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The Public Diplomacy Blog is intended to stimulate dialog among scholars, researchers, practitioners and professionals from around the world in the public diplomacy sphere. The opinions represented here are the authors' own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the USC Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School.
‘REUTERSGATE’ BECOMES AN ISSUE IN REPORTING THE ISRAEL-HEZBOLLAH WAR
AUG 9, 2006 - 6:01PM PDT
Posted by Alvin Snyder
All posts by this author
The media has chosen sides in the Israel-Hezbollah War, and much is ugly. Some errant media players have emerged. One is a behemoth news service, whose products -- including newspaper and TV news reports -- have an audience of many millions worldwide. Another is a world-renowned news brand, whose reports are said to be biased. Then there is someone from a major daily newspaper promoting a book, and saying really stupid things. But there are those who boldly set the record straight in their reports. Someone could say that any large organization cannot be expected to control all of its employees, and that could be said for the Reuters news agency. Headquartered in Great Britain, Reuters calls itself "the largest international multi-media news agency, reporting extensively from around the world on topics ranging from financial markets to general and political news." But at least two Reuters journalists lost it while attending to their version of coverage of the Israel-Hezbollah war. Growing tension between the news agency and the blogosphere began boiling over in late may, after Charles Johnson's Little Green Footballs pro-Israel Web log received an e-mail death threat that was soon traced to the computer of a Reuters staffer. "I look forward to the day you pigs get your throats cut," wrote the unnamed Reuters staffer, who was suspended, pending investigation. Last week, Johnson, who was credited with breaking open the 2004 "Rathergate" scandal after Dan Rather aired a damning piece regarding President Bush's national guard service on CBS' 60 Minutes II, broke open what is now being referred to as "Reutersgate." In the first week of August, a wayward Reuters contractor, the Lebanese freelance photographer Adnan Hajj, doctored at least two photographs to make Israeli military actions in Lebanon appear worse than they actually were. He layered double images on an August 5 photo depicting an Israeli military bombing of targets in Beirut, which made the bomb explosions appear to cause more devastation than they did. A second photo, dated August 2, was doctored to make an Israeli jet fighter appear that it was firing three bursts. Hajj’s entire photograph archive was purged from Reuters' database. But do his actions reflect a culture of anti-Israel bias at Reuters? A random review of TV news feeds by Reuters, which are broadcast to subscribers worldwide, show a decided tilt against Israel. In a news broadcast on its Web site August 7, which was monitored by Worldcasting, a Reuters broadcaster reported that Israel was killing innocent civilians in Lebanon, to which Hezbollah retaliated by killing Israeli military. "Israel's bombardment of Lebanon continues," said the news broadcaster, "claiming more than a dozen civilians, as a UN cease fire plan remains deadlocked. Air strikes on southern (Lebanese) villages have killed seven members of one family in their house, while other raids have targeted Hezbollah strongholds in Beirut and the Eastern Bekaa Valley. Hezbollah has struck back with more of the rocket attacks in Israel, that killed fifteen people yesterday, most of the them…... FULL TEXT
Read Comments (11) | Add Your Own
 Read Comments:
Alan Simpson on August 10, 2006 @ 11:04 am:
Oh dear, how sad!! Poor little Israel's aggression being misunderstood again.
Sorry Alvin this is not a balanced piece of journalism looking at the blatant unbalanced reporting from both sides.
CNN reporters as they are touring the border in IDF helicopters with an IDF General to point out the Hezbollah positions would criticize Al Jazeera. Cut to Wolf Blitzer, late of Jerusalem Post and AIPAC to add his spin.
No Hezbollah and Al Qaeda have learned from us how to spin and lie on camera, and with better visuals are reaching a larger sympathetic audience.
Any writer or broadcaster who criticizes Israel's extremism is branded "Anti Semitic" by the well organized Jewish media lobby. It doesn't work any more!
