How to Evaluate Media Coverage of Israel: A Guide
Too much journalism today begins with an ideological or political point of view already in place. Readers deserve journalism that begins with a blank slate, a mission of open exploration.
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This is a guest essay written by Gary Rosenblatt of Between The Lines.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
When I was editor of the Baltimore Jewish Times in the 1970s, the local Jewish community often complained about the Middle East coverage of The Baltimore Sun, the state’s leading source of news, with a Mideast bureau based in Arab countries — first in Beirut and then moved to Cairo.
Many Jewish readers thought the reporting was biased against Israel and that the paper under-reported news from the Jewish state.
At one point, several prominent local Jewish leaders met with the paper’s editors and urged them to move the bureau to Israel. To the surprise of many, the paper soon decided to do just that.
Within a few weeks, The Sun correspondent in the region was writing frequent bylined stories from Israel about societal divisions over religion, politics, and economics, as well as tension with Israeli Arab communities.
Dismayed by the coverage, the Jewish leaders called for another meeting with The Sun editors to voice their concerns. But at the outset of the meeting, one of The Sun editors said: “Before we begin, I just want to thank you for your suggestion about moving the bureau to Israel. Our bureau chief there is so impressed with Israel’s open society. There are so many stories he can write from there that would never have been allowed in the autocratic Arab states. We’re so grateful.”
Lesson learned: Beware of what you ask for.
Five decades later, the profound imbalance between foreign media coverage of Israel and of much of the Arab world still holds true, with the stakes even higher. Israel, a vibrant democracy, is an open book for the foreign press, including the damaging, racist rants from the far-Right of the current government’s coalition.
By contrast, Gaza, Lebanon (under Hezbollah’s sway), Syria, Iran, and Yemen are ruled by autocrats who firmly control the press and punish critics. The result is that we know little of the internal politics, social issues, and scale of violence which take place in those countries — while it seems as if we know every thought going through Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s mind.
Of course that’s the price a democracy is willing to pay, at least in normal times. But this is a war where much of the international media has branded Israel as genocidal, despite it being the victim of a brutal Hamas-led attack on October 7th. And Hamas, whose stated goal is to destroy Israel and kill Jews, is portrayed as the victim and champion of Palestinian rights.
Our duty is to call out the false moral equivalences in this war and hold the media to its journalistic obligations of fairness.
Here are a few observations and suggestions related to evaluating media coverage of the Israel-Hamas-Hezbollah war.
What You Don’t See
You will never see armed Hamas terrorists in photos or reports from Gaza. That is because Hamas prohibits it. Foreign media reporters and photographers are almost exclusively limited to showing destroyed buildings, mourning men and women holding wounded or dead children, and chaotic hospital scenes. But the media does not mention this reality.
Similarly, you will not see any bomb shelters to protect Gazan civilians. You will not see them escaping the fighting by entering the hundreds of miles of tunnels. Those tunnels are exclusively for Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. It is Israel, the enemy, which has sought to provide safe spaces and passage for Gaza’s civilians, warn them of impending attacks, and bring in humanitarian aid and polio vaccines.
Check the labels.
Is Hamas and Hezbollah made up of “terrorists,” “militants,” or “fighters”? These descriptions are used interchangeably. But every story about Hamas or Hezbollah should have at least one reference to the fact that the U.S. and many Western nations have defined each of them as a terrorist organization — no different from other radical Islamic groups such as ISIS and Al-Qaeda.
The term “pro-Palestinian” is a benign, common description for protesters and “activists” that often means “anti-Zionist” and “pro-Hamas,” which in actuality is not at all “pro-Palestinian” given that Hamas cares not a whit about an independent Palestinian state. Its goal is to establish a caliphate, an Islamic state, in Israel’s place.
That fact should be provided for context in news stories but rarely is. The same holds true for letting readers know that the Hamas foundational charter calls for the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews.
Be aware of ‘the minders.’
Terror groups like Hamas accompany reporters with “minders” who not only provide translation for interviews — common for foreign media — but also steer the journalists to scenes and people they want to be covered.
And a Gazan citizen being interviewed is keenly aware of the presence of the “minder.” Most importantly, while the “minders” protect the journalist from harm in dangerous areas, their presence is a form of intimidation, an implicit reminder that reporters or citizens who do not obey the rules are often threatened with physical harm.
Unfortunately, media organizations do not acknowledge this in their reporting.
Blurring the Line Between News and Opinion
The separation between news and opinion, once a foundational policy of major newspapers, has gone the way of the typewriter. News stories often have subjective points of view mixed with factual reporting, tainting the validity of the report, the publication, and the reputation of the reporter as an objective journalist.
This was covered in-depth by a former New York Times editor who wrote about his time at the newspaper:
“The newsroom’s embrace of opinion journalism has compromised the Times’s independence, misled its readers and fostered a culture of intolerance and conformity.”
