By Danny Schechter
Media bias is one those terms everyone likes to fling about, especially when we read or see something we don't agree with. For years the right has been banging away at "liberal bias" even as right-wing moguls and big companies buy up news outlets and stuff them with conservative commentators. Leftists lash out at right-wing bias but are often oblivious to the way the structure of "liberal media" is itself tilted.
Nothing seems to inflame this debate over media bias more than the conflict in the Middle East. When I wrote two weeks ago about the great divide between what the news media and the parties to the conflict themselves perceive as reality, I was flooded (well, maybe just moderately inundated) with letters questioning my own grip on reality (see the responses to my column). Some of this mail was very positive, thank you, but other responses brought predictable and clichéd put-downs, such as, "You are Jewish so you should be for the Jews," as if all Jews agree on all the issues. (Please, critics, remember that old joke: "Two Jews, six opinions.") Another spun the same thought the other way: "It's good to see a Jew standing up for Palestinians," even though I wrote as a journalist, not a Jew.
But was that what I was doing?
I thought I was standing up for a version of truth that, at a minimum, calls for more contextualized coverage and more compassionate understanding of all sides, free of labeling, stereotyping and reductive polarizing. As for ethnicity, I guess I would associate myself with the recent comments of 50 prominent French personalities of Jewish origin who published a statement October 18 in "Le Monde," rejecting the notion that the Israeli government speaks for all Jews: "By claiming to speak in the name of all world Jewry, by appropriating the common memory of Jewry as their own, by proclaiming themselves to be representative of all Jewish victims of the past, Israeli leaders have claimed the right to speak in our name without asking our permission. ... As the conflict has escalated, inadmissible acts of violence have been committed by both sides. This is unfortunately the logic of any war. However, the political responsibilities are not equally shared. The state of Israel disposes of a territory and an army. The Palestinians of the occupied territories and the refugee camps are condemned to living under Israeli tutelage in a mutilated and dependent economy, in a crippled society, in a territory divided into small fragments, cut through by 'strategic route' and peppered with Jewish colonies."
The Long Debate
The debate about media bias in Middle East coverage seems to have been going on forever. Writing in Toronto's Globe and Mail, Rick Salutin calls it the most distorted areas of foreign news coverage for 50 years. There are propagandists and spinmeisters on every side, each treating their own views as received truth and the views of others as baseless and biased. According to a recent report, the Israeli government has begun training its citizens on how to answer questions by journalists.
At times, for me, this conversation feels like deja vu all over again. It reminds me of an experience I had more than 18 years ago, which I recount in my book, "The More You Watch The Less You Know".
I was then a producer at ABC's "20/20," which had just broadcast an hour-long "exposé" on Palestinian terrorism that seemed as if it had been produced by the Mossad, Israel's CIA. It dripped with anti-PLO venom. A group of scholars challenged the program, detailing errors and omissions. ABC executives listened and couldn't deny all the specifics.
But they didn't deal with them either, reacting by commissioning a piece on Arab stereotyping in America. The segment called for tolerance and was quite worthwhile, except for one small problem: It was entirely unresponsive to the complaints about the original one-sided report by Geraldo Rivera.
Soon the critics were back, this time disgusted that their concerns about rectifying what they denounced as blatant media bias had been ignored. They challenged my then-bosses to go to the West Bank and see for themselves how Palestinians lived and suffered.
I doubted "20/20" would do it, but they rose to the task, dispatching veteran producer Stanhope Gould and correspondent Tom Jarriel, known as a straight shooter, to the region. These journalists decided that they would investigate Palestinian complaints on water rights, land use and access to health care. They also decided to interview only Israeli officials responsible for making policy in those areas. At that time, the man who ran the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza was none other than Ariel Sharon, who many contend touched off the current Palestinian revolt and Israeli (over)reaction with his visit to a holy site in Jerusalem. (Some say Sharon's visit was facilitated by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. As a result, Israeli journalists like Danny Rubenstein, writing in Ha'aratz, has started calling him "Sharak.")
