Electronic Intifada : Role of the Media

Report: Israeli intelligence illegally profiling travelers in South Africa

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 09:56:50 PST

Last month South Africa's premier investigative journalism TV show, Carte Blanche, aired an investigation of allegations that security personnel from Israel's national carrier, El Al Airlines, were acting dubiously at Johannesburg's airport. Carte Blanche conducted an experiment, sending an undercover reporter into the airport, expecting him to be targeted simply because he was Muslim. Sayed Dhansay comments for The Electronic Intifada.

CAMERA's broken lens revisited

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 10:45:16 PST

A February 2008 report by the pro-Israel media watchdog CAMERA claimed the existence of an overwhelming pro-Arab, anti-Israel agenda in The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Los Angeles Times in "guest op-eds" over a 19-month period. The Electronic Intifada found CAMER ignored articles that undermined its claims. CAMERA responded with another report reaffirming most of its findings, but The Electronic Intifada finds that once again, CAMERA's analysis fails to pass the credibility test.

Lies and Israel's war crimes

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 06:45:47 PST

This month marked six months since the "official" conclusion to Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip, "Operation Cast Lead." Electronic Intifada contributor Ben White looks at some of the strategies of Israel's campaign of disinformation, confusion, and lies -- and the reality of its war crimes in the Gaza Strip.

Music, The New York Times and the politics of a Palestinian state

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 00:58:45 PST

"Just as it is apparently impossible for the President of the United States to visit the Middle East without a corresponding visit to Buchenwald, it is apparently also impossible to have a news article on Palestinian humanity without a corresponding reminder that Arabs do not understand the Holocaust." So writes Belén Fernández in a comment on how The New York Times covers the work of Palestinian musicians.

Ramattan's war: The world's eyes into Gaza

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 09:11:20 PST

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.

Egypt on offensive after critical Al-Jazeera coverage

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 10:35:39 PST

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.

Selective reporting from Lebanon

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 01:38:30 PST

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.

BBC violates its own principles by not airing Gaza appeal

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 09:51:28 PST

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.

Are Germans getting fed up with Israel?

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 06:22:03 PST

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.

In Washington, all roads lead to Tehran

Sat, 10 Jan 2009 10:20:41 PST

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.

EI investigation: The US media and the attack on Gaza

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 17:12:31 PST

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.

Canadian media attempt to silence on Israel

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 10:45:06 PST

When the bottom line is threatened, corporations typically show little concern for holding the line on political principles such as freedom of expression. In capitalism, freedom is too often just another word for maximizing profits. Robert Jensen comments.

EI study refutes CAMERA media bias accusation

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 07:07:19 PST

The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) is a media monitoring organization with a large database of supporters known for its staunch support for Israeli policies and its ability to influence media coverage. While CAMERA claims to be objective and interested in holding the media accountable to its own "self-professed standards," a study published by The Electronic Intifada demonstrates terminology and views of the organization are largely consistent with those of the Israeli government itself.

Haaretz.com promotes website advocating genocide and terrorism

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 11:42:56 PST

Haaretz.com, the website of the Israeli newspaper often cited as an example of Israel's liberal, critical media carries paid advertisements from a website openly advocating the total destruction of the Palestinian people, the murder of large numbers of Muslim civilians, the assassination of the family members of Arab rulers, and the use of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons against dozens of countries.

This 'bombshell' took a year falling

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 10:10:13 PST

CAIRO, 2 April (IPS) - A recent article in Vanity Fair magazine "exposing" a US-planned coup attempt against Palestinian resistance movement Hamas last year has ignited a storm of debate about Washington's Middle East policies. Yet for more than nine months, details of the plot were reported in the independent Arabic press -- and elsewhere -- leading some observers to ask: where was the mainstream media?

Revealed: the US plan to start a Palestinian civil war

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 08:19:56 PST

United States officials including President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice participated in a conspiracy to arm and train Contra-style Palestinian militias nominally loyal to the Fatah party to overthrow the democratically-elected Hamas government in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, an investigative article in the April 2008 issue of Vanity Fair has revealed.

Where does it end?

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 16:07:22 PST

The New York Times, always to be counted on to provide the right euphemisms, reported that "Israel's defense minister, Ehud Barak, ordered a temporary halt on all imports into the Hamas-run Gaza Strip late last week. The measure, along with stepped-up military operations in Gaza, was meant to persuade Palestinian militants there to stop firing rockets at Israel." Terms like "measures" and "persuasion" sound so gentle. But they cover up a brutal reality that Israeli leaders are keen to boast about. Ali Abunimah comments.

Citizenship, Zionism and separation of religion from the state

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 02:05:37 PST

It is customary to say that the Israeli daily Haaretz is a progressive newspaper. However, its progressive character is generally nowhere to be seen when Israel initiates a war against one of its neighbors -- its opposition to the previous two wars came only after the newspaper provided support to the policies of the government and the military -- or abuses against the Palestinian people. However, when dealing with matters of religion, and particularly hatred of the religious, the progressiveness of Haaretz, its editors and community of readers, is endless. Michael Warschawski comments.

Shoot and cry: Liberal Zionism's dilemma

Thu, 20 Sep 2007 03:07:13 PST

Liberal Zionists desperately wish to "acknowledge" and embrace the Palestinian "feeling" of suffering and dispossession, yet at the same time, help to solidify the Zionist mythology that was, and is, used to justify the Palestinians' dispossession. Perhaps it is not quite strictly accurate to call it a "dilemma," since for the Zionist -- liberal or otherwise -- there is no doubt when it comes to the crunch question of whether to support or oppose the ongoing colonization of Palestine and the dispossession of its people. Ben White comments for EI.

Decoding the media's Palestinian "civil war"

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 18:28:00 PST

Major news stories from Palestine/Israel are often accompanied by what becomes a self-reinforcing "vocabulary," typically generated by Israeli government ministries or other propaganda outlets, and then picked up by the Western media. A classic example was the redeployment of Israeli settlers and military from the Gaza Strip in 2005, which was successfully packaged as a "disengagement" that pitted "Israeli against Israeli," in a "painful compromise."