Manfred Gerstenfeld and Ben Green

Watching the Pro-Israeli Media Watchers

Manfred Gerstenfeld and Ben Green

Media Watching1

Media watching can be defined as critically examining one or more media on a regular or recurrent basis. It usually results from a conviction that certain media are biased against a cause the monitoring body or individual supports. Media watch activities include data collecting, their analysis and publication.

The media have benefited over the past decades from a unique situation. While they have the power to criticize others relentlessly and sometimes brutally, there are few ways to take them to task. The work of their staff is only subject to the specific media’s self-regulation. Except for extreme cases journalists are not accountable to anybody outside their profession. Reporters can choose the facts they will mention or omit, even if this leads to major distortion of perceptions by their readers. Their methods to slant findings, if they wish to do so, are almost unlimited. Media also rarely attack each other. If they did this would create much greater accountability of journalists.

There are many ways in which media create false perceptions. Infinite examples of them are exposed by a large number of authors. So for instance says Alan Dershowitz.

At Israel’s 55th anniversary parade, the Neturei Karta, a small ultra-Orthodox group, held a counterdemonstration with banners saying ‘real Jews are anti-Zionists.’ The Boston Globe printed two pictures: one of pro-Israel groups carrying flags and the other of the anti-Israelis. This created the feeling that there were equal numbers of Neturei Karta and Zionists at the parade.2

The impact of such isolated remarks however is much smaller than of a systematic ongoing approach.

Computing Media Bias

Tim Groseclose of UCLA and Jeff Milyo of Chicago University have developed a sophisticated method to compute the bias of American media. It is based on counting the times that a media outlet cites various think tanks. They compare this with the times that members of Congress cite the same think tanks in their speeches on the floor of the House and Senate. The authors then compare citation patterns and as the political identification of Congress members is known and measurable they can establish where the media are positioned.

Their findings showed a significant liberal bias. All news outlets except Fox News’ Special Report received a score to the left of the average member of Congress. They summarize: “by one of our measures all but three of these media outlets (Special Report, the Drudge Report, and ABC’s World News Tonight) were closer to the average Democrat in Congress than to the median member of the House of Representatives.”3

Groseclose and Milyo write that various reports showed that the great majority of journalists are liberal. One study found that only seven percent of all Washington correspondents voted for George Bush in 1992, compared to 37% of the American public. They conclude: “Statistics suggest that journalists, as a group, are more liberal than almost any congressional district in the country.”4

This phenomenon is even more extreme in Sweden. Former Swedish deputy Prime Minister Per Ahlmark mentions that in 1968 not more than three percent of Swedish journalists had sympathy for the communist party. This figure was identical to the percentage the party obtained in that year’s election. By 1989 the number of pro-communist journalists had increased to about 30%, while not more than four to five percent of the voters supported the party.5

Media bias manifests itself differently in various cultures. Former Israeli ambassador to Japan Yaacov Cohen relates how New York mayor Ed Koch in 1985 in three different appearances in Japan, strongly condemned the Japanese surrender to the Arab boycott. He added that this attitude cast doubt about Japanese adherence to free trade. Hundreds of journalists heard him. Not a single mention of these words appeared in any Japanese language paper.6

Starting in the Seventies

Currently several organizations systematically follow foreign media’s reporting on Israel-related matters. Most pro-Israel media watches are in English but there also some in other languages such as French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.

Since the second Palestinian uprising began in autumn 2000, many consider that Israel is losing the media battle. The Israeli Government is frequently blamed for not making its viewpoints effectively known. Pro-Israel media watchers are an important source of information for their readers. But above all, they are private actors in the Arab-Israeli public relations war.

Pro-Israel media monitoring – albeit in a more simplified form – goes back about three decades. The first watches were in written form. Former Israeli diplomat Lenny Ben-David relates that in the mid-70s Si Kenen, editor of the AIPAC affiliated, Washington-based Near East Report, initiated a media-monitoring column entitled The Monitor. Its purpose was to clarify “controversial issues and to expose negative propaganda.”7

One of NER’s prime targets were the columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, who were syndicated in about 250 cities in the U.S. When they published errors Kenen would send out telegrams to local activists who would then write critical letters to the papers in which the columns were published. The climax of this campaign came after Evans had falsely claimed that Israel made a secret request of $4 billion per year for US arms. Evans, who had initially refused to retract, had to do so after several weeks. Under the ongoing pressure from letter writers Evans and Novak stopped writing on the Middle East for several years.8

Some pro-Israel media watches were initiated after the war in Lebanon.CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, was founded in 1982.9At that time they published hard copy articles about various media who distorted information concerning Israel.

