Welcome to Layalina Productions

The Layalina Review

VOL. V NO. 2, January 02-January 15, 2009

Charades and Media Politics Color Gaza Coverage

As the conflict in Gaza continues into its third week, the issue of media coverage has come to the fore as both sides criticize regional and international media outlets.

Reporting on the war in Gaza has been severely complicated by Israel's ban on foreign correspondents, reports Paul Reynolds for the BBC. Despite a ruling from the Israeli Supreme Court, Israel has not allowed foreign bureaus into the strip. "The most difficult reality confronting the foreign news media is that we have been prevented from entering Gaza to cover the conflict," notes Tony Connelly for RTE News.

Israel’s decision has drawn criticism from a wide variety of media professionals in the international community. While Israel has received significant coverage of the threats and damage to its own towns and communities, stories from within Gaza have not been as widely told as if reporters from major organizations had been present, argues Reynolds. "The conflict is being reported on almost entirely by journalists working in Israel and under Israeli influence," posits Ray Hanania on Arabisto.

A Menassat report suggests that the banning of the international media is part of an Israeli effort "to convince the world that it is acting 'humanely' in Gaza." Israel justifies the ban "under the cynical pretext of concern for the safety of foreign journalists," adds the news site.

Despite the absence of foreign press organizations in Gaza, Arab networks with local bureaus, including Al-Jazeera, have been able to relay their images of the conflict to the region and the world at large. Al-Jazeera has presented "a rather distinct view of the conflict," suggests Raed Rafei of the LA Times. "The channel broadcasts constant images of children covered with blood being rushed into hospitals with interviews with parents who had lost their children," he explains.

In defense of the network's reference to the dead of the conflict as "martyrs" and its uncensored broadcast of footage from Gaza, Al-Jazeera editor-in-chief Ahmed Al-Sheikh explained that the network does broadcast images of bombing and victims, but also gives Israeli officials ample space to express their views, reports Middle East Online. "We are not covering (the war) because we are Arabs or Muslims, but because we are journalists," added Al-Sheikh.

In contrast, Dubai-based Al-Arabiya has employed "a markedly different tone in its continuous 'Gaza Invasion' coverage," suggests Middle East Online. The station refrains from using the term "martyr" and "does not air footage that may badly disturb viewers," explained Al-Arabiya Director Nakhle El-Hage.

Other Arab media organizations have been scrutinized since the outbreak of war in addition to these major networks. In an editorial on Israeli Ynetnews, Roee Nahmias argues that "a dual and often contradictory narrative" had been created by various Arab media outlets. "On the one hand, Israel is portrayed as a Nazi state and a mass exterminator of defenseless civilians…yet on the other hand 'Palestinian resistance fighters' are said to pulverize Israel mercilessly," observes Nahmias

The London-based newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi is "one of the most blatant," according to Nahmias. "In addition to harsh editorials slamming Israel and Arab states that do nothing to assist Hamas, the newspaper constantly brands Israel as Nazi," he continues.

In addition to criticism of Arab news media, many pro-Israel news blogs and editorials have attempted to expose a Palestinian propaganda conspiracy that has been dubbed "Pallywood" (as in Palestinian Hollywood) by Richard Landes of the Center for Millennial Studies. "Whether by Israeli accident or Hamas engineering, expect a spectacular civilian massacre…followed by an orgy of Pallywood photography," says Landes on the Bob McCarty Writes blog.

Perhaps the main focus of Pallywood conspiracy theorists has been a video of Gaza cameraman Ashraf Mashharawi who rushed to the hospital to find doctors trying to save his 12-year-old brother's life. In an article entitled, "CNN Tricked into Running Anti-Israeli Propaganda?", the Weekly Standard compiled a series of "red flags" relating to the video's authenticity and suggested that the CNN audience "deserves a prominent retraction, explanation, and apology."

Following the Weekly Standard allegations, CNN ran a report defending the video's authenticity, reports the Washington Times. Paul Martin, co-owner of World News and Features, the syndicating service that provided the video, called the charges "absolute nonsense." Mr. Mashharawi is "a man of enormous integrity and would never get involved with any sort of manipulation of images, let alone when the person dying is his own brother," argued Martin.

"No-one in their right mind would suggest that any person would allow doctors to play games with a dying or dead younger brother. The idea is bizarre and deeply insulting," commented Martin in response to allegations on the Little Green Footballs blog.

In another editorial that aims to highlight a Palestinian media conspiracy, Mitchell Bard of News Blaze suggests, "Palestinians will routinely call attacks 'massacres' and invent large numbers of fatalities." Bard goes on to claim that when victims are presented as evidence "sometimes they are not even dead," before suggesting that casualty figures are unreliable as they come from "Palestinian sources."

Contrary to Bard's criticisms, a myriad of international organizations have been monitoring and reporting on civilian deaths and casualty figures. "On the nineteenth day of Israeli attacks, the total dead up to 1040 with around 4850 injured," reported the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, the world's largest humanitarian network. Likewise, Doctors Without Borders has been periodically evaluating the humanitarian disaster in Gaza.

As mentioned, the broadcast of gruesome footage of civilian casualties in Gaza has been the subject of much criticism. Nevertheless, "the reality for the Israeli government is that world opinion is probably more influenced by images rather than by spokesmen," suggests London School of Oriental and African Studies Professor Charles Tripp.

Weighing in on the issue, Matt Armstrong of the Mountain Runner blog notes he has "seen a good number of articles praising Israel's handling of the war of perceptions in the media," but that "in the offline critiques of Israel's strategy and tactics by information experts there is much less congratulatory language."