An Open Letter to University Presidents
9 min read
When it comes to the current Hamas-Israel war, normal journalistic standards go out the window.
Israel gets called a lot of things these days: “Colonial”. “White Supremacist”. “Apartheid”. “Evil”. “Illegitimate”. Slurs that Israel is “committing genocide” or even waging a “war on humanity” have become commonplace on the news and in casual discourse.
A key factor in the transformation of coverage related to Israel is the retreat of traditional news bureaus. In a seminal 2008 analysis, journalist Sherry Ricchiardi noted that “foreign correspondents assigned to a country for a prolonged period, with expertise in the local language, culture, history, and customs” is a “vanishing breed”. That was 16 long years ago; today, almost no news outlets maintain their own foreign correspondents any more. The loss in foreign news bureaus and foreign correspondents means that news agencies lack experience, access, and nuance when it comes to reporting on events around the world.
The scale of the problem in Israel became apparent in the aftermath of Hamas’ deadly October 7, 2023 attack. As newspapers and television stations rushed to report on the atrocities, the Washington Post reported that major “networks have been ‘scrambling’ - in the words of one veteran television journalist - to get correspondents and producers to Israel….” Whereas in past decades, it was common for newspapers and television stations to have permanent journalists on the ground in Israel and elsewhere around the world, on October 7 news editors found themselves playing catchup. Reporters had difficulty getting flights to Israel on October 7 and in its aftermath. Once Israel’s assault on Hamas began on October 17, 2023, virtually no international media organization had a presence inside Gaza.
Into this vacuum of news-reporting expertise, highly biased actors are supplying a never-ending stream of misinformation and slurs about the Jewish state. Here are a few ways in which global news is flooded with misinformation and hatred.
In the absence of any foreign press bureaus inside Gaza, news outlets around the world are relying on biased locals, “stringers” who are not professional, dispassionate journalists, to report what’s going on inside the war-torn territory. Jerusalem Post editor Gil Hoffman notes: “Who are these freelancers? It has unfortunately become evident during this war that among the world’s top media outlets, the standards for hiring freelance writers, photographers, and cameramen are considerably lower in Gaza than in Greece or Guatemala.”
Hassan Eslaiah, a stringer who supplied photos to CNN and Agence France Presse, was later revealed to be a close associate of Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas commander who planned the October 7 massacre. Another stringer, Issam Adwan, has publicly called for Hamas to fight Israel, yet still is listed as a journalist working for AP. Stringer Fayq Abu Mostafa, who works for Reuters, was caught on video on October 7 urging Gazans to enter Israel to massacre Israelis.
In January 2024, Al Jazeera accused Israel of “targeting” journalists after two of their stringers, Hamza Al-Dahdouh and Mustafa Thuraya, were killed in fighting in Gaza. It emerged later that both men were Hamas fighters in addition to providing news to international outlets. (Al Jazeera never updated their article accusing Israel of adopting a policy of journalist-murdering.)
“You can only operate in Gaza if you cooperate with the regime.”
With its iron grip on Gaza society, it’s no wonder that Hamas continues to control much of what local stringers are allowed to say. “Palestinian stringers are either intimidated by Hamas, or they are Hamas,” explains journalist Matti Friedman, who has covered the region for nearly two decades. “You can only operate in Gaza if you cooperate with the regime.”
Yet international news companies have been remarkably willing to accept stringers’ accounts without asking difficult questions.
Take a recent New York Times video, “Inside a Father’s Struggle to Feed His Family in Gaza.” In the slickly-produced video, Anwar Ghilan, a 30-year-old Gaza father, shows how expensive foods including eggs, fruits and vegetables, and chicken are in his local market. “While the aid is free,” The New York Times includes in a brief subtitle, “some of it ends up in markets with prices that are too expensive for most people.” The one-sided video - like much other reporting originating with Gaza stringers today - goes on to place all blame for expensive food and other problems on Israel; the word Hamas is never mentioned once. While it’s understandable that Mr. Ghilan might be too afraid to point out that prices are expensive because Hamas steals food aid, it’s notable that The New York Times doesn’t report on this development either. (The paper has likewise refrained from running articles showing that as more aid flows into Gaza, food prices are coming down.) Like other media outlets, The New York Times seems content to present a highly tendentious message, put together by local stringers, as impartial news.
It’s not only The New York Times. Britain’s influential Guardian newspaper has run a column called “Gaza Diary” since Hamas’ October 7 attack. It’s one of their most popular recurring columns and presents a heartbreaking account of unending torture and suffering at the hands of brutal Israelis. All the Guardian has released about the author is that he is “Ziad, a 35-year-old Palestinian” living in Gaza. No other biographical details or corroboration about “Ziad’s” words has ever been presented.
