Labels: anti-Israel media bias, CNN lies, Honest Reporting
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:09 AM
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Labels: Honest Reporting, IDF ethics
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:55 PM
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Labels: BDS, BDS sewer system, Honest Reporting
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:25 PM
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Congratulations to the New York Times on this richly deserved honor.The New York Times has captured the 2013 Dishonest Reporting Award, given annually by HonestReporting to the journalist or media outlet most responsible for skewing coverage of Israel during the past year.See HR's full coverage of the award here: http://honestreporting.com/a-year-of-biased-reporting-why- the-new-york-times-won/ The Times distinguished itself throughout the year by publishing news articles that glorified Palestinian stone throwers, opinion pieces that questioned Israel's right to exist and editorials that took a dismissive tone towards Israeli fears of a nuclear Iran.It also added an anti-Israel conspiracy theorist to its editorial board and capped the year with a flourish by publishing a sympathic photo of a Palestinian terrorist's mother in a story about the terrorist's victim.HonestReporting CEO Joe Hyams said the New York Times was the clear winner for 2013. "It has really outdone itself this year," he said. "While the paper's motto may be "All the News That's Fit to Print," the reality is that too much of its Israel reporting was simply not fit to print."Runners-up in 2013 included Amira Hass of Haaretz for referring to stone throwing by Palestinians as a "metaphor of resistance," German newspaper , Süddeutsche Zeitung, for depicting Israel as a demon in a political cartoon, and the BBC for its botched coverage of a UN report blaming Hamas for the death of a child in Gaza.See coverage of the winner here: http://honestreporting.com/a-year-of-biased-reporting-why- the-new-york-times-won/ And all of the runners-up here: http://honestreporting.com/the-2013-dishonest-reporting- awards/
Labels: anti-Israel media bias, Honest Reporting, New York Times
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:17 PM
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It’s no secret that some of the most critical stories concerning Israel in the international press are lifted straight from the pages of Israel’s very own Haaretz newspaper, and all the more so thanks to its English language website.
While Haaretz is entitled to fulfill its role as a critical domestic judge of Israel and its government’s policies, what happened when it published a story that was — quite simply — dishonest?
Gideon Levy’s front page article ”Most Israelis support an apartheid regime in Israel,” backed by a survey, made headlines around the world:
Israeli back discrimination against Arabs: poll (Sydney Morning Herald)Israelis approve discrimination if West Bank annexed: poll (AFP)
Levy regularly demonizes the Jewish state to foreign audiences and in his own newspaper columns. He regularly goes beyond legitimate criticism of Israel, crossing red lines and allying himself with those who refer to Israel as a racist “apartheid state”, promote boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) and wish to see the very destruction of Israel.
On the basis that Levy promotes the canard of Israeli “apartheid”, he is the last journalist who could give an objective analysis of this polls results.
His article opened with the following premise:
Most of the Jewish public in Israel supports the establishment of an apartheid regime in Israel if it formally annexes the West Bank.
Levy’s entire premise was based, however, on a hypothetical situation where Israel annexes the West Bank – a policy that the majority of Israelis are opposed to according to the very same poll.
Other statistics were casually tossed into the mix by Levy in an attempt to fit the figures to his framing of Israel as an apartheid state. Minority opinions were highlighted and illustrative graphs that appeared in the Haaretz Hebrew edition were noticeably absent from the English article.
Levy stated that the survey was commissioned by the New Israel Fund’s Yisraela Goldblum Fund. It was perhaps an indicator of just how politicized and toxic this poll was that the New Israel Fund publicly disassociated itself (Hebrew) from it.
After an outcry over the article, Haaretz was forced to issue a clarification stating that the original headline did not accurately reflect the findings of the poll and amended the headline.
While it did not represent a correction or apology, Haaretz did publish an opinion piece by Dr. Yehuda Ben Meir, who shredded Levy, concluding:
There’s a lot of room for improvement in Israeli society, but this article does an injustice to the State of Israel, the Jewish people and the truth. an injustice to the State of Israel, the Jewish people and the truth.
Toronto’s Globe & Mail (to its credit) was the only non-Israeli paper to report the clarification – an indication of just how much damage the original story had caused to Israel internationally.Read the whole thing.