Back then Sharon received my colleagues, who invited him to cooperate with their report. But when told what "20/20" was probing, he refused to go on camera, suggesting instead that they interview some professor who had no policy role but supported Sharon's political views. ABC refused to play along, insisting on going to the person responsible for the policy and with the power to fix it, not someone not involved. When Israel learned that ABC was running the report without an Israeli response, it sent officials to the network's office in New York City to try to pressure the executives. Without even seeing the piece, they called it unfair and biased. ABC repeated its willingness to include Sharon's responses.
Again he declined. Israel calculated that the report would never run because it was "too one-sided," even though it was explicitly commissioned to explore Palestinian grievances that were rarely in the news. By not cooperating, they thought they would kill it.
They were wrong. The story, "Under Israel's Thumb," aired as a hard-hitting catalogue of systemic discrimination and injustice. Anchor Hugh Downs twice disclosed Israel's refusal to respond to specifics. His remarks felt to me like a politically motivated disclaimer, but clearly the network sensed a potential public relations problem. And they were right about that.
On the night the story was to air, I was in the production offices when bags of telegrams protesting the show were delivered. By some mistake, this orchestrated letter writing effort arrived at 8 p.m., two hours before the letter writers could have seen the piece they were denouncing as biased. The whole idea of a story about life for individuals under occupation was too much for certain lobby groups to bear. I was proud of ABC for broadcasting the report that night (although few other pieces like it aired in the eight years I was there).
Palestinians (Not) In The News
The Palestinians remain a marginalized people on the bottom of the media pecking order. They are rarely given the benefit of the doubt — or any benefits at all. In fact, everything about their aspirations is doubted. In my view, they have not been represented well politically, and, yes, as the Committee to Protect Journalists notes in a new report, "Bloodied and Beleaguered." there have been press freedom violations committed by all sides. And yes, to quote the report: "Palestinian authorities have consistently harassed journalists and suppressed coverage that is critical of Yasser Arafat's government." There have been arbitrary arrests, threats, physical abuse and the shutting down of media outlets. (There is plenty of hostility to the press to go around: CPJ also charges that Israeli soldiers have assaulted and shot Palestinian journalists, for example.)
In many instances, under these conditions, journalists cannot even report their stories, much less indulge biases, if they have any. In covering these media issues, one must try to remain open-minded and balanced — as CPJ often is, to a fault. But open-minded is not empty-minded, and balance cannot be mechanistic. Journalism has to go beyond just reporting on incidents. Reporters have to assemble facts, but serious journalists must then put them in context. That's on the "story side."
On the "media side," where stories are framed and filtered by media as institutions, there are other pressures that have to do with how stories are framed and who gets to tell them. The larger forces ("biases"?) that move the media in one direction or another are often ignored. The U.S. media system tends to smile more favorably on countries supported by Washington, especially at times of war and conflict. (This is also true in other countries, where nationalist fervor is shamelessly organized and exploited.)
And then the media respond to a climate they helped create. They have been known to take sides before; many did in Vietnam and more recently in Iraq and Kosovo. U.S. journalists often act as if they are bystanders, as if the United States, which continues to bankroll Israel to the tune of billions, is somehow not participating in the conflict but is instead, as the White House would have it, just an "honest broker." (The extent of U.S. support is and has been quite significant. According to writer Bill Mandel, in a posting to a Progressive Sociologists list-serv: "Total U.S. aid to Israel since its foundation comes to just under $85 billion. Including interest on the borrowing undertaken to fund that sum, the American people has spent $130 billion on Israel. More aid goes to Israel right now than to all of Africa combined.") (In recent years aid to Egypt has reached this amount as well.)