“… more opinion columnists and critics were writing for the newsroom than for Opinion. As at the cable news networks, the boundaries between commentary and news were disappearing, and readers had little reason to trust that Times journalists were resisting rather than indulging their biases.”1
Sadly, The New York Times has become the rule in this light, rather than the exception.
Lost in the Cacophony
The influence of legacy news media — major newspapers and national television networks — has diminished as more and more people get their news from social media. Never has there been such a flow of information, but much of it is unaccountable, unreliable, and untrue. And even leading newspapers seek highly “clickable” stories, often fluff, to maintain their readership.
As social media has become more dominant, mainstream news companies put ever greater emphasis on being first with breaking news, scoops, etc. It used to be a competition to be first with the full story. Now, in this highly competitive field, it is: “Get the story posted online first, and if we need to make corrections, we’ll do that later.”
The faster the effort, the more prone the errors of fact and judgment. The Al-Ahli hospital fiasco last October — when Palestinian terrorists launched a rocket destined for Israel but it hit this hospital in Gaza, and then they blamed it on Israel, leading much of the mainstream media to instantly run with this version — is a case in point where initial headlines regarding the attack were wrong on every count.
Too much journalism today begins with an ideological or political point of view already in place. Readers deserve journalism that begins with a blank slate, a mission of open exploration.
Be aware of which stories make it to the front page and “above the fold” — and which are found on inside pages. Also key in terms of what gets the most attention is the length of the article, size of accompanying photos, the frequency of a topic making the news, and who is writing it. Look for persistent patterns in coverage of the war.
An often forgotten factor in evaluating a news story is considering not just what is in it but what is not. Have enough voices with different points of view been presented? Who is not being heard? Also, who or what is the source of information?
Media often provides Gaza casualty figures from the “Gaza Ministry of Health” without making clear that it is a wing of Hamas, a terror organization with a history of providing false and misleading information.
Mainstream media has improved in noting, but not always, that the Gaza casualty figures Hamas provides do not differentiate between civilians and fighters. In other words, no Hamas fighters in this war have been reported killed or wounded, according to Hamas.
Countless articles about Israel’s use of sabotage, cyberattacks, and alleged assassinations of key scientists to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon fail to explain why these acts are taking place. This week, The Times, reporting online on the pager attacks in Lebanon, stated: “Israel has carried out a series of clandestine attacks against Iran and its allies as part of a yearslong shadow war,” citing several examples.
These reports should note — but rarely do — what may seem obvious to some readers (but not all) that Iran’s religious, political, and military leaders have long called for the destruction of the Jewish state, described as a “cancer” requiring a “final solution.” No other country regularly calls for the destruction of any other. That is why Iran is, as described in The Times, “Israel’s No. 1 enemy.”
The news of this week is of the dramatic pager and walkie-talkie attacks on Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon, presumably carried out by Israel. The Times has extensive coverage online, which invariably will be updated, but for now it has quoted the United Nations human rights chief asserting the attack “violates international human rights law.”
Where are comments — and even praise — from those who would point out that Israel, faced with the moral dilemma of minimizing civilian casualties while fighting brutal terrorists who wear civilian clothing, seems to have managed to do just that?
One way to tell a reporter’s political leaning on an issue is to see who gets the last quote in the article. It is the quote that stays with the reader.
That is why this essay will end with a quote from renowned Israeli author and journalist Matti Friedman, who asserted that “the ascendant force in our part of the world is not democracy or modernity. It is rather an empowered strain of Islam that is willing to employ extreme violence in a quest to unite the region and confront the West. Those who grasp this fact will be able to look around and connect the dots.”2
Let’s hope so.
“When the New York Times lost its way.” The Economist.
Matti Friedman wrote some time ago…
“The practice of journalism—that is, knowledgeable analysis of messy events on planet Earth—have been replaced by a kind of aggressive activism that leaves little room for dissent. The new goal is not to describe reality, but to guide readers towards the correct political conclusion.
By selectively emphasizing some facts and not others, by erasing historical and regional context, and by reversing cause and effect, the stories portray Israel as a country whose motivations could only be malevolent, and the one responsible not only for its own actions but also for provoking the actions of its enemies.
They are backed up by an affiliated world of progressive NGOs and academics who are referred to as experts creating a thought loop nearly impervious to external information. All of this has the effect of presenting a mass audience with supposedly factual stories that have a powerful emotional punch and a familiar villain - Israel. We have seen the outcomes this approach generates on our streets and university campuses.”
Too bad you yourself reproduce the unthinking lies of the media when you write "the damaging, racist rants from the far-Right of the current government’s coalition." This is a commonplace unsubstantiated assertion which accepts the lazy and ignorant assumptions of a lazy and ignorant press. Finance Minister Smotrich's and Interior Minister Ben-Gvir's numerous statements have all been spot-on accurate descriptions of what Israel faces and what Israel must undertake to overcome the enemies vowed to its destruction.