Cropoganda

On February 24, Israeli troops entered Dheisheh refugee camp near Bethlehem to arrest a Palestinian terrorist. During the ensuing street clashes, Jihad al-Jafari was shot and killed. If you accept the Israeli version of the story, al-Jafari was the "leader of the rioters" and was fired upon only after a soldier was physically injured and the others felt endangered by incendiary devices and cinder blocks which were being thrown down at them from the rooftops.

Al Jazeera, which provided the above photograph, does not deny that Jihad was on the roof when he was shot, but claims that he was asleep at the time of the raid and only went up to the roof when he heard a commotion in the street below. The only evidence for this assertion appears to be from an interview given by Jibreen al-Bakari, the Palestinian Authority Governor for the area to the Voice of Palestine.  According to a local resident, al-Jafari "was a very nice person. The soldiers had no reason to kill him. He was innocent. A simple, lovely kid."

While I find it hard to believe that al-Jaafari was so naive as to be unaware that the rooftops of the refugee camps are the meurtrières of the modern age, he does, indeed, look like just a kid in the article's accompanying photograph.

Or does he? Here is the uncropped photo:

Obviously, the above photo plays havoc with the narrative that the journalists at Al Jazeera present. The editorial decision to crop the photo should seriously call into question their "reporting."

Yet, perhaps the worst offender was the New York Times. While the Times article briefly presents the Israeli version of events early on in the article, the rest is dedicated to the unverified Palestinian claims that al-Jafari sleeepwalked his way onto the roof. Even worse, the Times gives voice to the unsubstantiated claim that, "Israeli snipers immediately opened fire and shot him in cold blood."

In almost the same breath, the Times reporter Isabel Kershner, proceeds to tie this incident to the withholding of tax revenues and reductions in the electricity supply to the Palestinian Authority. How these events are interconnected remains unclear, but the reporting definitely smacks of an attempt at what social scientists call "contextualization" - a "big picture" approach that attempts to situate events into a broader context.

In those cases where causal links can be demonstrated, contextualization can be an important corrective to simplistic or reductionist explanations. On the other hand, where causality cannot be demonstrated or is assumed, it can be misused to dispense with agency (i.e. free will) by citing supposed underlying causes. In this case, Kershner elicits sympathy for the predicament that Palestinians find themselves in while tacitly absolving them of any responsibility for their actions.

At the same time, Israeli actions are simply presented as a given. They exist in a contextual vacuum and the article makes no attempt to uncover or disclose why the Israeli army chose to "raid" the camp in the first place.

Worst of all, even though the Times undoubtedly had acccess to the above photo, it's editors chose to crop it out all together. In his writings, Foucault called this the "administration of silence" or the other side of discourse that serves to delimit it. It certainly seems like the editors at the Times chose to completely crop out the photo lest its readers try to form their own opinions about Jihad.

Have You Heard?

Here is something that will never make the evening news. From the website Ya Libnan:

The state-run National News Agency reported that Abbas Abbas, 13, was shot and seriously wounded by Syrian border guards ( Hajanah) at the Grand River borderline in north Lebanon. He died later from his wounds at the hospital in
Akkar.

Apparently, Lebanon is trying to get Syria to demarcate their mutual border and the Syrians are not too keen to do so. In fact. only yesterday Syrian troops invaded Lebanon:

The Syrian intelligence forces and Syrian border guards invaded Lebanon yesterday and stormed the house of Hussein Ali Aldedda and fired three bullets at him wounding him in his hand, elbow and hip, before withdrawing back to the Syrian territory according to the Arabic daily Al-Nahar

Aldedda ( 41) lives in the Bekaa region , inside the Lebanese territory near the Syrian border. No explanations were given for the Syrian actions.

"In Beeb we Trust"

The BBC is apparently so worried that a report on it's coverage of the Middle East conflict will be made public, that it has reportedly spent between ₤200,000 and ₤300,000 on legal fees to prevent it's release! The Balen Report, which was commissioned by the BBC in 2004 and written by a senior BBC editorial advisor (!) allegedly demonstrates that the BBC's coverage in recent years has been anti-Israeli.

BBC bosses have faced repeated claims that is coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict has been skewed by a pro-Palestinian bias.

The corporation famously came under fire after middle-east correspondent Barbara Plett revealed that she had cried at the death of Yasser Arafat in 2004.

If the BBC were not publicly funded and did not claim to be unbiased and independent, then it would not matter, but the fact remains that the BBC claims that it is impartial and therefore it's impact is greater than it would be otherwise. As the Beeb's own website states: "Trust is the foundation of the BBC: we are independent, impartial and honest".

While I find it interesting (and slightly Orwellian) that a news agency would value "trust" above "truth", this is consistent with Gramsci's brilliant analysis of how groups dominate in society without the need to resort to the threat of force. He called this "hegemony" and argued that it, "describes the process whereby ideas, structures, and actions come to be seen by the majority of people as wholly natural, preordained, and working for their own good, when in fact they are constructed and transmitted by powerful minority interests to protect the status quo that serves those interests." Basically, it "controls the way new ideas are rejected or become naturalized in a process that subtly alters notions of common sense in a given society." [My Italics]

A prerequisite for hegemony to have an impact on society is trust. Without trust, people reject what they are being told, seek other sources of information and threaten the status quo. While Gramsci's critique was directed against the Italian Fascists that had imprisoned him, he would have had a field day with the BBC, a "quasi-autonomous public corporation" owned by the British government, run by a board appointed by the Queen (on the advice of the government) and paid for by taxes (license fees) collected from the public.

To understand how hegemony works in practice, one need only compare the BBC to such documentary films as Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine or Fahrenheit 9/11. Most people are media savvy enough to realise that even though they are watching a documentary, it is being edited to present a particular viewpoint. This does not mean to suggest that Moore fabricated any of the footage in these films, rather that both the juxtaposition of images and what he chose NOT to present is as important as what he does present to the viewer. Most people realize this because they know they are watching a "movie" and not witnessing real life.

In the case of the BBC, people are much more likely to suspend their disbelief, because news footage is often so raw. If you add in the element of trust, then people begin to confuse what they are seeing on their TVs as "reality". If the only footage of Africa that people see is one of famine, poverty and war and the only Middle East coverage always centers on Israel and never about the serious social problems of the other states of the region, then it is not surprising if one's attitude towards Africa is one of pity and dismay while Israel is perceived as the biggest threat to peace in the world. That the media could have such a profound effect was succinctly explained by Marshall McLuhan as the phenomenon commonly known as "The medium is the message." As McLuhan pointed out, crime reporting does not necessarily change the amount of crime, but it does change our attitude toward crime and even contribute to a culture of fear (a point well made in Bowling for Columbine.)

I think that there is another reason why the BBC pundits chose "trust" over "truth". It reflects a post-modern sensibility that eschews "simplistic" notions such as "truth" for the supposed "nuance" of relativism. The problem with this is that it is really a disarming technique that causes the reader to "trust" the reportage. What this supposedly nuanced approach accomplished is the illusion of balance. After all, how can the BBC be accused of "taking sides" if it does not believe that there really are "sides"?

Interestingly, in all my years of writing complaints to the BBC about their skewed and partial coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict, I have only received one e-mail in response. When I complained that an IRA "militant" was termed a "terrorist" and a PLO "terrorist" a "militant", I was told that this was not accidental. In fact, I was informed that the official BBC policy was that only members of the IRA were considered terrorists while everyone else were "just" militants! While this exchange pre-dated September 11, it certainly does not appear that the events of that tragic day have changed much at the Beeb. It also shows that there are more sides to the BBC than appear at first glance.