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Media Watchdog Seeks Balance In Middle-East Coverage
By Bradley Vasoli, The Bulletin
Wynnewood — Media analyst Aryeh Green says most journalists covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict harbor no visceral favoritism or disfavor toward either side but nonetheless tend to favor the Palestinians for at least one important reason: public relations.
Palestinian Authority officials and Palestinian nonprofits, he told participants at a discussion Wednesday night at Temple Beth Hillel-Beth El in Wynnewood, habitually cater to the professional and leisurely concerns of the reporters who travel abroad to cover the warring region.
“One of the things that they’ve done very well is to embrace the journalists in the field there,” he said.
Recognizing that, Mr. Green and other pro-Israel individuals started MediaCentral, a media watchdog group, in 2006. It has set up an office in Jerusalem where reporters can stop in to get information on Israeli and Palestinian history and policy. Avoiding advocacy, the organization aims solely to teach members of the press about aspects of the conflict they might not thoroughly understand.
Mr. Green, a former adviser to former Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Natan Sharansky, said Israel needs a welcoming educational center for the press, so it can clear up the factual inaccuracies and perplexities that pervade the mostly kind but also rather inexpert international media.
Many in that line of work who cover the Middle East don’t know, for example, that the 1967 War that led to the seizure of Arab territories in Gaza, the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights and the West Bank was a defensive war and that the United Nations Charter allows a country to hold adversarial territory after such a conflict.
Many journalists also, according to Mr. Green, refer to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “right-wing,” “hawkish,” or “hardline” when he has endorsed a two-state solution to the current conflict. The Israelis themselves almost never associate such a view with the political hard right.
Sometimes, Mr. Green said, press outlets that have become sympathetic to a generally welcoming Palestinian elite, occasionally publish headlines like this one from the British Broadcasting Corporation: “Israel Kills Palestinian Bulldozer Driver.” In that instance, however, the driver was wielding the machine to kill Israelis.
In Mr. Green’s experience, some news organizations put out less one-sided material after dealing with his group, whose slogan is “embracing the journalist.”
The group, operating on a budget of less than $1 million, sometimes helps foreign reporters get to know their newly adopted neighborhoods and public amenities. Many who visit MediaCentral to get information, he said, are furthermore surprised to find it is the only pro-Israel educational nonprofit that has a Palestinian Muslim on its staff.
If the press learns more about Israel’s history and its politics, Mr. Green said, Israel will have won its most important battle. He said victory in that battle will come with patience and helpfulness.
“Accuracy is Israel’s best ally,” he said.
Bradley Vasoli can be reached at bvasoli@thebulletin.us
Palestinian Authority officials and Palestinian nonprofits, he told participants at a discussion Wednesday night at Temple Beth Hillel-Beth El in Wynnewood, habitually cater to the professional and leisurely concerns of the reporters who travel abroad to cover the warring region.
“One of the things that they’ve done very well is to embrace the journalists in the field there,” he said.
Recognizing that, Mr. Green and other pro-Israel individuals started MediaCentral, a media watchdog group, in 2006. It has set up an office in Jerusalem where reporters can stop in to get information on Israeli and Palestinian history and policy. Avoiding advocacy, the organization aims solely to teach members of the press about aspects of the conflict they might not thoroughly understand.
Mr. Green, a former adviser to former Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Natan Sharansky, said Israel needs a welcoming educational center for the press, so it can clear up the factual inaccuracies and perplexities that pervade the mostly kind but also rather inexpert international media.
Many in that line of work who cover the Middle East don’t know, for example, that the 1967 War that led to the seizure of Arab territories in Gaza, the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights and the West Bank was a defensive war and that the United Nations Charter allows a country to hold adversarial territory after such a conflict.
Many journalists also, according to Mr. Green, refer to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “right-wing,” “hawkish,” or “hardline” when he has endorsed a two-state solution to the current conflict. The Israelis themselves almost never associate such a view with the political hard right.
Sometimes, Mr. Green said, press outlets that have become sympathetic to a generally welcoming Palestinian elite, occasionally publish headlines like this one from the British Broadcasting Corporation: “Israel Kills Palestinian Bulldozer Driver.” In that instance, however, the driver was wielding the machine to kill Israelis.
In Mr. Green’s experience, some news organizations put out less one-sided material after dealing with his group, whose slogan is “embracing the journalist.”
The group, operating on a budget of less than $1 million, sometimes helps foreign reporters get to know their newly adopted neighborhoods and public amenities. Many who visit MediaCentral to get information, he said, are furthermore surprised to find it is the only pro-Israel educational nonprofit that has a Palestinian Muslim on its staff.
If the press learns more about Israel’s history and its politics, Mr. Green said, Israel will have won its most important battle. He said victory in that battle will come with patience and helpfulness.
“Accuracy is Israel’s best ally,” he said.
Bradley Vasoli can be reached at bvasoli@thebulletin.us
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