Irene Gendzier, a professor of political science at Boston University, is right to be troubled by the key questions the media are missing. "The most important is that the false peace has continually been misleadingly labeled as the 'peace process,' and the grievances of Palestinians, well understood over the years by some Israelis, have been marginalized or considered a form of troublemaking," she wrote in critiquing my column. "With continuing Israeli settlements and occupation and further parcelization of land, how on earth can one expect a viable peace? Why is this question not put to Israeli officials by U.S. reporters who insist," she says, "only on pinning blame on Arafat? Why not investigate exactly what the Israeli position is, what the settlers on the West Bank and in Gaza — supported by the Israeli government and the U.S. government — think about Israeli policy? Oslo, Cairo, let alone Sharm el-Sheikh: [The issue is] peace, in short, and with whom such peace is to be made."
Why Revolt?
Years ago, Bob Dylan told TV Guide that he didn't watch TV news because it doesn't tell us how people feel. That comment has remained with me. How people feel is important in understanding why they revolt, why they throw rocks at soldiers with weapons. What does it feel like to live under occupation, to be regulated, told where you can go and not, to have your life controlled? It can't feel very good. It is often the smallest indignities that trigger the biggest rebellions.
And what of the fear and anger of the Israelis? It is very real, but is it realistic? What could assuage it? There are interests on both sides that benefit by continuing the polarization and conflict. I can understand why supporters of Israel in times like these rally around the flag with a message that boils down to an old Spanish-American War refrain: "My country, right or wrong." I much prefer: "My country: When it's wrong, set it right." After all, why can't you support Israel's right to exist and also support statehood and dignity for Palestinians? Clearly this problem is at the heart of what good faith negotiations in a real peace process should be about. An Arab-Jewish peace group, Arab Jewish Peace Group (AJPG), shared its concerns in late October (in a letter I read as part of their mailing list, but which The New York Times has yet to publish): "We believe that peace will only prevail if it is based on justice, rights and security for both Palestinians and Israelis (Jew and Arab), and that these rights and concerns are clearly spelled out in United Nations resolutions in a way that protects the interests of all sides. We urge that the United Nations be brought firmly back into the picture, and that, if need be, a team of proven and internationally respected peacemakers — such as Nobel Peace Laureates Nelson Mandela, Oscar Arias and Jose Ramos Horta — should be called on to support Israeli and Palestinian leaders as they work towards peace." Now, that's a good idea, and one I have yet to see any U.S. editorial writer or columnist advocate.
A Monologue of Incommunication
And what of the peace activists, people like Noam Kuzar, an Israeli soldier who went to jail rather than serve in what he terms an army of occupation? Why did he, and others like him, act as they did? His resistance rated only a small mention. Antiwar protests by Israelis are all too often missing from the media discourse.
But there's even more to it than that, as the profound Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano observes in his must-read new book "Upside Down: A Primer for the Looking Glass World" (Metropolitan Books). A masterful writer and cultural critic, he offers what he calls "a crash course in incommunications." "Most of the news the world receives comes from and is directed at a minority of humanity — understandably so from the point of view of the commercial operations that sell news and collect the lion's share of their revenues in Europe and the United States. It's a monologue by the North," he writes. "Other regions and countries get little or no attention except in the case of war or catastrophe, and then the journalists covering the story often don't speak the language or have the least idea of local history or culture."
He may be from Latin America, but his remarks can be applied to the crisis in the Middle East. "News," he concludes, "tends to be dubious and sometimes, plainly, simply wrong." And then, he offers this clincher: "The South is condemned to look at itself through the eyes of those who scorn it." Read those words again and nod. It's true. Interestingly, Galeano, whose ideas on the media will be posted on next weeks MediaChannel with permission, writes approvingly of the use of the Internet to challenge the media order. Yet, as he confided to me during a recent visit to New York, he doesn't use computers at all.
While most of us focus our charges of bias on specific stories or the work of journalists, including myself, who are thought to exclude information or evidence that undercuts their arguments, Galeano sees media bias as a structural, not a journalistic, problem. Its easier to yell at individuals than indict systems.
