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Heaven On Earth
Laugher of the Week: Ethan Bronner on Journalists on Intimidation in Gaza
Ethan Bronner has an article on the media warfront in which he cites — without any trace of irony or supressed guffaw, the following comment:
Foreign reporters deny that their work in Gaza has been subject to Hamas censorship or control. Unable to send foreign reporters into Gaza, the international news media have relied on Palestinian journalists based there for coverage.
I’ve written quite a bit on intimidation of the media in the Arab Israeli conflict, particularly in relationship to Bronner’s predecessor, Steven Erlanger (who, I’ve heard, had the courage to go to the Egyptian border and tried unsuccessfully to get into Gaza), but also Alan Johnston, the avidly pro-Palestinian BBC journalist who nonetheless got himself kidnapped for annoying somebody in Gaza.
This is a very bad joke.
Indeed, I’ve thought long and hard about this one, and I would say, briefly, the following.
- Palestinian intimidation of Western journalists is pervasive.
- Reporters can’t tell their audiences because it would undermine their credibility (hence the whopper above).
- Reporters can’t admit their cowardice to themselves (hence Bronner’s lack of even a trace of irony).
- They console themselves by saying that they are doing it not from intimidation but either for money, or, better yet, for ideological reasons: they’re siding with the underdog; they’re leveling the playing field; they’re supporting a freedom movement.
If anyone else has a good explanation for why so many reporters continue to support an underdog who behaves as repugnantly as the Palestinians, I’m all ears.
Normally, your arguments are very good, but this time it is not so good.
For the most part, yes, reporters are gutless.
For the most part, yes, reporters are also famously lazy.
For the most part, yes, reporters are lying bastards who never let the truth get in the way of a “good story”.
But in this case, it’s a bit more.
To wit: They hate our fucking guts.
If the Palestinians were a bunch of Hitler loving, religiously fanatical, fascists (all of which they actually happen to be) – they’d still support them at our expense.
Here’s a useful test. How do foreign correspondents view these assignments? Are they lining up for the privilege, or are they reluctant? I know that the war correspondent is a breed unto itself, but within that group, is there a particular “ideological type” who seeks out these assignments, or do they all want it?
In the foreign service, certianly, there is a whole hierarchy of highly desirable to highly undesirable posts. In fact, a couple of years ago didn’t the State Department have to resort to threats to fill all the unwanted posts in Baghdad?
I would argue that the eager-for-a-nasty-assignment correspondent case differs from the diplomat case, in that the latter might be motivated by patriotism, whereas the former could not.
They console themselves by saying that they are doing it not from intimidation but either for money, or, better yet, for ideological reasons: they’re siding with the underdog; they’re leveling the playing field; they’re supporting a freedom movement.
I don’t think they SAY it to themselves or to others they’re doing it for money. They understand they are expected to fulfill their mission to report and they know that if they report the truth, they may lose access (they’re failures!) or theur health (they’re beaten or dead). So they do their best to IGNORE OR AVOID unpleasant truth.
Once they engage in this kind of endeavor they get into dissonance — mismatch between values and their behavior — and RATIONALIZE the latter as out of ideology/justice.
Note that because the system itself rewards such behavior and punishes true reporting (remember the italian publication who apologized to arafat for the lynch reporting? what do you think happened to the reporter and the publication after that?), reporters start hating israel, because if it only did what the pals lie that it did, what they report as untrue would be true and they would not be cowards. and that engenders the idology that started as rationalization.
Check out the AP photo here:
Is this not a photoshop exercise?
btw, this explains why the guy at the gaza border did not follow the situation up — ignore and avoid anything that can produce unpleasantness. deniability.
PS…. your email’s bouncing 4 me, RL.
this also explains why they see only what israel does as potential violations of the international law, never the initiations by the palestinians.