Europe and Israel

For a long time pro-Israel individuals have also criticized European anti-Israel media reporting on a more than one time basis. Former Israeli Ambassador in Brussels, Sergio Minerbi, analyzed six documentaries of the French-speaking Belgian television station RTBF between 1979 and 1982. In 1985 his findings were published in a book.10

In 1987 Henry Weinberg devoted an entire chapter of his book, The Myth of the Jew in France 1967-1982, to the anti-Israel bias of the Paris daily, Le Monde.11 Already in 1980 this leading French paper had published an article entitled “Double Nationality, Double Allegiance” by the academic M.L. Snoussi, which “openly leveled the charge of treason against French Jewry”. Weinberg remarked that the article “contained phrases which in other democratic countries would be considered as incitement to racial violence”.

After terrorists bombed a synagogue in the Paris Rue Copernic in October 1980, Le Monde had published another anti-Semitic article by Jean-Marie Paupert on its front page. Weinberg remarked that it was full of anti-Semitic clichés. Le Monde already at that time applied several of the techniques, which have become so obvious today. Much of its coverage of the Middle East was given to pro-Arab Jewish journalists. Frequently when citing Israeli sources they quoted extremists such as Felicia Langer, Uri Avneri and Matiyahu Peled without mentioning them as being remote from the Israeli mainstream.

Weinberg summed it up saying that the paper expressed “consistently unfair and excessive criticism of the Jewish state and made for the acceptance of anti-Semitic expression as a legitimate means of public debate”.

David Bar-Ilan

Prominent among early pro-Israel media watchers in Israel was David Bar-Ilan, editor of The Jerusalem Post, who published a column entitled Eye on the Media. In 1993, a selection appeared in book form.12

In an interview in 1994, Bar-Ilan said: “The assumption of most foreign media is that the Palestinian cause is a just one… Here is a people seeking liberty, freedom, self-determination, which is as good as motherhood. Israel should give it to them. If it does not, it is in the wrong.”13

In this interview Bar-Ilan gave the following story as one of the foremost examples of anti-Israel bias:

The BBC is by far the worst offender when it comes to Israel… I shall only give one example of its malice. A few years ago a coffeehouse collapsed in Arab East Jerusalem due to structural problems. The most striking thing about it was that Jews and Arabs worked together to save lives.

Even strong PLO activists like the deputy Mufti of Jerusalem were stunned by that cooperation. The BBC did not say one word about it. They only mentioned that Arabs suffered. They repeated the libel that a bomb had been put in there.

This was a totally distorted report, leaving out the one phenomenon that should have made news all over the world: the fact that Arabs and Jews worked together to save lives at a time when the Intifada was at its height.” Bar-Ilan mentioned that the building collapse was not a politically significant event and added: “From the political sphere, there are hundreds of examples of BBC malice.”14

The Internet: Major Impetus

Several developments have heavily influenced the substantial growth in pro-Israeli media watching in recent years. The explosive expansion of the Internet opened major new opportunities. Before one could follow media in a regular way, however it involved sizable expense to get one’s conclusions to many readers within a short time. Today media watchers can circulate their findings at little cost by e-mail or by publishing them on websites.

Media monitors have access to Internet search engines that can carry out the research that only expensive clipping services could do. Thus, for instance, a media watcher can quickly determine in how many newspapers a biased syndicated columnist appeared.

A third factor, which accelerated pro-Israel media monitoring, has been the increased foreign media attention to the Arab-Israeli conflict since the second Palestinian uprising in 2000. This led to an influx of foreign correspondents into Israel and a flood of biased and sometimes explicitly anti-Semitic information about Israel. In turn pro-Israeli individuals reacted to this biased reporting. Some created specific organizations to watch, analyze and criticize these media.

Aims of the Media Watches

Currently several watch organizations regularly comment on various media in the world as to their reporting on the Arab-Israeli conflict. They differ in their aims, focus and modus operandi. For some of them media watching is one of a wider range of activities.

Pro-Israel media monitors have typically the following characteristics:

• They focus on the Arab-Israeli conflict.
  
• They supply otherwise inaccessible information – for instance from Arabic sources – to policy makers and stimulate activists to react to the media concerned. Their ultimate aim is to change the media bias.
  
• They have a website on which their material is published.
  
• They regularly publish their findings, often one or two times a week, either on their website or by sending e-mails to their subscribers.
  
• Sometimes media watchers will speak, without publicity, to a media organization, which has published biased material, and hope to reach an agreement.
  
• Several also lobby foreign governments and authorities.

