{"id":167374,"date":"2020-08-24T12:01:10","date_gmt":"2020-08-24T11:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=167374"},"modified":"2024-06-12T21:25:05","modified_gmt":"2024-06-12T20:25:05","slug":"media-show-little-interest-in-israeli-bombing-of-gaza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/08\/media-show-little-interest-in-israeli-bombing-of-gaza\/","title":{"rendered":"Media Show Little Interest in Israeli Bombing of Gaza"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

FAIR<\/p><\/div>\n

21 Aug 2020 – <\/em>Israel is bombing Palestine again, although you likely wouldn\u2019t guess that from watching TV news. For the eleventh straight night, Israeli Defense Force warplanes have been bombing the densely populated Gaza Strip. Israel\u2019s bombs have caused considerable damage, forcing the shutdown<\/a> of the area\u2019s only power plant.<\/p>\n

But US corporate media, focused on the coronavirus and election coverage, have shown little interest in the renewed violence in the Middle East. Searching for \u201cGaza\u201d on the websites of NBC News<\/b>, CNN<\/b>, MSNBC<\/b> and PBS<\/b> elicits no relevant results. Nor has Fox News<\/b> addressed the bombings, although it did find time (8\/18\/20<\/a>) to cover the archaeological discovery of an old soap factory in Israel\u2019s Negev Desert.<\/p>\n

Other major news networks were not much better. In a wide ranging interview with Trump advisor Jared Kushner, CBS<\/b>\u2019s Face the Nation<\/b> host Margaret Brennan (8\/16\/20<\/a>) did mention that \u201cthere were hostilities overnight in Gaza. There were Israeli airstrikes. Palestinian militants fired off rockets,\u201d in a question about the US\u2019s role in the Middle East, but did not return to it.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

AFP (CBS, 8\/13\/20) describes attacks on Gaza as \u201cthe latest retaliation against fire bombs suspended from balloons that have been released from the Palestinian territory.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n

CBS<\/b> (8\/13\/20<\/a>) also reprinted an AFP<\/b> newswire story headlined \u201cIsrael Responds to Fire Balloons From Gaza Strip With Fighter Jet Strikes,\u201d which began by stating (emphasis added):<\/p>\n

Israel attacked targets of Islamist group Hamas<\/i> in Gaza and halted fuel supplies to the enclave Thursday in the latest retaliation<\/i> against fire bombs suspended from balloons that have been released from the Palestinian territory.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The story clearly presents the bombing as a reactive Israeli counter-effort\u2014not an attack on Palestine, but a response against Hamas, which it describes not as a political party but as an \u201cIslamist group.\u201d Hamas, it insists, was the target, despite later noting that a UN-run school was also hit. AFP<\/b> did not comment on the lack of symmetry between homemade explosives tied to balloons and F-35 jets.<\/p>\n

ABC News<\/b>, meanwhile, relied on another news agency for all of its (limited) coverage (two pieces), reprinting (8\/16\/20<\/a>) an Associated Press<\/b> article<\/a> that similarly presented the cutting off of Gaza\u2019s electricity supply as a \u201cresponse\u201d to aggression from the \u201cPalestinian militants\u201d of Hamas.<\/p>\n

\n

\"WaPo:<\/p>\n

AP<\/strong> (Washington Post<\/strong>, 8\/16\/20<\/a>) reported that \u201cIsraeli aircraft bombed several sites belonging to the militant Hamas group in the Gaza Strip\u201d\u2014though in the Post<\/strong> the article was accompanied by a photo of a boy with his destroyed home.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

A second AP<\/b> story, headlined \u201cIsrael Strikes Gaza Targets After Arson Balloons Launched,\u201d was picked up not just by ABC<\/b> (8\/16\/20<\/a>) but by influential outlets like the New York Times<\/b> (8\/15\/20<\/a>), Washington Post<\/b> (8\/16\/20<\/a>) and Guardian<\/b> (8\/16\/20<\/a>). The piece is at pains to present Israeli actions as directed purely against Hamas, and as a response, not an aggressive action, allowing Israeli military spokespersons to drive the narrative. Indeed, much of the report reads like an IDF press release.<\/p>\n