Ethan Bronner in the above quoted article also let slip the following idle truth when he whined about journalists not being let into Gaza:
“There are other ways to construe the context of this conflict, of course. But no matter what, Israel’s diplomats know that if journalists are given a choice between covering death and covering context, death wins. So in a war that they consider necessary but poorly understood, they have decided to keep the news media far away from the death.”
In other words, his tacit admission would be something like this:
“We journalists don’t care about the real context of the situation, we just want to showcase the horror and the death… it’s our way of waving our finger and saying, “tsk tsk, isn’t this terrible”".
It is undoubtedly an added bonus for them to wag the finger at the IDF. It lines up perfectly with their leftist media malpractice to demonize Israel.
Access. You get it free in a democracy but you have to play the game when it’s a fascist regime at the helm.
Eventually, Stockholm Syndrome kicks in and you sympathize with the bastards you sucked up to in order to gain access.
The joke is that the reporters don’t believe they are tools, they think they are champions. The people they champion would behead them as soon as they were no longer useful propoganda tools.
They also don’t want to jeopardize their access or endanger their “sources.”
I think the peculiar persistence of the Post Colonial narrative among Western reporters toward Israel is caused by the fact that the very existence of the Jewish state is a constant rebuke to the West for its ill treatment of Jews in general and the holocaust in particular. Israel creates an unbearable conflict between anti Semetic feelings and holocaust guilt for many in the West. Seeing Israel as a colonialist power persecuting Palestinians relieves Western guilt toward the Jews and guilt for colonialism in general. At the same time it allows the unconscious indulgence of anti Semitic feelings which have not gone away. Prevented from being overtly anti Semetic by holocaust guilt the acts of the Palestinians are not repugnant to many in the West, but rather an occasion for schadenfreude. As Freud pointed out, one side effect of complete repression is that the repressed energy finds an indirect outlet. So the holocaust makes it impossible to openly express anti Semetic feelings even internally for many and makes their overt expression by the Palestinians particularly attractive. Every Palestinian barbarity is excused and protected. Every act of Israeli self defense demonized. No balanced view, no real negotiation is possible until the West comes to terms with its own ant Semitism and concomitant tendency to indulge Palestinian violence and media fakery. To take it a bit further the chronically anti Semetic West needs to destroy the affront to its self esteem caused by the existence of Israel. Israel’s existence is also an affront to Arab self esteem for somewhat different reasons but both need to destroy Israel. Hence the persistent alliance.
lorenz,
certainly part of the explanation.
but also a part is the fact that in times of crisis, when he individual or even the group cannot respond to events, the seeking for scapegoats is irresistible.
suppose westerners see themselves facing the terror of jihad and the economic collapse of the west in which ME oil plays a large part. and they hear all day from the media and their govts that israel is the problem. and they are already predisposed to anti-semitism, part. when they have no contact with the history, either personal or via education. who do you think they’ll scapegoat, the arabs?
after all, the same sort of force which caused anti-semitism in history, is causing it again. the juice are the most convenient target for the ignorant.
An interesting take
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1053605.html
e.g.,
what the author of the article is saying is “we, the western readers, don’t give a shit about jews and arabs and don’t want to know anything about the root and nature of the conflict. we just care about ourselves and how the war between the two will affect us.”
the inability and unwillingness of the west to put the conflict in the context of clash of civilizations is precisely what’s dooming it, for unless they start israel is on the frontline of western civilization, it is doomed to a sharia future and it deserves it.
here’s what the author missed:
http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_spine/archive/2009/01/08/a-truism.aspx
and as long as the media does not cover this and the readers are not interested in it, they are both doomed.
Another laughter of the week:
http://www.lemonde.fr/la-guerre-de-gaza/article/2009/01/08/la-presse-tenue-a-distance-rumine-sa-frustration_1139299_1137859.html
We (press) want to tell the story of poor Gaza children and the IDF won’t let us! So instead, we should tell the story of Sderot?!? But it’s totally uninteresting!
See Foreign reporters dun Israel ‘military dictatorship’ with news from Charly.