Media fairness?
June 29th, 2006 by ktula
If you have just arrived from Mars, by reading the recent news in the mainstream media about ongoing conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, you most likely would have come to the conclusion that the Palestinians are the aggressors in the hostility. The mainstream media is constantly portraying Israel as the victim while using words like “terrorists”, “extremists”, “religious fanatics”, “militants” to describe the Palestinians in this asymmetrical war between the two parties, in which ironically Israel now plays the part of Goliath.
The recent capture of an Israeli soldier by a Palestinian group is a good example that clearly demonstrates how the media is legitimizing Israel’s actions while criminalizing the Palestinians’. Since both parties are at war with one another, the captured Israeli soldier should be considered as a prisoner of war, and so should the tens of thousands of Palestinians being kept in Israeli prisons.
Israelis Batter Gaza and Seize Hamas Officials
New York Times
Israel stepped up its confrontation on Wednesday with Palestinian militants over the capture of an Israeli soldier, battering northern Gazan towns with artillery and sending warplanes over the house of the Syrian president, who is influential with the Palestinian leader believed to have ordered the kidnapping.
When the Palestinians are being captured, they are seized. However, when the Israeli soldier is captured, he is kidnapped.
Many eyes for an eye
Guardian
Has Israel gone over the top in its response to the kidnapping of one of its soldiers?In its current attack on Gaza, Israel has chosen to play the “many eyes for an eye” card and take 64 “hostages”, a number of whom are elected Hamas MPs.
Notice the author used the term kidnapping to describe the capturing of the Israeli soldier, and yet, when describing the capturing of the 64 Palestinian legislators, he actually double-quoted the term hostages, as if it is not an appropriate term to use to describe the status of the captured Palestinians.
Hamas provokes a fight
Internation Herald Tribune
The responsibility for this latest escalation rests squarely with Hamas, whose military wing tunneled into Israel on Sunday, killed two Israeli soldiers and kidnapped a third.Israel does not seem to want to reoccupy Gaza, but its reported detention of several cabinet ministers in the West Bank is unsettling.
The New York Times editorial on the International Herald Tribune considered the captured soldier as kidnapped while reporting the capturing of the Palestinian cabinet ministers as detention.
Militants taunt Israel over kidnapped soldier
Reuters
Palestinian militants involved in the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier taunted the Jewish state on Thursday by saying the conscript could be dead or alive.
Even Reuters considers the captured Israeli soldier as kidnapped.
Israel arrests Hamas leaders
Reuters
Israel arrested dozens of Hamas cabinet ministers and lawmakers on Thursday in a move the Islamic group said aimed to topple its government, as the army pressed on with a Gaza offensive to free an abducted soldier.
And yet, in another news story released by Reuters, the capturing of the Palestinian cabinet ministers and lawmakers are described as arrests, as if Israel has the legitimate authority and jurisdiction over the Palestinians.
Israel detains Hamas ministers
Guardian
Israeli troops arrested dozens of Hamas ministers and parliamentarians today as they stepped up their campaign to free a soldier kidnapped by militants in Gaza at the weekend.The group’s leader, Khaled Meshaal, who is suspected of ordering the kidnap of Cpl Shalit, lives in Syria’s capital Damascus.
In another article on the Guardian, words that are used to describe the capturing of the Palestinians are arrested, detains and yet the Israeli soldier is kidnapped.
If i have to go on and quote all the articles from the mainstream media to show the media bias favoring Israel in this conflict, i will probably have to make this my primary job. A search on Google News on the terms “israel kidnap soldier” came back with 527 results and this is just for news articles from the last five days.
So either the Israeli soldier and all the Palestinians sitting in Israeli prisons are “kidnapped”, or they are “captured” as prisoners of war. There can be no other way to describe it.
worldgirl
Says
Ironically, I read the same articles you mention, and feel they are biased against Israel. Fascinating, no? IN fact, the NY Times, The Guardian and Reuters are soe of the most consistently pro-Palestinian news organizations out there. I guess the fact that they are reporting the actual news — that Palestinian “militants” tunneled into Israel from Gaza and kidnapped a wounded soldier seems biased to you. Talk to your friends in Hamas about committing atrocities in a more ambivalent way so that your friends in the media can report on them more positively.
Jul 3rd, 2006 at 08:23
ktula
Says
I have no problem with the news media reporting the Palestinian militants (or soldiers?) tunneling into Israel and capturing the Israeli soldier. I have a problem with how they are describing the capture of the Israeli soldier as “kidnapping”. If you are at war with another party, every military target (including the colonists on the occupied territories) is legitimate. When you have captured an enemy soldier, you don’t call that kidnapping. The captured soldier is not a hostage, he is a prisoner of war. If you consider the captured Israeli soldier as a hostage, then the tens of thousands of Palestinian men, women and children sitting in Israeli prisons now are all hostages.
I have no friends in Hamas - their brand of religious activism is not my cup of tea. May be you can talk to your friends in Israel “about committing atrocities in a more ambivalent way so that you friends in the media can report on them more positively” too. Atrocities are committed when civilians are killed. How many atrocities have the state of Israel committed?
Jul 3rd, 2006 at 12:28