In response to the Washington Post ombudsman’s comparison of Hamas missiles to “bee stings” the other day, Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren took the media to task in WaPo’s opinion section this morning. Oren doesn’t single out ombud Patrick Pexton directly, but it’s clearly implied:
Media naturally gravitate toward dramatic and highly visual stories. Reports of 5.5 million Israelis gathered nightly in bomb shelters scarcely compete with the Palestinian father interviewed after losing his son. Both are, of course, newsworthy, but the first tells a more complete story while the second stirs emotions.
This is precisely what Hamas wants. It seeks to instill a visceral disgust for any Israeli act of self-defense, even one taken after years of unprovoked aggression.
Hamas strives to replace the tens of thousands of phone calls and text messages Israel sent to Palestinian civilians, warning them to leave combat zones, with lurid images of Palestinian suffering. If Hamas cannot win the war, it wants to win the story of the war. …
Like Americans, we cherish a free press, but unlike the terrorists, we are not looking for headlines. Our hope is that media resist the temptation to give them what they want.
As Oren writes, this is exactly the kind of coverage that benefits Hamas, and the frustrating part is many journalists don’t seem to have a problem with it. Israel has the right to use force to defend its own people from attacks, but media figures like Pexton act as if any response is out-of-bounds simply because Israel has a strong military.
To give an analogy, there are no reliable estimates of Taliban and insurgent casualties in Afghanistan, but the numbers are obviously much larger than the number of fallen NATO forces. Add in the number of Afghan civilian casualties (the majority of them killed by the Taliban and its allies) and that would greatly outweigh the number of NATO fatalities. The Taliban also fights with unsophisticated weapons, improvised explosive devices and Soviet-era rifles, and limited training. Often the Taliban blows up its own fighters while setting up IEDs; in some cases they fail to go off or are detected. Meanwhile, the U.S. has the greatest military the world has ever seen. Not only do NATO troops have access to far superior weapons and training, but billions are spent on counter-IED efforts and protective gear.
Yet serious journalists don’t contrast the number of NATO fatalities with the number of insurgency fatalities (or lump in Afghan civilian deaths with Taliban deaths) without putting it in proper context. They don’t compare the Taliban’s IEDs and small-arms attacks — which have caused horrific NATO casualties — to “bee stings on a bear’s behind.” They don’t describe U.S. defense against insurgency attacks as “disproportionate,” or set it up as a David v. Goliath scenario.
Hamas is as much a terrorist group as the Taliban, but they are not treated that way by a large portion of the media. As Oren argues, this type of coverage will only encourage more violence from Hamas, not less.
I guess he's not getting invited to CNN's annual Jew burning holiday celebration.
Well, this is what comes of Israel sucking up a million 'bee stings' and a dozen exploded buses and pizza parlors over the years without responding with force and finality. n nIsrael acted AS IF they were bee stings. Why expect any less from the media, which is not only looking for emotional David and Goliath stories, but is predisposed to disfavor Israel? n n nOf course, any response to a few missiles NOW seems 'disproportionate'. n n
As the saying goes, it's always peaceful until Israel fights back. In the eyes of many people, Jews being murdered for being Jews is just the normal state of affairs, and nothing to get upset about. n nSome things have not changed much in the 700 years since the prayer was added to the Monday/Thursday morning service lamenting that we are viewed k'tzon latevach yuval – like sheep to be led to slaughter.
We do it to ourselves. n nWe let the Germans lead us to slaughter, 4 soldiers to a thousand men and women, and now we let Arab savages ravage us with impunity. n
But the Taliban are killing Americans. Hamas is only killing Jews and Arabs. The press does not care if the former are killed, and does not care about the latter unless they are killed by Israel.
Not sure everyone will be OK with calling Demokrats "terrorists", but of course media bias helps them.
I thought at first like you that "Oren doesn’t single out ombud Patrick Pexton directly." On further inspection, I saw that actually he did. Or he did online. There's a link to Pexton's column in Amb. Oren's op-ed. There's no ambiguity or uncertainty about Oren's target.
The only words I remember from reading Amb Oren’s fine op-ed in the WaPo was the very poor wording that the “population of Tel Aviv is twice as dense as Gaza”
I know he meant population density per square mile, but…
It was NOT an effective pushback against media bias.
Amb Oren should have not written "the population of Tel Aviv is twice as dense as Gaza" n nI know he meant population density per square mile, but not an effective pushback against media bias
Well, the first rocket attack alarms to go off in Tel Aviv interrupted a bunch of Tel Avivniks who were demonstrating in support of the Gazans. So at least part of Tel Aviv's population is as dense as they come.
Ambassador Oren missed the most reprehensible part of the Washington Post's front page image, and the defense offered by the paper's ombudsman. n n Patrick Pexton, in extenuation, quotes the Post's photo editor, Mary Ann Golon who explained, n "the purpose of any front-page photo, regardless of subject, is to move the reader, whether through its beauty, sentiment or drama". n nIs that true? Does professional journalism allow for moving the reader's sentiments with an accompanying picture, even when the facts related in that news report do not support the sentiments encouraged by the picture? n nOn the opening day of that war, the Post's dramatic photo established the villain and victim of the fighting, something the news story itself did not. That is the opposite of journalism. It is recourse to the most brazen methods of propaganda n