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VOL. V NO. 10, April 24-May 7, 2009

Gaza Media Coverage Sparks Further Controversy

Lack of coverage and biased portrayals of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza by Western media are partially to blame for the absence of international intervention in the fighting, claims Ayman Mohyeldin, Gaza Correspondent for Al-Jazeera English, in an interview with Journalism.co.uk. Other alternative media journalists in the region agree with Mohyeldin, adding that unbiased coverage of the Palestinian experience in Gaza is key to gaining international sympathy and action.

“The Western media has failed tremendously in covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict accurately and contextually,” he said in the online interview. Mohyeldin was one of the few journalists able to continue reporting from Gaza during the Israeli military attack on the region in December 2008, when Israel also banned all foreign media.

Other sources familiar with the media situation in Gaza agree with Mohyeldin. In an interview with Stefan Christoff of Rabble, Anjali Kamat of Democracy Now! suggests that the timing of the Israeli military offensive, between Christmas and the Western New Year, was purposefully chosen as a period when most foreign journalists would be on hiatus from their work in Gaza.

Kamat also believes that Western mass media has been strikingly biased in its portrayal of what are, in his view, unequal levels of suffering between Palestinian and Israeli residents in Gaza. Kamat said he felt many journalists in Gaza felt compelled “to make some sort of equivalency with Israel…when the situations are simply not comparable.”

When asked what the effect would have been if international media had been allowed to cover the war in Gaza, Mohyeldin said it would have been both good and bad; there might be more awareness of the situation, but also more inaccurate and unbalanced information.

In an effort to address the issue of media bias, the Dubai Press Club will hold a session specifically on media coverage of the December 2008 Israeli military actions in Gaza at the eighth Arab Media Forum on May 11-12 in Dubai. According to Emirates Business 24|7, coverage of the Israeli attack “brought to the fore divergent political positions within the media in the region,” indicated by the biased commentators that were featured and the language used to describe the conflict.

Another effort to combat unbalanced reporting in Gaza comes from Crossing Borders, a non-partisan NGO that seeks to promote dialogue between young journalists and educators, especially in the Middle East. Dr. Enas Youssef, a journalism professor in Cairo, was quoted by theYemen Timescriticizing mass media for “escalating conflicts,” such as the war in Gaza, where he feels many media outlets “decided to throw blame around instead of tackling the real issue of the war on civilians.”

Sherine Tadros, also a reporter for Al-Jazeera, speculated to Journalism.co.uk that one reason for waning mass media interest on the situation in Gaza is that without the possibility of sensationalist photographs, “editors won’t spend [resources] on deploying teams to cover humanitarian tragedies.” Tadros feels that alternative media sources have expanded audiences by covering more sympathetic and compelling human-interest stories in Gaza, which consumers can easily relate to.

Nicole Hernandez at Jacksonville.com relates a personal example of how media can shape opinions about Arab people. Hernandez writes that she “had stereotypes about Saudi women without having met or dealt with them before, relying on images and words from articles, TV and books,” which she says mostly “focus on the minority of Arabs and Muslims who do use violence and threats.”

Tadros and Mohyeldin expressed similar views, both commenting on what they see as a heavy bias in Western media against Arabs, especially Palestinians in Gaza.

“One can’t help but feel anger and frustration as to how the world allows for this to happen,” Mohyeldin concludes in the Journalism.co.uk interview. “If people in the West understood what was happening in Gaza, in the West Bank, accurately, they would demand more from their governments.”

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