Israel Matzav

Rudoren's deputy signed Hamas harassment protest

In an earlier post, I discussed New York Times bureau chief Jodi Rudoren's tweet claiming that journalists were not harassed by Hamas in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge. Haaretz reports that the tweet led to a lot of back and forth between Rudoren (who was not in Gaza until after most of the fighting ended) and the Foreign Press Association (FPA). It also turns out that Rudoren's deputy, Isabel Kirshner, is a board member of the FPA and voted in favor of issuing the protest.

Rudoren’s Tweet was followed by a furious email exchange with the FPA, in which Rudoren denounced the statement as “dangerous.”

Crispian Balmer, last year’s FPA chairman and former Jerusalem bureau chief for Reuters, told Haaretz the FPA was not in the habit of issuing such protests without very good reason.

“When I was on the FPA board, we took our statements very seriously,” said Crispian Balmer. “They were never written on a whim and were only issued after broad consultation – either face-to-face at a board meeting or via a stream of email exchanges. Our prime concern was always the well-being of the foreign press pack and we would not pull our punches if we thought our members needed vocal support. We would certainly never issue broad statements condemning the behavior of one side or the other if we did not feel that a good number of our members had been impacted.”

Even more intriguing, Rudoren’s deputy at the NYT, Isabel Kershner, was one of the FPA board members who approved the statement. How could two colleagues from the same newspaper observing the same sequence of events come to such different conclusions?

“I was not in Gaza during the height of the hostilities, I have only been here a week,” Rudoren told me. “But in conversations with many colleagues, those who were here from NYT and other major news organizations who I trust, I have not heard about harassment, intimidation, censorship or threats. There have been a few anecdotes re Hamas people shooing photographers away from fighters' faces at the hospitals, asking people not to shoot this or that, and yes, names and phone numbers were taken down in a spiral notebook of who was here, but nothing that these veteran war correspondents consider unusual.”

“I am confident the FPA based its statement on detailed reports from members regarding their experiences on the ground, and only had the best intention of protecting journalists and journalism, as it always does. But I found the wording of the statement overly broad, and, especially given the narrative playing out in some social media circles regarding foreign correspondents being taken in by the Hamas narrative and not reporting on the war fully or fairly, I was concerned that it undermined what I consider to have been brave and excellent work by very talented people,” she said.

Rudoren wasn’t actually there. Her conclusions are based on talking to colleagues. But several other reporters who spoke to Haaretz agreed with her. British freelancer Harry Fear was reporting for Russia Today TV when he was asked to leave Gaza by three plainclothes Hamas officials at Al-Shifa Hospital, apparently for referring to rocket launches near his hotel. But Fear said he did not feel he had been subjected to intimidation or interference for the four weeks he reported from Gaza, where he has worked intermittently since 2012.

“It’s a totally free playing field,” said Fear. “I feel somewhat aggrieved that there were no guidelines that I broke, because there are no guidelines. If they had asked me not to do it again, which is what’s happened to dozens of other visiting journalists over the last several years with respect to rocket locations, I would have respected that, because professionally you have to respect such things.”

Fear and other reporters who spoke to Haaretz on condition of anonymity insist that they did not experience or hear of the kind of Hamas actions described in the FPA statement. Anecdotal evidence suggests they may well be in the majority.

But other reporters did experience threats and intimidation from Hamas – enough to convince the FPA that they were not isolated incidents. Unfortunately for Hamas, they included prominent FPA members. So many of them complained that when the board met in Jerusalem on Monday and looked at confirmed information about a series of troubling incidents there wasn’t a single dissenting voice – only a discussion about just how fierce the protest should be.

...

The FPA worked tirelessly through the conflict to get journalists in and out of Gaza on a specially-chartered bus via a safe passage. Haaretz has learned that Hamas repeatedly demanded a list of the names of correspondents using the FPA bus in order to draw up a blacklist of individuals and networks.

“We do not take or give out lists to anyone and certainly not for the purpose of blacklisting people going into or out of Gaza,” said Glenys Sugarman, the FPA executive secretary.

Some reporters received death threats. Sometimes, cameras were smashed. Reporters were prevented from filming anti-Hamas demonstrations where more than 20 Palestinians were shot dead by Hamas gunmen.

In perhaps the most serious incidents considered by the FPA, Hamas began firing mortars right next to the location of foreign reporters, in what may have been an effort to draw Israeli retaliatory fire.

Several foreign correspondents said the FPA had been right to issue the statement. One European reporter told Haaretz how Hamas officials prevented photographs being taken of any wounded or dead fighters at Al-Shifa hospital, even though their presence there was common knowledge. Only images of wounded or dead civilians were permitted. The journalist said Hamas repeatedly issued warnings to local translators that blatantly interfered with reporting. Other correspondents had similar experiences.

As we say in Hebrew, Fear is כשמו כן הוא like his name. I find it incredible that a journalist who was expelled from Gaza for his work would then claim he was not harassed (probably because he wants to be able to work there again) and that his only gripe was that the rules were not told to him in advance.  Does he expect Hamas to hand out a press guide (that would then be broadcast all over the world if the IDF ever found it) saying what reporters can and cannot do?

I'm also still waiting to hear from Reporters without Borders about this. Ah, I hear them now....



UPDATE 2:29 PM

You will note that Rudoren denounced the FPA statement as 'dangerous.' This is what I think she meant by  that. I think she implied what she meant by 'dangerous' here:
In other words, there's a danger that someone might decide that pro-Hamas reporting like that of the Times was a result of duress.

Labels: crickets, Foreign Press Association, freedom of the press, Gaza, Hamas, IDF, Jodi Rudoren, New York Times, Operation Protective Edge, Reporters without Borders

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:47 PM