The Palestinians are losing the PR war
The Israeli PR operation is so slick that it’s impossible for the Palestinian authorities to compete. Especially when foreign journalists are not allowed in Gaza, and setting up a studio in the West Bank is near-impossible.
By Leah Borromeo on Wednesday, December 31st, 2008 - 1,120 words.
“Your coverage of the Gaza Holocaust continues to appear biased. How can you be so cruel? don’t you have children yourselves? Why do you carry on giving the Israel officials airtime and refuse similar time to Palestine officials? What about interviewing doctors/ UN Officials/ journalists in Gaza? Why have you not tried to send someone into Gaza to see for yourselves how the children are being massacred? Show some truth. Shame on you!”
Some punter called John Hill on the Sky News website.
That sort of thing shouldn’t and normally doesn’t bother me. Detractions are taken in the same humor as praise. But it’s late at night/early in the morning and I haven’t slept well.
I donned the cap of anonymity and posted a riposte.
The reality is this. A news channel or news organization, especially one whose bread and butter is continuous rolling news, cannot afford to be “biased”. It is far to concerned with getting the raw facts of who what where when… usually before the competition. The why and how come in if there is enough time in the running order. Call it news by time code.
The airtime thing with Israeli talking heads is due to characters like Mark Regev, the Israeli Prime Minister’s spokesperson, virtually setting up camp at buildings in Jerusalem where the major news organizations have offices. When there is an Israel-related story to react to, he hops up and down the building tarting himself out to any broadcaster.
Spokespeople for the primarily Fatah government of Mahmoud Abbas are based in Ramallah. Western broadcasters don’t have offices in Ramallah (unless you want to count Al Jazeera English) due to the unbelievable amount of red tape, logistical nightmare, and expense involved with setting up an office in the West Bank which is, if you pardon the analogy, a stone’s throw away from Jerusalem.
For interviews from Ramallah, we hire a television studio. But the Palestinian Authority do not have a Mark Regev-type creature who has the freedom to slope from TV station to TV station saying, “You guys need a voice on this?”. There’s a rather large wall between Ramallah and Israel. The gaps in the wall are called checkpoints. They can take a very long time to pass through. And you need a permit to get through them. And these permits have a curfew… an inflexible curfew that will not allow you to appear live on the ten o’clock news.
Israel also has a system whereby every journalist working that patch receives text messages on their mobile phone whenever something happens. “Qassam hits Sderot. No injured”, an arrest here, a suspected terrorist there, an update on the shekel-dollar exchange rate. You can wake up in the morning to upwards of twenty unread text messages… none of which actually say anything. The Palestinian Authority has no such service. No such infrastructure for that service.
***
Gaza. The western organizations that operate from within Gaza do so cautiously… especially since the Alan Johnston kidnap thing. Firms that have a permanent presence in Gaza usually have an office with its own studio. Everyone else hires studios when they’re needed. And keeps a fixer on retainer. The fixer serves as your eyes and ears… they’ll look out for stories for you and you can call them at inhospitable hours to ask them about the significance of something that is ultimately mundane. Or you ring them with something obvious like, “There are air strikes over Gaza”. They will get you guests, alert you to the latest happenings, and help your team when/if they get into “theater”.
Guests from Gaza on the phone… easy. Getting them into a television studio when you know and they know they are risking their lives by walking out into the street takes a bit more negotiation. Especially if you are trying to get members of an organization called Hamas that a country called Israel is actively targeting with heavy firepower called a missile.
When shit hits fan, Israel pulls the PR guns out of the bag along with the rest of the armaments they have. Newsdesks and producers are inundated with offers for guests, offers for comment….
Palestinian PR? We have to chase them. All the time. Messages left, few calls returned. There is no Palestinian PR machine that kicks into gear once something happens. Journalists detest PR unless it can do something useful, like make work easier for them. At heart, journalists are sloth-like creatures who like things at their fingertips. We like people ready, accessible. Now.
As for why we haven’t sent anyone into Gaza, ask Israel. Gaza is a “closed military zone”. Meaning unless you were in that walled-off strip of land before it was declared a “closed military zone”, you aren’t going in until after the next lot of invading soldiers. And nobody’s coming out either. Everyone is hanging out in the buffer zone. Or sometimes sneaks into the loading bay bit at Kerem Shalom to see the aid trickle through after the previous night’s bombardment.