Labels: Haaretz, Honest Reporting, Israel's Hebrew Palestinian daily, Israeli apartheid
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:35 PM
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Labels: hasbara, Honest Reporting, NGO Monitor, StandWithUs
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:07 PM
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Shavua tov v'chodesh tov, a good week and a good month to everyone.1) Yehuda Avner's Independence Day 1948
Former Ambassador Yehuda Avner wrote of his experiences the day the modern state of Israel was founded:Then cheers, tears, embraces. Every breast filled with exultation as we pumped hands, cuddled, kissed, in an ovation that went on and on. Nobody wanted it to stop. "Hey, Mahler!" shouted Linder cutting through the hullabaloo, "Our state - what's its name?" The violinist stared back blankly. "I don't know. I didn't think to ask." "You don't know?" Mahler shook his head. "How about Yehuda?" suggested someone. "King David's kingdom was Yehuda - Judea." "Zion," cried another. "It's an obvious choice." "Israel!" called a third.2) Israeli aid
"What's wrong with Israel?" "Let's drink to that," said Elisha with delight, grabbing hold of a tin mug and filling it to the brim. "A lehaim to the new state, whatever its name." "Wait!" shouted a hassid whom everybody knew as Nussen der hazzan - a cantor by calling, and a most diligent volunteer digger from the ultra-Orthodox Mea Shearim Jerusalem quarter. "It's Shabbos. Kiddush first."
Honest Reporting has put together a very nice slide show about Israel at 64, If There Were More Honest Reporting About Israel . . .
If there were more honest reporting about Israel, the world would know that Israel recently sent a delegation to Ethiopia to provide eye care ...Using its proprietary mobile unit that encases the patient’s head in a sterile environment, Eye from Zion has already performed the 20-minute procedure on thousands of people in Asian and African countries. This time, the organization was asked by the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs to pay a visit to northern Ethiopia because so many people there are blinded by cataracts.No doubt the anti-Israel cynics of the world would call this "eye washing."
Confronted with the unexpected mass of people, Eye from Zion founder Nati Marcus decided he would send no one away if he thought they could be helped. “They told us 70, and when we arrived there were 1,400 waiting for us. We sent 400 away immediately because there was nothing we could do - some even had no eyes. But we knew there were about 1,000 we could help.”
If there were more honest reporting about Israel, the world would know that Israel recently committed to fighting world hunger ...The Heads of MASHAV and of USAID signed in Washington, April 18, a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to increase cooperation on food security to Africa, within the framework of USAID’s “Feed the Future” Initiative. The MOU allows for closer cooperation on the issue of food security in four countries: Uganda, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Rwanda.3) Not saving Syria
Feed the Future strives to increase agricultural production and the incomes of both men and women in rural areas who rely on agriculture for their livelihoods.
America's Syria Abdication by Fouad AjamiThe defining truth of this struggle is the abdication of the Obama administration. For a year now, American officials have skillfully run out the clock. They made much of the authority of the U.N. Security Council when any model U.N. team in any high school would have predicted the vetoes of Russia and China. It was clear that the Obama administration did not want to arm the opposition for fear of "escalating" the conflict.This wouldn't even qualify for "leading from behind."
But behind the scenes there was a darker play: American officials have resisted and discouraged other players from providing crucial aid to the rebellion. The newly emancipated Libyans had crates of weapons and were keen to dispatch them to the Syrian rebels. But according to the Syrian opposition leader I spoke to in Istanbul, they were discouraged from doing so by American officials. Arab diplomats from the Gulf states confirm the same pattern of American obstructionism.
While Syria Burns by Charles KrauthammerYes, we’ve imposed economic sanctions. But as with Iran, the economic squeeze has not altered the regime’s behavior. Monday’s announced travel and financial restrictions on those who use social media to track down dissidents is a pinprick. No Disney World trips for the chiefs of the Iranian and Syrian security agencies. And they might now have to park their money in Dubai instead of New York. That’ll stop ’em.Syrian Psychosis by Lee Smith - about those who made Assad possible.
Obama’s other major announcement — at Washington’s Holocaust Museum, no less — was the creation of an Atrocities Prevention Board.
I kid you not. A board. Russia flies planeloads of weapons to Damascus. Iran supplies money, trainers, agents, more weapons. And what does America do? Support a feckless U.N. peace mission that does nothing to stop the killing. (Indeed, some of the civilians who met with the U.N. observers were summarily executed.) And establish an Atrocities Prevention Board.Vogue was not alone: Even after the onslaught kicked into full gear, plenty of journalists wanted to meet with the first family of Syria. Bob Simon’s producer at 60 Minutes wrote that the show would be “be most honored to have President al Assad on our program”—honored, five months after Syrian streets started to run red with blood.But as long as Kofi Annan still gets paid, all is good.
But it’s not just journalists who lose perspective when it comes to dealing with Syrian regime. It’s also U.S. policymakers and Middle East experts. Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post offers an important corrective to her colleague Farhi’s assertion that Washington’s foreign policy community “had long regarded Syria as a regional troublemaker and leading violator of human rights.” Wrong, Rubin counters, the best and brightest were all on the Assad bandwagon.