A leaked 2009 publication from the Israel Project<\/a>, an Israeli\/American group that advises Israel advocates on what language to use when discussing the Palestine conflict, stresses that they should \u201cclearly differentiate between the Palestinian people and Hamas.\u201d \u201cIf it sounds like you are attacking the Palestinian people (even though they elected Hamas) rather than their leadership, you will lose public support,\u201d they counsel. Media, it seems, are doing their job for them, in much the same way they reflexively present US actions against Iran as a \u201cresponse\u201d or a \u201ccounter\u201d to the threat from Tehran (FAIR.org<\/b>, 6\/6\/19<\/a>).<\/p>\n

In their seminal books on media coverage of the conflict, Bad News From Israel<\/i><\/a> and More Bad News From Israel<\/i><\/a>, Greg Philo and Mike Berry wrote that TV news followed a \u201cconsistent pattern,\u201d which misleadingly presented the events as \u201cPalestinian action and Israeli response and retaliation,\u201d their focus group sessions showing that the presentation had a \u201csignificant effect\u201d on how the public remembered events and apportioned blame, effectively legitimizing Israeli actions. Sixteen years after their first study was published, corporate media appear to be following exactly the same playbook.<\/p>\n

The US press sampled here have produced barely any original coverage of the 11-day (and counting) bombing campaign of the area commonly described as the world\u2019s largest open-air prison<\/a>. This is in contrast to foreign channels such as Al-Jazeera<\/b><\/a> and RT<\/b><\/a>, or alternative media like Democracy Now!<\/b><\/a>, all of whom have followed the events in more depth, and often with fewer resources. When corporate media have covered it, they have followed tried and tested conventions that reproduce an Israeli-friendly narrative.<\/p>\n

Media coverage of Israel\/Palestine is a topic FAIR has criticized for decades (e.g., Extra!<\/strong>, 1\/91<\/a>; Extra! Update<\/strong>, 2\/05<\/a>; FAIR.org<\/strong>, 8\/6\/14<\/a>, 3\/29\/19<\/a>). The reporting on the latest round of attacks on Gaza follows the patterns we have often remarked on: downplaying Palestinian suffering and viewing the conflict from an Israeli state perspective.<\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Alan MacLeod is an academic and journalist. He is a staff writer at<\/em> Mintpress News and a contributor to <\/em>Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting –FAIR<\/a>. He is the author of<\/em> Bad News from Venezuela<\/a>: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 fair.org<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Join the<\/em><\/strong> BDS-BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT, SANCTIONS <\/em><\/strong>campaign<\/em><\/strong><\/span> to protest the Israeli barbaric siege of Gaza, illegal occupation of the Palestine nation\u2019s territory, the apartheid wall, its inhuman and degrading treatment of the Palestinian people, and the more than 7,000 Palestinian men, women, elderly and children arbitrarily locked up in Israeli prisons.<\/p>\n

DON’T BUY<\/strong> PRODUCTS WHOSE<\/strong> BARCODE<\/strong> STARTS WITH<\/strong> 729<\/strong>, which indicates that it is produced in Israel.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 DO YOUR PART! MAKE A DIFFERENCE!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

7 2 9: BOYCOTT FOR JUSTICE!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

21 Aug 2020 – Israel is bombing Palestine again, although you wouldn\u2019t guess that from watching TV news. For the eleventh straight night, Israeli Defense Force warplanes have been bombing the densely populated Gaza Strip causing considerable damage and forcing the shutdown of the area\u2019s only power plant. But the corporate media, focused on the coronavirus and US elections, have shown little interest in the renewed violence in the Middle East.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":167375,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[120,1829,1030,87,267,1029,487,2395,88,771,1027,427,85,109,287,1572,985,880,292,70,126,1025,886],"class_list":["post-167374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media","tag-conflict","tag-coronavirus","tag-fatah","tag-gaza","tag-geopolitics","tag-hamas","tag-human-rights","tag-international-criminal-court-icc","tag-israel","tag-nakba","tag-oslo-accords","tag-palestine","tag-palestine-israel","tag-politics","tag-power","tag-settlers","tag-social-justice","tag-state-terrorism","tag-un","tag-usa","tag-violence","tag-west-bank","tag-zionism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167374"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":264250,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167374\/revisions\/264250"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}