Ultimately, the pictures gleaned by news agencies like Reuters or the Associated Press do a better job of explaining the reality on the ground than any commentator could. Images of children being pulled from smoking rubble are more eloquent than a man in a suit talking to another man in a suit. Video released from the cockpit of an Israeli aircraft showing people walking around the back of a flatbed truck then going fuzzy after the missile impacts…the mass of humanity and collective wailing at a funeral…kids dirtied by soot, mud and blood.
***
Speaking to a doctor who works at Gaza’s Shifa hospital, he had no time to return home… and definitely no time to swan in front of a television camera. The conversations we have are stolen moments when he is moving from one ward to another or when his attempts at sleep prove fruitless. “I’ve dedicated my life to saving life. These people. All these people. They are dedicated to killing. Palestinian. Jew. Killing. Let us say we have an unsustainable relationship,” was the last conversation we had. I’ve heard nothing from him tonight. He was going to try to go home for a day.
If Hamas or the Palestinian Authority want to redress the balance on Western news and get a little bit more “face time”, please reach out to us. Return our phone calls. Keep us in the loop. Don’t depend on “friendly” Arab media stations because you have no idea how hungry we “mainstream” outlets are for you. Our numbers don’t change and our leaders rarely get assassinated. We’ll pay for the studio time because we need your voice. You pay the risk because you need your voice heard.
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Leah Borromeo
old enough to know better, young enough not to careLondon
Leah Borromeo is a journalist who has served as deputy foreign editor at Sky News, fawned over Jon Snow's bad socks at Channel 4 News and nearly died in a Land Rover for APTN. She also writes for The Guardian, The Index on Censorship and was part of the team that won the Knight-Batten Award for Innovation in Journalism. Able to shoot and edit her own material, she's 'the biggest show off since Lady Godiva turned up in town on a horse claiming she had literally NOTHING to wear' and edits The Comment Factory.
http://fryingpanfire.comhttp://www.twitter.com/monstris
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V interesting piece Leah… I would say, although I did the headline, that I think that even though Israel go to such lengths to warp the public discourse, they are still losing…. There's only so many lies that people are going to accept from Israel, I sort of feel this is critical mass…. Even arch Zionists are finding it hard to defend these massacres… And the only way that country will become more civilized is if the debate in the country of their patron becomes at least tenuously based on reality, otherwise they know they can carry out atrocities and never be rebuked……
"You don't count the dead when god's on your side" — Bob Dylan
When David Ben Gurion sealed the deal with religious sects/parties, he also secured the way for the still-to-be-formed country of Israel to act with impunity. Settlers' activities are noticed but the eye turns blind. They have god on their side.
By 'patron' I assume you mean America. You could simplistically suggest that the aerial bombardments and targeted assassinations are "Made in the USA"… finger-pointing towards American imperialism is the reflex of the left. But if America were to cut down aid to Israel (the US Congress approved a $170m dollar increase in 'security assistance' as part of a 10-year, $30bn defence commitment this past summer), it would be due to the economy going to shit. Not due to any major avant-face or enlightenment brought about by international dissent and popular demand.
Israel may be 'losing' in your eyes and in the eyes of anyone else who turns up to demonstrations and knows that 1948 isn't just a year. But if you pick apart the language and structure in reports from commercial American media, you will find a bias borne from ignorance. The default position in America is "Israel good, scary beardy Arabs bad". Having been educated in the States, I distinctly remember the history books that mentioned the 1948 Arab-Israeli war called it the Israeli War for Independence.
I'm interested in finding any 'arch Zionists' who find it hard to defend what's happening in Gaza. Every Zionist I've spoken to has been defending Israel's actions with all the low-key, soft-spoken skill they are known and loved for.
Palestinians are losing the PR war?
Maybe, but they aren't losing the propaganda war. Are Hamas stringers providing the footage you crave, just as Hezbollah did in Lebanon? Interesting that the text alert system provides you with details of rocket attacks, yet they have rarely been reported. Are terror attacks only news when people are hurt?
Footage: APTN, Reuters, stringers we've known in the region long before Hamas — truly courageous guys who carry on working despite having their house shot to shit and their wife sent to hospital with unspeakable injuries, guys who I've been up late at night worrying about when they go missing, guys who've saved my worthless little skin in more ways than one.
Propaganda: Israel still has the upper hand there. Videos, handouts, ready spokespeople. They want to claim a clear victory…something tangible to justify the bloodshed…. The propaganda helps. Now nearly 900 killed, 40% of which are women and children.
Hamas? Jihad? Some are as fanatic and lunatic as the kippa-wearing Israeli soldierboys volunteering to fight with the Nahal Haredi. I work off a loose principle that everyone is a bastard until they prove themselves otherwise.
