In the US, Gaza is a different war

[ProgressiveMuslim]

By Habib Battah


The mainstream US media has been careful to balance images of Gazan suffering with those of Israelis, leading to accusations it is not reflecting the unequal death toll


The images of two women on the front page of an edition of The Washington Post last week illustrates how mainstream US media has been reporting Israel's war on Gaza.

On the left was a Palestinian mother who had lost five children. On the right was a nearly equally sized picture of an Israeli woman who was distressed by the fighting, according to the caption.

As the Palestinian woman cradled the dead body of one child, another infant son, his face blackened and disfigured with bruises, cried beside her.

The Israeli woman did not appear to be wounded in any way but also wept.

Arab frustration

To understand the frustration often felt in the Arab world over US media coverage, one only needs to imagine the same front page had the situation been reversed.

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If an Israeli woman had lost five daughters in a Palestinian attack, would The Washington Post run an equally sized photograph of a relatively unharmed Palestinian woman, who was merely distraught over Israeli missile fire?

When the front page photographs of the two women were published on December 30, over 350 Palestinians had reportedly been killed compared to just four Israelis.

What if 350 Israelis had been killed and only four Palestinians - would the newspaper have run the stories side by side as if equal in news value?

Like many major news organisations in the US, The Washington Post has chosen to cover the conflict from a perspective that reflects the US government's relationship with Israel. This means prioritising Israel's version of events while underplaying the views of Palestinian groups.

For example, the newspaper's lead article on Tuesday, which was published above the mothers' photographs, quotes Israeli military and civilian sources nine times before quoting a single Palestinian. The first seven paragraphs explain Israel's military strategy. The ninth paragraph describes the anxiety among Israelis, spending evenings in bomb shelters. Ordinary Palestinians, who generally have no access to bomb shelters, do not make an appearance until the 23rd paragraph.

To balance this top story, The Washington Post published another article on the bottom half of the front page about the Palestinian mother and her children. But would the paper have ever considered balancing a story about a massive attack on Israelis with an in-depth lead piece on the strategy of Palestinian militants?

Context stripped

Major US television channels also adopted the equal time approach, despite the reality that Palestinian casualties exceeded Israeli ones by a hundred fold. However, such comparisons were rare because the scripts read by American correspondents often excluded the overall Palestinian death count.

By stripping the context, American viewers may have easily assumed a level playing field, rather than a case of disproportionate force.

Take the opening lines of a report filed by NBC's Martin Fletcher on December 30: "In Gaza two little girls were taking out the rubbish and killed by an Israeli rocket - while in Israel, a woman had been driving home and was killed by a Hamas rocket. No let up today on either side on the fourth day of this battle."

Omitted from the report was the overall Palestinian death toll, dropped continuously in subsequent reports filed by NBC correspondents over the next several days.


http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/war_on_gaza/2009/01/20091585448204690.html

[EFerrari]

1. This morning Amy reported a Rasmussen poll that hat Democrats against

this action by 24 points and Republicans for it by 31 pts or so. I don't know if it was the same poll someone posted a few days ago but it might have been -- in all, Americans against 41 / for 44.

[subsuelo]

2. No wonder so many are in support of the massacres

They really haven't got a clue what's going on

[ProgressiveMuslim]

3. Personally, I have not watched any mainstream coverage of this.

The most mainstream I get is BBC TV.

[subsuelo]

6. The only news I watch is Democracy Now and from Link TV

everything else I get from rss feeds

[EFerrari]

5. There is a lot more opposition here than I remember seeing before.

:shrug:

[Vegasaurus]

7. You obviously don't watch the news

because it is on all day, constantly, with footage from Arab TV.

I have seen all the dead kids, shown over and over and over again.

They keep replaying the same footage.

If you think that this news isn't being shown, you are delusional.

[azurnoir]

8. So you have seen ALL of the dead kids?

And from ARAB tv well I will give this at least you are sparing us the crocodile tears, and I am sorry you are annoyed because the media is showing a bit of what is going on

[Vegasaurus]

9. You really are obtuse

Television watching and news watching are voluntary activities.

I choose to watch the news, because I am disabled and home a lot now.

I am interested in watching what is happening in Gaza.

No one is forcing me, and I am not "annoyed".

I never said I saw ALL the dead children.

And the video footage is from ARAB TV, because no western media is in the Gaza strip.

Do you have a problem with my stating a fact about ARAB TV?

[subsuelo]

11. where did I say that news isn't being shown?

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

4. I've found public opinion about Gaza different than it has been in the past

I recall during the '67 war and those afterwards that there was a lot of "rah rah Israel" talk amongst folks I would meet and talk to in the course of work, social events, etc. Not this time. I live in Arkansas in the most conservative part of the state. There are a lot of evangelicals that support Israel because they think that will bring on the Rapture. But they aren't cheering on Israel in this case. And others who are not evangelicals are saying that what Israel is doing is wrong. These people have even talked about how it seems that the people in the Israeli government are reincarnations of Nazis, because they are using similar tactics.

[BunkerHill24]

10. Inside the US: "Hear no Evil, See No Evil" !