The Spate of Israeli Violence in Gaza - Essay Example

The recent spate of Israeli violence in Gaza has left nearly 500,000 homeless and 400,000 without water (www.dec.org.uk). Against the backdrop of a burgeoning humanitarian crisis, has been the raging controversy regarding the role of the media in the conflict (Luft, 2009). Firstly, foreign press access has been prohibited into Gaza since November 2008 notwithstanding a ruling of the Israeli Supreme Court ordering journalists to be allowed to enter Gaza (Bronner, 2009). To date, the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) has refused to comply with the court order resulting in numerous arrests of foreign journalists on grounds of permissible wartime censorship rules in Israel. The focus of this paper is to provide a brief overview of the media coverage of Israeli violence against Palestinians in Gaza along with the Israeli ban on the media. Indeed, the Foreign Press Association of Israel attacked the prohibition as unprecedented and a “violation of press freedom” (www.fpa.org.il) and the International Federation of Journalists argued that the ban on foreign media entering Gaza combined with the Military Censor’s guidelines has effectively resulted in the world not seeing what is happening in Gaza (www.ifj.org; Erlanger, 2009). Moreover, the New York Times reported on January 10 that “Israel has also managed to block cellphone bandwidth, so very few amateur cell-phone photographs are getting out of Gaza” (Erlanger, 2009). As such, this has further fuelled controversy regarding the nature of media reporting, with criticisms of the BBC and Sky News refusal to screen the charity appeal of the Disasters Emergency Committee to highlight the plight of those struggling to survive the aftermath of the Israeli attacks (www.dec.org.uk). This further highlights importance of responsible media and accountability in reporting due to the concurrent influence on the public opinion. Indeed Curren and Seaton comment that “the mass media are rather like the political parties in that they tend to gravitate towards the centre in response to competitive pressures” (Curren & Seaton, 2003). Moreover media self regulation and ownership model results in a handful of media barons with influence and power of media to broadcast their ideology and increase of competition among channels for advertisers with fewer businesses controlling the mass media (Curren & Seaton, 2003). As such, it has been submitted that the shrinking media ownership has given way to the incorporation of a Marxist media model through the back door (Briggs & Burke, 2005). The most obvious example is the Murdoch empire. Ruport Murdoch owns Sky News, controls the Sun and the Times newspapers and owns almost 35% of distributed newspapers (Briggs & Burke, 2005). Moreover, Murdoch is unabashed in expressing his agenda “for better for worse, our company….is a reflection of my thinking, my character, my values”, which is in line with Chomsky’s extrapolation in “Media Control: the spectacular achievements of propaganda” (Chomsky, 1997). This is evidenced by the role of the Israeli media in the Gaza Conflict as Daily Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Israeli Foreign minister Livni “instructed senior ministry officials to open an aggressive and diplomatic international public relations campaign in order to gain support for Israel Defence Forces operations in the Gaza Strip” (Ravid, 2008; www.haaretz.com). Moreover, Israeli consulates mounted campaigns in local media abroad with Israel’s consulate in New York holding online press conferences on Twitter in an attempt at damage control (Erlanger, 2009; www.haaretz.com). This was on response to Israeli Foreign minister’s criticisms that the international media were not showing the Israeli perspective arguing that some media outlets have “often failed to report on the pervasive Kassam attacks that preceded the current violence” (Jerusalem Post, 2009; www.jpost.com). The various interests at play highlight the importance of the media’s in reporting and the requirement of responsible reporting, which in turn presses the need for equal access. Indeed, whilst a YouTube channel has been opened by an IDF spokesperson’s unit with many combat videos and narrative video log, this is appears to be misrepresentative in light of the Human Rights Watch Video and Red Cross claims of Israeli attacks on militants in fact, killed civilians (The Israeli Herald, January 2 2009). On the one hand, Israel’s media has been criticised for alleged self-censorship and silencing dissent with an anti-Hamas vitriol, which in turn conflicts with Israeli Human Rights groups claiming that “opinions criticising the decision to launch the offensive or the army’s conduct during the war are hardly hears” (Agence France Press, 2009). Head of the “Centre for the Protection of Democrat in Israel” Keshev, Yizhar Be’er commented that “the media’s coverage of the first days of the fighting was characterised by feelings