From the worthies who authored the Iraq Study Group to Gen. David Petraeus, from Jim Baker to Bill Clinton, from John Kerry to Barack Obama, everyone wanted to engage Assad. What they thought was sophisticated diplomacy—convincing Assad of his true interests—amounted to nothing more than missionary work. The number of policymakers and Middle East analysts who argued against warming up to Assad—who cited his past record and identified the trail of blood that led back to his door, and who showed that the Syrian president was a serious problem and that American interests, as well as regional stability, would be best served by Assad’s demise—is so small that it couldn’t fill out the bench of an NBA team. And in any case, they were all dismissed as ideologues—like George W. Bush, who unconscionably withdrew the U.S. ambassador from Damascus after Assad was believed to have had former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri assassinated.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Bashar al-Assad, Honest Reporting, Middle East Media Sampler, Soccer Dad, Syrian uprising, Yom HaAtzmaut
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:38 PM
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Here's Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Thursday, December 15. 1) Ramat GiladHas Friedman ever won a Dishonest Reporter award? He should be high on the list.
The New York Times reports Israel leader sets new curbs on violent settlers:In his announcement of the authorization to use what is called “administrative detention” against radicals — imprisonment for long periods without charge — Mr. Netanyahu said: “Those who raise a hand against Israeli soldiers or Israel police personnel will be punished severely. Those who rioted at the Ephraim Brigade base are like those who riot in Bilin.”Jameel at the Muquata unconditionally condemns the attacks against the army bases and provides some background.
Early Tuesday, dozens of settlers attacked the Ephraim Brigade base of the army, near Qalqiliya in the northwest of the West Bank, after they heard that settler outposts were to be dismantled. Mr. Netanyahu’s comparison was to a Palestinian village north of Jerusalem, which for six years held weekly demonstrations that occasionally turned violent against the Israeli security barrier’s encroachment on village land.
A spokesman for Mr. Netanyahu, Mark Regev, said by telephone that one of the most significant elements of the announced changes was the way they brought aspects of the legal systems for Israelis and Palestinians living in the West Bank into line.Shortly after the murder of Gilad Zar in 2001, Ramat Gilad was founded. The first two caravans plus a double caravan for a Bet Knesset were placed with the approval of then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his advisor for settlement affairs, Yossi Vardi.A few things are worth noting here. The purchase of the land for Ramat Gilad was a private transaction. Only in Israel where nearly anyone can have "standing" to bring a lawsuit, could Peace Now contest the purchase in the courts. This underlines several issues that are very much in the news.
In 2003, a plan for 185 units on the slopes of Ramat Gilad was approved by the Housing Ministry. The plan received all the necessary approvals except for that of the Defense Minister, for whose approval we've been waiting for eight years.
In 2004 "Peace Now" petitioned the court to require the government to destroy Jewish settlements that were built on private Arab land. Moshe Zar was not invited to the proceedings. No one else claimed ownership. No Arab has any claim on the land.
The only complaint that has been presented to the Supreme Court, for Jews living on a hilltop in the Shomron is from "Peace Now." As a result of the petition, the government committed itself to destroying Ramat Gilad by the end of 2011.
Peace Now has a constituency of probably no more than 10% (and I suspect less) of the Israeli electorate. It continues to function not because of internal Israeli support, but because of foreign funding. Yet because of its unlimited access to the court system, it can and does affect Israeli governmental policy.
Furthermore for those who complain that Israel discriminates against Arabs and for the need of making peace with the Palestinians, this case highlights that peace with the Palestinians necessarily involves discrimination against Jews.
So for those who see the efforts for greater transparency of NGO's or limits on the court as assaults on Israeli democracy, it's important to realize that the issue is not as simple as portrayed.
2) Israeli courts
Eliot Jager has written Full Court Press for Jewish Ideas Daily. After illustrating some of the problems with the court, Jager concludes:Where does this leave Jabotinsky-style classical liberals who are unhappy with the Court's overreaching and its codependence with foreign-funded leftist pressure groups? Some of them would rather accept a flawed, hyperactive Court than have a runaway populist Knesset. The Likud's Dan Meridor has forcefully supported judicial prerogatives against political criticism. Benny Begin, also in the inner cabinet, referred to Knesset efforts against the Court as "political gluttony." Even Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who allowed the issue to fester, has ultimately sided with Meridor and Begin against the Court's opponents within his own party and beyond.Jager's conclusion is unsatisfying. He still doesn't address the fact that Israel's High Court of Justice has plenty of checks from other branches of government but no balances.
