Archive for the ‘Media’ Category

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NPR’s psychological warfare technique

Wednesday, March 7th, 2007

By Vic Rosenthal

National Public Radio (NPR) is a personal bête noir. I used to be a regular supporter of my local Public Radio station, but stopped because of what I felt was biased coverage of Israel and related issues from NPR. Organizations such as CAMERA and Honest Reporting have documented this bias for some time.

NPR was generally criticized on the basis of which events they chose to cover (they somehow ignored the 2002 Passover Seder Massacre in which Hamas murdered 30 people), and the relative amount of time they gave to pro- and anti-Israel voices. In response, NPR started providing free transcripts of their Mideast coverage from major news programs in 2002. They also appointed an ombudsman, Jeffrey Dvorkin, to deal with complaints about biased reporting.

So when I woke on February 27 to another anti-Israel segment from NPR’s Linda Gradstein, describing an Israeli incursion into Nablus [Shechem] on the West Bank, I planned to obtain the transcript and complain about it to the ombudsman. Unfortunately, as of today the transcript has not appeared (they usually are provided within a couple of days at most). And Dvorkin, the ombudsman, apparently doesn’t work there anymore. An automatic reply to my email of March 2 said that his assistant would read all mail until a new one was hired, but as of today I have received no response. I’ve transcribed it myself, and it appears below.

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More on “Ruach Shaked”

Wednesday, March 7th, 2007

By Naomi Leitner

Naomi Leitner is an attorney in Israel.

Several stories have been carried in Israel’s media today and yesterday (March 5 – 6, 2007) concerning the passions being stirred up in Egypt over the documentary movie “Ruach Shaked” (The Spirit of Shaked) which was aired last week on Israel’s Channel 1.

The documentary examines the elite commando unit “Shaked”, including the fighting on the so-called “seventh day” of the 1967 Six-Day-War.

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BBC listeners dislike Israel… Is this really a surprise?

Monday, March 5th, 2007

From the BBC:

A majority of people believe that Israel and Iran have a mainly negative influence in the world, a poll for the BBC World Service suggests.

It shows that the two countries are closely followed by the United States and North Korea.

The poll asked 28,000 in 27 countries to rate a dozen countries plus the European Union in terms of whether they have a positive or negative influence.

Canada, Japan and the EU are viewed most positively in the survey.

What is really incredible about this is that Israel probably has less direct effect on the people in those 27 countries than any of the others. The policy of the United States, whether or not you approve of it, is quite likely to have great effect on the world. And one can understand how regimes that threaten to use nuclear weapons, as Iran and North Korea have, would generate a lot of strong feeling.

But if Israel were to disappear, or alternatively to build 100 new settlements in the territories, the effect on 99 percent of the world’s population would be exactly — nothing.

The BBC piece mentions the ‘controversial’ war in Lebanon. But even the most exaggerated estimates of the total death toll on both sides in this war don’t exceed 1,500. Contrast this with the ongoing conflict in Chechnya, which began in 1999 and where at least 10,000 have been killed in the last 4 years. And this is just one of many ongoing wars.

The BBC mentions that Muslims are particularly anti-Israel. Indeed, but most of the dead in Chechnya are Muslims, including plenty of civilians.

Maybe the explanation lies in the fact that the people they polled were BBC listeners!

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The BBC’s point of view

Friday, February 16th, 2007

As everyone knows, the Palestinians have been struggling to stop shooting each other and get back to shooting us. Here’s how the BBC sees it:

The vast majority of Palestinians are desperate for the government to come together smoothly and succeed.

They want to see their leaders form a united front in their confrontation with Israel and the effort to end its occupation of their land.

And even more pressingly, they have been appalled and frightened by the violence in recent months between forces loyal to Hamas and Fatah. — BBC (my emphasis)

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How they see it

Friday, February 9th, 2007

Here are how some mainstream news reports refer to the Temple Mount:

JERUSALEM – Israeli police stormed the grounds of Islam’s third-holiest shrine Friday, firing stun grenades and tear gas to disperse thousands of Muslim worshippers who hurled stones, bottles and trash in an eruption of outrage over Israeli renovation work nearby. — Yahoo News (from AP. The same report appeared in CNN, the LA Times, and our own Fresno Bee)

In Jerusalem the Israeli building project is taking place on the most sensitive ground. The Al Haram al Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary compound, is where the second Palestinian uprising erupted in 2000 following a controversial visit by Ariel Sharon, who was then the Israeli opposition leader.
It contains the Al-Aqsa mosque, the site where, Muslims believe, the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven. It is also revered by Jews as the site of their ancient temple, destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD. — Timesonline (UK)

Clashes at disputed Jerusalem holy site (headline)
JERUSALEM: Protestors and Israeli police clashed today outside the Al Aksa Mosque, Islam’s third-holiest shrine… (IHT)

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli police forces entered the area around Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem and fired stun grenades at stone-throwing Palestinian worshippers in clashes at the end of Friday prayers. (Boston Globe, others)

Please note, we are talking about the site which has been most holy to Judaism for several millennia. The best we get is an ‘also’ mention in one report. Note too that the International Herald Tribune emphasizes ‘disputed’. The BBC recently called it ‘contested’.

There’s lots of discussion about the historical importance (or lack thereof) of this site to Islam, and especially the emphasis placed on it since 1967. Recently, there have been attempts by Muslims to deny that the Temple ever was at this location! But keep in mind that Israel has allowed access to all the holy sites of all religions in Jerusalem since 1967, whereas Jews were not permitted to pray at the Wall when the area was under Arab control.

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