Fourth estaters or fifth columnists
Our fourth estate often boasts that it is the guardian of our freedom. It shines light over the dark recesses of government to let citizens know what’s really going on and whose interests are being served. This pretense allows the media to claim that they show the news but don’t shape the news. It allows them to pretend that they are the essential neutral arbiters of what is right and wrong in our society and what must be done to make things right. But when that light of scrutiny shines on the media, the media don’t welcome the openness. In fact they do all they can to turn off the light. No intimidation, no denial and is too trivial. The media’s pretense of its incorruptability and its indispensibility to our freedom must be maintained at all costs. When France 2 won its libel case against “Philippe Karsenty, director of Media Ratings, a website that comments on the media,” its lawyer exemplified this arrogance
“Hopefully this decision will end a campaign of defamation that is particularly dangerous because it affects those with a duty to inform the public,” Benedicte Amblard, lawyer for France 2, told reporters after the ruling.
The problem is, of course, that Enderlein, the reporter at the center of this controversy clearly lied. CAMERA recounts his report on Mohammed al-Dura
“3 pm… everything has turned over near the Netzarim settlement in the Gaza Strip…here Jamal and his son Mohammed are the targets of gunshots that have come from the Israeli position…. A new burst of gunfire, Mohammed is dead and his father seriously wounded.” [September 30, 2000, France 2 evening newscast]
But as James Fallows notes in his excellent Who shot Mohammed al-Dura
Bullets had not been recovered from the boy’s body at the hospital, and the family was hardly willing to agree to an exhumation to re-examine the wounds. Thus the most important piece of physical evidence was the concrete barrel. In the TV footage it clearly bears a mark from the Israeli Bureau of Standards, which enabled investigators to determine its exact dimensions and composition. When they placed the equivalent in front of a concrete wall and put mannequins representing father and son behind it, a conclusion emerged: soldiers in the Israeli outpost could not have fired the shots whose impact was shown on TV. The evidence was cumulative and reinforcing. It involved the angle, the barrel, the indentations, and the dust.
So we know that Enderlein’s report (and those following him) were false. Fallows also notes something that Richard Landes has shown at Second Draft (specifically this.)
To watch the raw footage is to wonder, repeatedly, What is going on here? In some scenes groups of Palestinians duck for cover from gunfire while others nonchalantly talk or smoke just five feet away. At one dramatic moment a Palestinian man dives forward clutching his leg, as if shot in the thigh. An ambulance somehow arrives to collect him exactly two seconds later, before he has stopped rolling from the momentum of his fall. Another man is loaded into an ambulance—and, in footage from a different TV camera, appears to jump out of it again some minutes later.
And indeed this shows the staged nature of much of the reporting and according to the Jerusalem Post even the prosecutor was convinced
Indeed, it is rare for the court to hand down a judgement more severe than that recommended by the public prosecutor. The prosecutor had recommended that the court rule in Karsenty’s favor, arguing that he had conducted a thorough investigation of the France 2 report and had presented substantial evidence to support his case.
So in France, a television station sought, successfully for now, to silence critics by means of a lawsuit. In England the BBC is seeking to suppress the contents of the Balen report that is widely believed to confirm complaints of anti-Israel bias
The High Court action is the latest stage of a lengthy and expensive battle by Steven Sugar, a lawyer, to get access to the document, which was compiled by Malcolm Balen, a senior editorial adviser, in 2004. Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner, who is responsible for the workings of the Act, agreed with the BBC that the document, which examines hundreds of hours of its radio and television broadcasts, could be held back. However, Mr Sugar appealed and, after a two-day hearing at which the BBC was represented by two barristers, the Information Tribunal found in his favour. Mr Sugar said: “This is a serious report about a serious issue and has been compiled with public money. I lodged the request because I was concerned that the BBC’s reporting of the second intifada was seriously unbalanced against Israel, but I think there are other issues at stake now in the light of the BBC’s reaction.”
And, in South Africa, The South African Broadcasting Corporation is seeking to suppress a report on its blacklisting of journalists who don’t hew to the political line of the ANC. In a particularly offensive section It’s Almost Supernatural tells us
Copied below is the section from the report dealing with award-winning Jewish freelance journalist Paula Slier. Slier is accused by SABC news MD Dr Snuki Zikalala of being impartial (pro Israel) and of “taking sides”. These accusations were primarily made because Paula Slier is a “white, Jewish girl”. Slier’s reporting is anything but biased and the criticism of her from both Jewish and Muslim sections of the community is probably the best indication of the absurdity underpinning Zikalala’s censorship of her reporting. She has on numerous occasions reported very critically on Israel. It seems that for Dr Snuki Zikalala, her mere recognition and acceptance of Israel as a sovereign state is an intolerable position of Zionist support.
So we have it, when it comes to Israel (and sometimes, not just Israel) media organizations that are in favor of greater openness in just about any other sector; use every legal means at their disposal not to allow their biases to be exposed to the light of scrutiny. It seems that (especially regarding Israel) that they are less members of the fourth estate than they are part of a fifth column.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.Technorati tags: France 2, BBC, SABC, Media Bias, Israel.