Netanyahu made the right call. Israelis can't convincingly criticize the Arab world's pure democracy, now catapulting one Islamist party after another to power, while championing populist majoritarianism in Israel. Today's Knesset has no majority to block separate sidewalks and buses for men and women or prevent religious obscurantists from marginalizing women in the Israel Defense Forces. It is questionable whether a majority would support Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar in forbidding separate, unequal elementary schools for Ethiopians in Petah Tikvah or would overturn the segregation of Sephardi ultra-Orthodox girls from their Hasidic classmates in Emmanuel. The list goes on.
The issue is not that the Court makes tough and controversial decisions but that it is politically tone-deaf in doing its work. Israel's Supreme Court, to restore badly needed legitimacy, must—like its critics—abjure "political gluttony" and internalize rather than delegitimize criticism. Ultimately, however, Israel's High Court can only be safely revamped not salami-style by the Knesset but as part of an overall reform of the political system.
Jewish Ideas Daily has linked to a number of relevant articles from different sources. Evelyn Gordon reminds us that these controversies over the court have been going on for some time. Richard Posner critiques a book by for chief Justice Aharon Barak, who provided the philosophical basis for how Israel's high court operates. The article is called Enlightened Despot. Finally, law professor Ruth Gavison asks Who's afraid of judicial reform? The questions about reforming the court system in Israel, despite ridiculous charges that they are an assault on democracy, have everything to do with finding the proper balance in Israel's political system.
3) Dishonest and proud
Honest Reporting came out with its Dishonest Reporting Awards for 2011.The Guardian leads the way of dis-honorees.
It's interesting to note that a famous picture of a stone thrower getting hit by a car in Silwan just won an award. The award was not ironic. However the picture in question was staged. You can't make this stuff up.
4) More Friedman fallout
There have been a number of new critiques of yesterday's Thomas Friedman column. Elder of Ziyon questions his portrayal of Palestinian nationalism. Daled Amos observes that this wasn't the first time Friedman charged that Congress was bought by the Israel lobby. Omri Ceren made a similar observation. Congressman Rothman of New Jersey demanded an apology.
Powerline writes that Friedman has gone Walt and Mearsheimer. The most complete critique was from Ron Radosh, Thomas Friedman, the Demonization of Israel, and the Assault Against Josh Block, which brings several recent news items together. Radosh quotes David Frum, who got to the core issue:As Frum aptly puts it, the real issue is “a referendum on whether it is more unacceptable inside today’s liberal Washington to use the language of anti-Semitism — or to protest the language of anti-Semitism.”
Labels: Honest Reporting, Middle East Media Sampler, outposts, Soccer Dad, Supreme Court, Tom Friedman
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:48 PM
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Honesdt Reporting has issued their 2011 Dishonest Reporter Awards. The winners include al-Guardian, al-Independent, Press TV and the Los Angeles Times. Read all about it here.Labels: Honest Reporting
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:50 PM
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Labels: anti-Israel media bias, Honest Reporting, mainstream media
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:33 PM
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A massive study of photographs by media bias watchdog Honest Reporting shows blatant bias by the major wire services in their use of photographs in reporting about Israel (Hat Tip: Daily Alert). To find out if Israel is being treated fairly by the wire services, we embarked on a three-month in-depth study of how Israel is portrayed by all three wires. This study covers the period that began with the Gaza flotilla on May 31, 2010 and ended with the murder of four Israelis at the hands of Palestinian terrorists on Aug. 31, 2010.Read the whole thing and click on the links.
The study was carried out by David Katz, a professional photographer with 25 years experience working at the highest levels in the media together with HonestReporting. Over three months, some 13,500 photos from Israel and the Palestinian territories were reviewed.
The study revealed a pattern of double standards and bias that has become a norm in coverage of the region, particularly in regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Distortions of images mostly fell into the following categories:
1. Deliberate Staging
2. Use of wide-angle lenses and photographer positions to make photos appear more dramatic than the reality
3. Photographers choosing positions that effect the events they are shooting
4. Editorializing in photo captions.
The study did not reveal significant instances of photo manipulation through programs such as Photoshop. While dramatic examples of digital photo manipulation have been uncovered in the past, most notably during the Second Lebanon War, the study found that photo bias against Israel consisted largely of subtle techniques such as staging images.
To ensure objectivity in the study, HonestReporting used the wire services' stated missions (Appendix 1) as its standard, comparing the missions to actual performance.
Labels: Honest Reporting, media bias, photographs
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:54 PM
1 comments
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
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