgow Media Group, who provided an anecdote about an unnamed television producer who stated that ‘we wait in fear for the telephone call from the Israelis.’
This anecdote is the sole evidence provided by Philo for his earlier assertion that:
‘What it comes down to is the basic knowledge journalists have that if they criticise Israel, then it’s potentially trouble; if they criticise the Palestinians, then there is much less of a problem.’
The argument put forward by Pilger and Philo (whose book ‘Bad News from Israel’ included Pilger in its page of acknowledgments, alongside partisan figures such as Avi Shlaim and Norman Finkelstein) was that, due to this ‘intimidation’, the British media will not use certain phrases such as ‘military occupation’, and will not provide necessary context for audiences to understand Palestinian perspectives.
This complaint about the use of certain terminology failed to note that the media regularly uses terms and phrases that both sides strongly disapprove of. For example, the BBC uses the phrase ‘separation barrier’, while some Israelis prefer ‘security fence’ and some Palestinians prefer ‘Apartheid wall’. Similarly, the BBC refers to members of groups such as Hamas as ‘militants’, while Israelis and Palestinians prefer ‘terrorists’ and ‘resistance fighters’ respectively. This policy on terminology is long established despite this supposed fear of a phone call from the Israelis.
To read about the Editor-in-chief of ITV describing Israel’s flotilla footage as ‘propaganda’, click here.
To read about John Pilger’s endorsement of a controversial report by the United Nations Human Rights Council, click here.
To read Just Journalism’s special report on how the broadsheets covered Israel’s flotilla footage, clickhere.
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