Steve Quayle News Alerts

May 30, 2002
By Diana Lynne

The battle has intensified in the new Mideast war front – American newspapers – as the Washington Post becomes the latest major daily to come under attack for a perceived anti-Israel bias in its coverage of the conflict, and pro-Palestinian groups mobilize for a counteroffensive to what they see as an orchestrated effort by Jews to sway public sentiment.

A grass-roots organization of professionals and lay people based in the Washington, D.C., area is calling on Post subscribers to halt their subscriptions during the week of June 10 to June 17 to "protest the paper's skewed coverage on Israel." BoycottThePost.org launched an online petition and is sending e-mail alerts about their effort to "achieve truthful reporting on the Middle East." The group is also contacting major Post advertisers to give them the opportunity to "save money" during the boycott week.

"We're not interested in putting the Post out of business. We want them covering the news. We just want them to be fair and honest," activist Peter Hébert told WorldNetDaily. "The only way for democracy to function is if the press performs its role of full information."

On its website, the group lists an archive of "documented bias" members say they've grown accustomed to over the past 18 months. These include:

* "Outright falsehoods
* Attributing emotions to actions, which shapes opinion
* Reporting Palestinian testimonial as fact, but Israeli testimonial as 'claims'
* Ignoring important facts/context
* Referring to terrorists as 'gunmen,' 'militants' and 'freedom fighters'
* Legitimizing terrorism as a valid political tool by stressing the 'rationale' for it
* De-humanizing Israeli suffering by blaming the victim for the violence
* Referring to 'settlers' as 'radicals'
* Headlines serving as conclusions
* News analysis and commentary not labeled as such
* A journalist's opinion reported as news
* Phrases like 'cycle of violence' and 'levels of violence' blur the distinction between offensive operations by terrorists and defensive operations by a sovereign state
* In depth story-telling of the suffering of Palestinian people, but no corresponding analysis of rampant Palestinian Authority corruption, or comparison to conditions when Israel managed and provided infrastructure for the same area
* Report[ing] that West Bank and Gaza were 'occupied territories' when in fact these areas had been under PA control since 1993 per Oslo
* Quick to show Palestinian suffering but rarely showing Israeli terror victims, and when they do, it's side by side with conditions in Palestinian controlled areas – implying their situation is Israel's doing."

Hébert offers a specific example of the Post "ignoring important facts/context" which, in his view, represents intentional distortion on the part of the Post:

"An April 20 Associated Press story, 'Gunman Kills Israeli Border Policeman,'" said Hébert, "was the source for The Washington Post's April 21 article 'Israel Sets Condition For Jenin Camp Probe.' ... [The Post] omitted the key factoid and thereby downplayed the facts and misinformed the paper's readers. AP's version in part reads:

'Sharon should expect all doors of hell to break loose,' vowed a masked militant, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. 'We are ready for martyrdom. But the occupation will never be safe on the land of historical Palestine, from the river to the sea,' the man told the crowd.

"The Washington Post's sanitized and dumbed down version ... reads:

'Sharon should expect all doors of hell to break loose,' one of the mourners was quoted as saying.

"The omission of the phrase 'from the river to the sea' distorts the facts and downplays reality. 'From the river to the sea' is Syria's position, which the Saudis hold, and this is pre-1947, pre-U.N. Partition Resolution – the Arab nations rejected a two-state solution. Up until the Saudi Proposal, they still rejected a two-state solution. This 'from the river to the sea' is connected with the full right of return of the 4 million Palestinian Arabs back into places within Israel. That was the deal killer and why Arafat walked away from Camp David II in June 2000."

Laurel Anchors, an attorney and spokesperson for the group, claims the paper violates the code of ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists.

"In a page-one article today, there's an article about the murder of Israeli high school kids by Palestinians, who are called "gunmen," said Anchors. "These boys were playing basketball. But in the article, they weren't murdered, just killed. ... The article continues inside the paper, and below the article there's a large picture of Palestinian women looking upset with a caption that says something like 'Looking for Relief.' Who are we supposed to feel sorry for here? If this had been Palestinian kids killed, you'd see a front-page photo of grieving Palestinians, and the gunmen would have been called "murderers." This, to me, is not just an accident. It's a very conscious effort to portray a point of view. One of the journalistic code of ethics is to look at your own bias and put it aside."

Anchors details accounts of being ignored and even shouted at by "hostile" and "defensive" Post editors when she contacted the paper to initiate dialogue numerous times over the past six months.

"We tried requesting meetings, but were either stonewalled or treated rudely," says Anchors. "We hope that the boycott will help the Post's editors realize that they've got a sizeable group of dissatisfied readers in the community, people who have noted a pervasive and long-term tendency to biased reporting by the paper."

Post spokesperson Eric Grant says the paper takes the issue "very seriously because of its reputation as one of being conscientious and bringing fairness to the issues."

"The Washington Post has been very receptive to the concerns of the community regarding the Middle East coverage," Grant told WND. "Managing Editor Phil Bennett and Assistant Managing Editor David Hoffman met with members of the Jewish community, the American Jewish Committee, in early May for two hours. It was a very productive meeting."