of self-righteousness and a sense of catharsis following what was felt to be undue restraint in the face of attacks by the enemy, along with support for the military action and few expressions of criticism” (Agence France Press, 2009; www.keshev.org). Additionally, the BBC has received numerous accusations of bias, primarily for being pro-Israel and the decision not to broadcast the appeal by aid agencies for victims of air strikes against Gaza. Additionally, a study by Arab Media Watch, argues that the British Press in general portrays Israel as the retaliating party and as such “inevitable, these trends in reporting leave Palestinian violence largely unexplained, causing it to appear as unwarranted aggression” (Shipra, 2009). Perhaps the best example of pro-Israel and unbalanced media reporting is the US. For example, in the first week of the Israeli attacks, including ground invasion and aerial attacks on civilians, the conflict was the top story on then nightly newscasts of three major networks (www.tyndallreport.com). However, the Tyndall Report, which monitors weekday nightly newscasts from the US broadcast networks, described the media coverage in the first two weeks as “an aberration in terms of coverage by American Broadcast networks” (www.tyndallreport.com). Moreover, the amount of airtime a news story gets on television is important because of the demographic reached. Indeed, in 2008 a survey undertaken by Pew Research Centre for the People and the Press found that 70 per cent of the public relied on television as a main source of national and international news (www.people-press.org). Moreover, with an estimated audience of 23 million watching US news, networks such as CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, their potential influence on the public is great. If the media can switch alliances based on political incentives and in return can influence public voting minds, then this challenges the perception of Blulmer and McQuail (1968) that people do not react to political media messages (Curren & Seaton, 2003). For example, Curran and Seaton comment that “Murdoch wields considerable power…. and is often wooed by politicians to persuade him to favourably cover their campaigns” (Curren & Seaton, 2003), which further highlights the importance of impartial media reporting of the Israel attacks on Gaza. Indeed, the Tyndall report further commented that the use of quotes from both sides was not adequately representative (www.tyndallreport.com). For every quotation by a Palestinian official, three networks quoted 10 Israelis (www.tyndallreport.com). Additionally, the stark contrast in the disparity between casualties on both sides was played down or not mentioned by US major news networks and the Tyndall report asserted that “When the number of deaths did appear sometimes as a graphic at the bottom of the screen, it was identified as the number of people killed, rather than being attributed specifically to Palestinians” (www.tyndallreport.com). A detailed analysis of media reporting of the Israel attacks on Gaza is outside the scope of this paper. However, the nature of the crisis and political sensitivity of the conflict means that responsible and impartial media reporting is vital. Free press is a democratic privilege however this is currently compounded by the IDF’s refusal to follow the Israeli Supreme Court’s orders and allow foreign press access into Gaza. This has fuelled a worldwide debate regarding media bias of various networks and questions over the use of media outlets to perpetuate anti-Palestinian propaganda. As such, this clearly raises wider issues of how the profit motivated control and power of the private unregulated sector and media powers clearly raises concerns for media impartiality and accountability, whilst the civilians affected struggle to survive the aftermath. BIBLIOGRAPHY Books Briggs, A., & Burke, P. (2005). A Social History of the Media. Polity Curran, J & Gurevitch, M (2000). Mass Media and Society. Arnold Publishers Curran, J., & Seaton, J. (2003). Power without Responsibility: The Press and Broadcasting in Britain. 6th Edition. Routledge. Articles Erlanger, S. (2009). A Gaza War full of traps and trickery. The New York Times Luft, O. (2009). Media Frustration over Gaza ban grows. The Guardian, 14 January 2009. Martin, P. (2007). Reporting Risks leave Gaza neglected. Available at www.bbc.co.uk Ravid, B. (2008). Israel to mount emergency international PR effort in the wake of Gaza Campaign. Available at www.haaretz/com/hasen 27 December 2008. Yan (2007). Foreigners Asked to Leave Gaza after AFP journalist abducted. Available at www.newsgd.com/news/world1 Burns, J (2009). BBC Assaulted for refusing to carry Gaza Appeal. The New York Times. Dingare, Shipra (2009). Are the UK Media Partial Towards Israel? Available at www.abcnews.go.com Website References: www.haaretz.com www.tyndallreport.com www.people-press.org www.fpa.org.il www.keshev.org www.afp.org www.ifj.org www.dec.org.uk Read More