True Hezbollah is the tool of the Iranian Hawks, just as Israel is the tool of American Zionist Hawks. It's time to leave the poor people of Israel and the whole region alone to get on with their lives in peace. Israel needs the Arabs, the Arabs need Israel. Neither needs Iranian or American Military Hawks.
We are screwing up our image around the world and boosting recruitment to Al Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas because of our failure for the first time in 230 years to be a beacon of public diplomacy others respect. Please don't follow in lockstep the AIPAC talking points and give the readers fresh and deeper analysis of the global scenario. We are losing the global media war!! The next phase is planes falling out of the skies with stars and stripes on their tails. Start thinking out of the box as to how we can halt the slide over the Abyss. Time is not on our side, it's on the side of China, the replacement Super Power.
Alan Simpson
President
Communication Links, Inc.
Washington, DC
Jessica Alona on August 10, 2006 @ 1:57 pm:
Well done
Rodney A Stanton on August 10, 2006 @ 2:41 pm:
Good job; well documented.
Rob Averill on August 10, 2006 @ 4:50 pm:
Is it only bias if it does not support your argument ? Or, perhaps there is an unbiased approach to assessing media bias.
Shameful !
Rob
dAVID kIESERMAN on August 10, 2006 @ 7:40 pm:
Nicely written, sir.
The so called "drive-by media" and the other folks out there in LEFT field, just don't get it. The real truth is that the media just wants to protect the terrorists from getting hurt because they believe that talking to a terrorist is the way to get him to behave. If you are nice to a person he will treat you nicely in return. (They reason).
The truth is that Hezbola is being whipped and they (the left) cannot accept that. If the terrorists are beaten in an out and out war (the only language they understand) that would mean that the left would never have the opportunity to prove themselves correct about people and terrorists
Your writing shows a clear understanding of what is going on and I admire you for your ability to say it so clearly.
And, yes, antisemitism toward the Jews (sounds redundant, no?) is a very different thing than fear of the other semites in the area. But that is just semantics.
The general media just don't see the negative consequences to being reasonable with unreasonable people. It just does not work, never has and probably never will.
Amos on August 11, 2006 @ 10:19 am:
Bless Israel and you shall be blessed. Curse Israel and you shall be cursed.
David G. on August 12, 2006 @ 1:40 pm:
Gee, your piece on biased and false reporting really upset Homer Simpson's brother Alan.
bernard eismann on August 13, 2006 @ 12:57 pm:
The piece is on point.
Not only Reuters but British press overall (rare exceptions) has been pro-Aab since 1948. For that matter so has the French media, taking its cue from the French cabinet minister who refers to Israel as "...a shitty little country."
I speak from first hand knowledge. I reported from the area in 1955-56, '58,63 and '67.
Peter H on August 14, 2006 @ 2:51 pm:
What a riduculous column! The fact that you obssess about a distroted pciture rather than the 900+ Lebanese civilians killed, the million+ Lebanese civilians turned into refugees, the desttruction of Lebanon's enviroment and infrastructure shows your warped priorities.
Yiou are sick, Mr. Snyder.
Peter H on August 14, 2006 @ 2:55 pm:
Mr. Snyder also neglects the fact that opinion journalists have written overwhelmingly in favor of Israel. Is there anybody remotely comparable on the pro-Palestinian or pro-Lebanese side as there is to Charles Krauthammer, George will or Jeff Jacoby on the pro-Israeli side.
Peter H on August 14, 2006 @ 7:48 pm:
One more point: For a scholar of public diplomoacy, Mr. Synder is remarkly unaware of the extent to which foreign observers have criticized the American media for favoring the Israeli point of view of the conflict:
"The media, more generally, has left little doubt in the minds of a majority of American news consumers that the Israelis are the good guys, the aggrieved victims, while Hizbollah is an incarnation of the same evil responsible for bringing down the World Trade Centre, a heartless and faceless organisation whose destruction is so important it can justify all the damage Israel is inflicting on Lebanon and its civilians."
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article1219241.ece
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