They have also become a counter weight to pro-Palestinian media watches. Palestinian supporters have their media watches, which claim that the media is biased against the Palestinians. These include Arab Media Watch, Palestine Media Watch and Electronic Intifada.

The Main Media Watches

The main pro-Israel media watches—some of which operate from abroad and others from Israel – in English are:

1. HonestReporting15

HonestReporting grew out of a private British initiative after the second Palestinian uprising started. In 2001 it became an independent foundation with its own board. It maintains an association with the Aish HaTorah educational movement. HonestReporting’s declared aim is to ensure “that Israel receives the fair media coverage that every nation deserves”.16

HonestReporting monitors mainly media in the United States, but also in other English-speaking countries. It has several affiliates who deal with foreign media. HonestReporting scrutinizes media for examples of anti-Israel bias. It maintains a regular relationship with foreign reporters based in Israel and provides them with information. If media publish distorted facts and biased articles it informs subscribers of offending articles, asking them to respond directly to the media concerned. It is thus not only an information service but also an activist body. It has 100,000 members worldwide.

HonestReporting has defined seven categories of media bias, respectively; Misleading Definitions and Terminology, Imbalanced Reporting, Opinions Disguised as News, Lack of Context, Selective Omission, Using True Facts to Draw Untrue Conclusions and Distortion of Facts.

Examples of its recent work include “Sheikh Yassin’s Happiest Day” which addressed some of the media myths that appeared after the terrorist cleric’s death.17 “BBC’s Selective Sensitivity”18 dealt with the double standards at the BBC after the sacking of Robert Kilroy-Silk. HonestReporting also awards every year a ‘Dishonest Reporting’ award. In 2003 Reuters was chosen.19 In 2002 it was the British media and in 2001 the BBC.

2. CAMERA20

CAMERA covers a wide range of media in the United States and occasionally in the United Kingdom. It follows television, radio and newspapers in a systematic way. It obtains part of its “media raw material” by subscribing to databases. CAMERA also places adverts in newspapers such as the New York Times. It reports media bias and then asks its email list of 5000 activists to take subsequent action through the writing of letters and op-eds to the media concerned. Its material goes out to 50,000 subscribers.

CAMERA’s director Andrea Levin stresses that as much as half of the work is done behind the scenes by staff members who communicate with media outlets. When factual errors are identified, they contact editors and reporters to elicit corrections. In other cases they urge coverage of underreported stories.21

Some examples of CAMERA’s publications include “The New York Times covers (and covers up for) Palestinian Child Bombers”,22 The Washington Post a Language of its Own”23 and “CAMERA prompts Boston GlobeCorrection on Legality of Settlements”.24

3. Palestinian Media Watch (PMW)25

Palestinian MediaWatch (PMW), established in 1996, focuses on analyzing Palestinian society. It monitors the Palestinian Arabic language media and schoolbooks. For its data-gathering it records and analyzes all Palestinian television programs and papers. Itamar Marcus, its Director mentions that the Palestinian Authority (PA) tightly controls all Palestinian media. Their analysis thus permits understanding what the PA’s true intentions are.26

Media watching is only part of PMW’s activities. It also analyzes the PA’s culture and society from numerous perspectives, including studies on summer camps, poetry, schoolbooks, religious ideology, crossword puzzles, and many more.

PMW has been playing an important role in documenting the contradictions between the image the Palestinians present to the world in English and the messages to their own people in Arabic. Some subjects its reports have dealt with are “Encouraging Women Terrorists”27 “War against the Jews and Israel in Palestinian Authority Religious Teaching”28 and “Comparing the Palestinian Authority Opinions and School Textbooks with the Hamas Charter”.29

In June 2004, PMW brought before the American Congress a special report entitled “Four loopholes in US Anti-Terror Laws.”30It analyzed the use of US money in Palestinian controlled areas in support of anti-American activities and the promotion of terror. The PMW report recommended five amendments to US law, which were all written into the new US Foreign Operations Bill, passed by the House of Representatives in July 2004.

Marcus considers that PMW’s most important activity is to bring its material to the attention of foreign politicians and decision-makers. He presents his findings frequently to parliamentarians and media abroad.31

4. Anti Defamation League (ADL)32

The Anti Defamation League (ADL) is first and foremost a Jewish defense organization.

Its media watch activities are a relatively minor part of its activities and are published on the ADL website. It covers newspapers, TV, internet, radio, magazines incidentally and is followed up by letter writing to whoever it has identified as being guilty of biased reporting. It attacks ethnic and religious defamation irrespective of who the victims are.

Examples of ADL media watch publications include; “Arab Journalist tells CNN Jews control the Media”33 and “Shocking anti-Muslim remarks aired in Boston”.34