So am I biased? My writing reflects my outlook. My outlook reflects my experience, and knowledge or lack of it. Ultimately, the judgment is up to the reader. And yes, you, dear reader, bring your own biases to the interaction. If you are a hard-line supporter of Israel or Palestine, for example, you may not be willing to read or hear another point of view. A few years back, while filming Arab and Israeli youngsters at a Seeds of Peace camp, I saw how hard it was for them to leave their respective "facts" behind and open themselves up to each other's point of view, to see another person before them and not simply "the other." Communication is critical to coexistence. Sadly, rather than encourage this process, most media outlets only focus on the cycle of violence and pain in ways that often perpetuates it. Atrocity journalism promotes atrocities, not possible alternatives.
When asked "Which side are you on?" I'd have to reply: on the side of those willing to look at this crisis from the inside out and the bottom up, in all of its tragic dimensions, historical miscalculations and as yet unrealized, hopeful possibilities. I'd like our calculus to revolve around notions of justice, not narrow nationalism or commitments to "just us" on whatever "side."
As Spinoza had it, centuries ago: "Peace is not an absence of war; it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence and justice."
(See my responses to reader comments in the forum. Yours are always welcome!)
UPDATE: Dictating Coverage
China's President Jiang Zemin warned critical journalists in Hong Kong to be more like Mike Wallace of "60 Minutes." And if they won't? A recent outburst to local reporters after they questioned him closely about Beijing's interference in local politics has, according to The New York Times, "rattled this city, reviving old fears about freedom of the press and other civil liberties."
The Times did not explain Jiang's affinity for an American journalist once known as a the toughest interviewer on the tube, but MediaChannel readers might recall the incident. In early September, just as Jiang was headed to New York for the United Nations summit and China was pressing hard for Senate approval of a trade bill, "60 Minutes" aired a two-part softball interview by Wallace. The appearance was arranged by China as part of what was called a "charm offensive." The questions showed little of the tough cross-examination for which Wallace was once famous. Human rights abuses, for example, against Falun Gong practitioners were cited, but there was no follow-up. Jiang came across as a sweet grandfatherly leader anxious to please an American audience.
Soon after, President Clinton praised Jiang for outmaneuvering Wallace and having him "purr like a little kitten." "I am so jealous," he said with a smile. (I originally cited a Chicago Tribune report on this comment, but later obtained U.N. TV tape to confirm it. I have included it in a just-finished Globalvision documentary, "Falun Gong's Challenge to China," as more evidence of how the U.S. media misreported this story.)
Now Jiang is telling journalists in Hong Kong that they are "too young and naive" for questioning him so closely on his political motives. "The questions you ask are too simple — sometimes naive," he said angrily. Added the Times: "Mr. Jiang compared the Hong Kong reporters unfavorably to Mike Wallace, the CBS correspondent who interviewed him in September for '60 Minutes.' Mr. Jiang said he could talk easily and joke with Mr. Wallace."
As reported in the Financial Times, the Hong Kong papers reacted negatively: "'Jiang Zemin throws tantrum, loses stature," the mass-circulated Apple Daily hit back with in its headline. Like the Apple, other newspapers gave front-page treatment to Mr. Jiang's tirade, and many ran scathing editorials berating him over the incident. Mr. Jiang's "condescending manner ... shows the hollow-heartedness and arrogance of Chinese leaders," the Hong Kong Economic Journal said."
Mak Yin Tang, chairwoman of the Hong Kong Journalists Association, said: "We don't mind whether the leaders like our questions or not. ... If he is asking the media to be responsible, that's OK. But if he's asking us to function as propaganda, that's not our role and I would tell the Chinese leader that our media is different from that of the mainland."
And far braver than ours, as far as this case is concerned. Mike, how about speaking out on this one?
- Danny Schechter is the executive editor of MediaChannel and the author of "News Dissector" (Electronpress.com) and "Falun Gong's Challenge to China" (Akashicbooks.com).
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