Even the Qatari-based news group Al Jazeera, which is often highly critical of Israel, was forced to retract a March 2024 story that was based entirely on the say-so of a local in Gaza. After reporting that Israeli soldiers sexually assaulted then murdered women in Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital, Al Jazeera retracted the story and explained that “The woman who spoke about rape justified her exaggeration and incorrect talk by saying that the goal was to arouse the nation’s fervor and brotherhood”. Shockingly, Al Jazeera’s retraction came after Hamas itself debunked this false story. How many other false stories, based on the words of stringers in Gaza who also might want to “arouse fervor” against Israel, go undetected?
When it comes to the current Hamas-Israel war, it seems, normal journalistic standards go out the window. One element of this is a pervasive reliance on reporting from stringers inside Gaza.
It’s not only cynical individuals who realize they can exploit the lack of seasoned reporters. Increasingly, non-governmental organizations (NGO)s are stepping into the void, supplying ready-made news articles to press groups.
Matti Friedman explains: “The press has been gutted. The bureaus have shrunk, and into that vacuum have come ideological voices. Now Human Rights Watch gives you a report, in English, and you write a story based on that report. And you end up serving as the media arm of the hard left, the world of NGOs.”
Realizing this, NGOs have invested heavily in their media wings. Northumbria University Professor Dr. Carolina Are has documented the phenomenon. Many organizations have “hire(d) communication professionals at all levels, including former journalists, to professionalize their external communications and build a network of contacts.”
Take Amnesty International. In 2022 its U.S. Director declared the group was “opposed” to the idea of Israel existing as a Jewish state. On April 8, 2024 the group reacted to the death from cancer of a 62-year-old terrorist, Walid Daqqah, who’d ordered the kidnap and torture of an Israeli soldier (including gouging out his eyes and castrating him) before ordering his murder in 1986. In their comment on Daqqah’s death, Amnesty International referred to him simply as a “writer” who’d endured an “endless nightmare” of being sentenced to prison in Israel and mourned his death as “heart-wrenching.” Refusing to mention his crime, Amnesty International called Daggah’s “death in custody” a “cruel reminder of Israel’s disregard for Palestinians’ right to life.”
Despite being so outrageously biased against Israel, Amnesty International – like some other far-left NGOs – provide ready-made, slick articles pushing their point of view. Reuters adapted Amnesty’s coverage of Walid Daggah in the form of a straight news article on April 9, 2024, citing only “Reuters” as the author. Activism is replacing journalism.
In some cases, media companies take deliberate steps to restrict their coverage. Matti Friedman has written that when he worked for the Associated Press (AP) during the 2008-2009 fighting between Hamas and Israel, he “personally erased a key detail - that Hamas fighters were dressed as civilians and being counted as civilians in the death toll - because of a threat to our reporter in Gaza….”
Major news organizations have a policy of not using the word “terrorist” to describe Hamas terrorists, even those who raped, murdered and kidnapped over 1,400 Israelis on October 7.
Today, major news organizations, including the BBC and Agence France Press, among others, have a policy of not using the word “terrorist” to describe Hamas terrorists, even those who raped, murdered and kidnapped over 1,400 Israelis on October 7, 2023. The result is changing media coverage to soften reports about Hamas and create an atmosphere in which their odious actions - including their continued, near-daily, bombardment against Israeli civilian targets, stealing aid, and using their own people as human shields as they place their fighters in civilian areas - is either downplayed or overlooked entirely.
Two hundred years ago, the British writer Jonathan Swift observed that “Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it.” In the face of today’s tsunami of biased reporting about Israel, there are a few steps we all must take. Become informed. Read Israeli media and educate yourself about the complexities of Israel, Gaza, and the entire Middle East. Don’t be afraid to stand up for truth. Speak out when you hear smears about the Jewish state. Write letters to the editor when you encounter sloppy or outright biased reporting. Blog and share news articles that present an accurate picture of what’s going on.
It isn’t easy, but we don’t have to do this alone. Check out online resources such as HonestReporting.com and Camera.org (and in the UK, Camera-uk.org). These give users help in marshaling facts to counter outrageous bias against Israel.
Welcome to the party pal.