When asked whether the meeting spawned any changes in coverage Grant responded, "We do believe our coverage is balanced. ... Our correspondents are working under duress and have come under pressure from both sides in this conflict and have worked long hours to provide coverage and that shouldn't be lost in all of this."

The Post boycott initiative comes on the heels of similar grass-roots efforts targeting the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle and the Chicago Tribune. As WorldNetDaily reported, StandWithUs.com, an 8,000-member group of concerned Christians and Jews born out of a living room gathering of "regular moms," rabbis and community leaders a year ago, joined a community-wide, synagogue-driven mobilization of Los Angeles Times readers to stage a subscription protest commencing on April 17 in observance of Israeli Independence Day.

The paper put a "rough estimate" of a thousand on the number of cancellations called in that day, which Communications Director Mike Lange stated "represent less than one-tenth of one percent of our average daily subscriptions." Citing results of an online survey and interviews with people at all the temples, StandWithUs spokesperson Allyson Rowen Taylor says a better estimate of cancellations is "closer to 7 - 10,000."

StandWithUs declared a temporary truce in the boycott as a conciliatory gesture following a lengthy meeting with Times editors, during which the group's concerns were presented.

"Some readers may take objection to specific articles," said Times Editor John Carroll in a statement released during the first week of the subscription boycott, "but I am confident that, over time, careful readers of this newspaper will get a full, balanced account of these unsettling events."

WorldNetDaily also reported that prominent Jewish leaders called for a boycott against the New York Times over perceived anti-Israel bias.

"There was a flurry of cancellations in late April, but they've abated," Catherine Mathis, vice president of corporate communications told WND. Mathis said no meeting between editors and community leaders akin to that held by the Washington Post had occurred. When asked what might explain the leveling off of subscription cancellations Mathis said, "I can't speak to the issue of why the cancellations abated, but we are highly conscious of sensitivities surrounding coverage of the Middle East. Our determination is to cover all sides thoroughly, dispassionately and with scrupulous impartiality."

Pro-Palestinian counterattack

The Palestine news agency Wafa, reported Tuesday that the "intense pressure campaign by several pro-Israel groups" seeks to "influence U.S. news coverage of the Middle East" and is "said to be motivated by a concern that media coverage of the Middle East – especially articles and broadcasts deemed 'sympathetic to Palestinians' – could weaken public support for Israel and influence what is generally seen as a historically pro-Israel U.S. policy."

Wafa quotes a column by Washington Post ombudsman Michael Getler, in which he refuted the charge of bias: "Is it possible that so many major American news organizations are getting this story wrong – that some sort of national media conspiracy is at work here? That, of course, is not the case, and news organizations will persevere in reporting this story in an unflinching, unintimidated fashion that reports the news in the most accurate way possible for their entire readership."

"It's a little bit like 'you're with us or against us,'" Wafa quotes James Naughton, former executive editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer and now president of the Florida-based Poynter Institute for Media Studies, as saying.

Wafa quotes Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of the San Francisco-based Tikkun magazine, as likening the boycotts over anti-Israel bias to "McCarthyism."

"We're a grass-roots initiative; we have limited things we can do," argued Dr. Michael Berenhaus a Bethesda, Md., optometrist and spokesperson for BoycottThePost.org. "We represent a huge readership who is expressing a symbolic gesture. We're not looking for the Post to be pro-Israel. We're looking for it to be pro-fairness, pro-accuracy and pro-honesty."

According to Wafa, newsroom officials see pro-Palestinian groups beginning to expand their own lobbying and public-relations efforts.

One group, according to Hébert, even launched a website similar in design to BoycottThePost.org under the domain "BoycottThePost.com," that called for a subscription boycott over a perceived Pro-Israel bias.

"Imitation is the highest form of flattery," Hébert said. "But they don't have any real beef. It's clear they're just trying to obfuscate our efforts."

Caught in the crossfire of this new Mideast war front, news executives are donning flack jackets. National Public Radio (NPR) ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin, told ABC News he and 60 or so ombudsmen at newspapers across America are convinced they have never seen anything quite like this. Dvorkin said he fielded phone calls and tens of thousands of e-mails from listeners on both sides of the issue, but primarily from listeners sympathetic to the Palestinian people.

"There is intense pressure from both sides to make sure their perspective is heard and, even more importantly, the other perspective is not," Dvorkin told ABC.

Anchors thinks editors need to be less preoccupied with achieving balanced coverage and more earnest in seeking the truth.

"Freedom of the press in this country means no propaganda from the government," she said. "But it also means no propaganda from the editors."

We tried requesting meetings, but were either stonewalled or treated rudely. We hope that the boycott will help the Post's editors realize that they've got a sizeable group of dissatisfied readers in the community, people who have noted a pervasive and long-term tendency to biased reporting by the paper. --Laurel Anchors, spokesperson for BoycottThePost.org

The Washington Post has been very receptive to the concerns of the community regarding the Middle East coverage. Managing Editor Phil Bennett, and Assistant Managing Editor David Hoffman met with members of the Jewish community, the American Jewish Committee, in early May for two hours. It was a very productive meeting. ... We do believe our coverage is balanced. --Eric Grant, spokesperson for The Washington Post
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=27785