ISM? Everything is taken with a Lot's-wife-sized pinch of salt. One thing you find is that everyone there is campaigning for something. People, governments, pets…the best you can do is refine your bullshit filter and play fair by giving everyone a hard time.
Text alerts and rocket attacks: all the time. everytime anything hits. usually reads "qassam lands in sderot, no injuries." the alerts come from the idf and the police…among other sources. the bare facts of an international news channel are this — no dead, no story. otherwise you're just serving a twitter feed. if i reported every bomb threat, stabbing, robbery in london, the city would be in a state of total paranoia. it's all about the inexact science of scale and perspective. and a lot depends on who happens to be in the newsroom when the information filters through.
if you knew how the news you consume gets on air and in print and what goes on before you hear about something, you'd kill most if not all of us.
From an IDF briefing to the AJC at the Hebrew University in J'lem:
"Another main issue in the midst of the current operation in Gaza is the IDF’s approach to the international media. Cpl. Aliza Landes, a soldier in the Foreign Press Branch of the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, spoke about the creation of an IDF YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/idfnadesk),on which they release footage of precise aerial strikes on Hamas targets and humanitarian aid distributions coming from Israel and being delivered into the Gaza Strip. The IDF has also launched, in the past week, a blog (http://www.idfspokesperson.com)to compliment the IDF’s website, which posts information that was previously only accessible to journalists and is now available to the public. The blog also features the latest footage received by the IDF: “It is a way of giving information out to the public instead of just through journalists…and to illustrate the points we want to address” she says."
Although I do own a few copies of the Hamas' latest lifestyle magazine (yes there is one…or rather…was), their blitz isn't as all-encompassing and complete as that of Israel's.
The UN in Gaza City has been bombed. John Ging, the UN's director in Gaza, says "if it looks like white phosphorus, smells like white phosphorus, acts like white phosporus, I am going to say it is white phosphorus until proved otherwise".
You cannot extinguish white phosphorus fires with water because it releases toxic fumes if you try. The fire department can't reach the building due to fighting in the city. Among the things going into the Gazan sky is the smoke from burning aid rations. And the lifeblood of everyday Gazans who depend on aid rations.
Mark Regev, the Israeli Prime Minister's spokesman, has said that Israel "does not use any such munition against civilian targets". The subtext being that they are using white phosphorus against a military target…and that they are using white phosphorus.
He also asked "Is it possible that it is Hamas fire? We have to be sure it was Israel. We do not target UN facilities. It would be much easier to carpet bomb that whole area but our concern for civilian life makes us commit our young men doing their national service to dangerous and more surgical strikes."
The UN big man Ban Ki-Moon has called this attack "indefensible".
There is much about this current situation that is indefensible — most of which is linked to military activities and the desperation of the humanitarian situation. But I'm steering away from using the word 'conflict' as there is nothing conflicting about what is seen and heard. Hamas was elected by a popular vote because the people of Gaza had their fill of Fatah corruption. Hamas services were cleaner, more efficient, better run. People preferred them because they got things done…through whatever means.
Israel created a monster with Hamas. There could be evidence that Israel helped fund Hamas at some point in the past in an attempt to undermine Fatah and Arafat. This dance with the devil has culminated in the flames we can only observe from long shots taken across the border…or through the work of colleagues who risk their lives to relay information.
Assholes exist on both sides. And there is a darker side to the Palestinian suffering…the factional infighting, the gangland violence, the exploitation for personal gain, the petty disputes that ultimately lead to further pain. Yet this suffering could not come to pass were it not for the economic and social stranglehold Israel and its allies have been choking Gaza with.
There is nothing conflicting because the shades of grey have split into black and white. The indefensible has become the status quo.
We can shake our fists in frustration, anger, whatever. We can kick, scream, shout, demonstrate, shock…. None of it will make the damnedest bit of difference. We have as much effect on Gaza as we do watching a soap opera. The power for change no longer lies in the hands of government…not Britain's, not America's, not Hamas', not Fatah's, not even Israel's. The power for change lies in the fundamental psychology of the everyday people in Palestine and Israel — not the self-serving twerps governing them, not the voices of authority. But the ones living the perpetual horror show we tune in to watch.
Palestine is LOSING? They're media darlings for f**k's sake!
The BBC is obviously biased towards the palistenians and arab nations in general that confront israel
Here is the leftist newspaper in israel which many of the people here quote explaining that:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1078501.html