Far too many Jews have been asleep and complacent and are awakening with a knife in their back. Biden is wooing Muslim votes and you've been thrown under the bus. The leftist media is doing their master's bidding.
it is not only the media that is bias against jews and israel, the arab muslims are brainwashing the people from kindergarten through college from their oil money, and the people don't know the real truth so the proganda against jews and isrsel works for them, all this came from the nazi(may their name be erased),hand book in gaza they read the book "mein keinf" by adolf hitler(may his name be erased) in arabic, it is scary this is happening in 2024, at least my mother(obm) is not alive to see this a Holocaust Survivor from Auschwitz
What's new? The lefty 'MSM' has had an egregious anti-Israel animus for many decades. Fox isn't bad, and perhaps even better is CBN. For pro-Israel opinion and analysis, FrontPage Mag, Jihad Watch and the Geller Report are three excellent sites; there are many others. WHY torture yourself with the NY Slymes or CNN?
ISRAEL CHAI!
Absolutely nauseating. This is why I barely ever watch or listen to news/media.
People choose who they want to believe. The younger generation (Generation Z and Generation Millenium, Greta Thunberg and her ilk) seems to be swaying into radical thinking, thinking they’re being kind to people like the Gazans. The Hard Left are also of that mob and the news reporters may fall into that category hence the bias reportage.
Of course the media has alternative options.
even as the terrorists were streaming their atrocities
live, the public was choosing to deny the reality and
believe the lies. Antisemitism is what allows the lies to
be spread, rather than the lies causing antisemitism.
The article is well-written and well- informed
Yvette, you need to take a step back from the situation because you’re way too close. This piece is biased journalism at its finest. The media bias is definitely way more so on Palestine. The Israeli government is in fact committing active genocide against the Palestinians and I’m sorry you’re too blind to see that.
Next time you talk about Palestine, take your Zionistic feelings out of the article.
Are you a self-hating Jew or anti-semite?
No matter, both will surely get what they deserve!
explain, please
You are asking a bigoted troll to explain a bigoted statement.
Genocide against Gaza?
Oh, you mean you're watching content straight out of Pallywood, like this?
https://frontline.news/post/pallywood-palestinian-hollywood-generating-fake-anti-israel-videos
Troll!
excellent article. I learned a lot.
"No, Rachel, thank YOU, thank YOU!"
Such was the sign-off retort of Sinwar (as depicted in that 'interview' clip from the Eretz Nehederet satire show) when addressing 'Rachel' of the BBC.
As suggested in this article, these sort of biased media organisations indeed do Hamas' work for them.
Thank you for writing and publishing this article. And for continuing to do so.
The author is very wrong. It is the other way around: the media serves its audience which has been allowed by Hamas murderers to openly show its antisemitic face.
You cannot expect fairness, justice and free of bias reporting from anti-semites.
Yes, all you can expect are outright lies that "fortify" the crooked minds of Jew haters by giving them "justification" to hate and to act upon it, cv"s.
However, we have Hashem's assurance that we're the eternal people, which is quite obvious (to an objective mind) considering our troubled history that would have decimated any other nation!
So what you’re saying is because your religious book deems that land to be yours, it justifies the murdering of the Palestinians on that land? Yikes. It’s not wonder so many people are leaving Abrahamic religions in droves.
Jews have lived in the land of Israel for 3000+ years. While the majority were driven out during the Roman occupation, that doesn’t change the fact that Jews have always lived there. In the 19th century, Jews began buying land in Israel (which at that time was part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire). When the Ottoman Empire collapsed after World War I, the British undertook administration of the region under Mandate.
After World War II, Holocaust survivors began moving to Israel. The United Nations outlined two states, one for Palestinians and one for Jews. The Jews accepted and modern Israel was born. As for the Palestinians, their state was precluded when allied Arab states attacked Israel. This reoccurred in 1967 and 1973. Legal authority.
Spot on, but uneducated bigots don’t listen, They are too consumed by envy and hatred.
Listen, honey. Jews don't just murder people. I'm sorry you're too stupid to have noticed that.
This war is not about land. It's about returning Israeli hostages and guaranteeing safety and security for Israelis. Y'know, from people who actually DO justify murdering people for land.
Could somebody please get that message to Jon Stewart? IMO he is one self hating Jew.
INTERESTING HOW YOU READ WHAT YOU WANT TO HEAR!
No point in getting into a theological argument with an atheist, so let's leave that aside for the moment.
You've omitted but a detail in your declaration about so-called "Palestinians" -- i.e., that any action taken by Israel after the Hamas massacre was a valid response to an existential threat!
But you'd rather believe Arab propaganda because it suits your anti-semitic inclination. Go ahead, you've got plenty of company throughout history, and we've outlasted them all, thank G-d!
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
Ignorant on many fronts. Jews have always lived in the land. . If you are referring to Islam, it is also an Ab rahamic religion . Buddhism is too peaceful for you