How Israel sets the TV agenda
Issandr El AmraniThis morning was a powerful example how a well-organized press strategy, combined with hasbara, can drive the media agenda. As the story of the flotilla unfolded, I was zapping between BBC World, CNN, Al Jazeera English, Al Jazeera Arabic and BBC Arabic. The Arabic channels I'll discount, they were mostly reporting from Gaza or featuring well-known commentators like Abdel Bari Atwan (which, mind you, I don't find particularly useful.) Most of the English channels were struggling to respond to the crisis. CNN was late to the story and featured analysis from the talented Ben Wedeman in Cairo, which suggests it did not have someone ready in Israel or Palestine. With all due respect to Ben, an excellent correspondent, CNN was just not on top of the story. BBC World wasn't either — it's been clear for years the channel is chronically underfunded.
Al Jazeera English had multiple correspondents available reporting live, as well as people in-studio. It covered the issue non-stop for much of the morning. But TV is highly demanding medium, it needs new content all the time — and not just information, but video and sound. For a couple of hours this morning AJE was going from one Israeli official or commentator for another, the IDF has scheduled several press conferences, as did the Prime Minister's office and the Foreign Ministry. They controlled the news cycle by having their message dominate the airwaves in those early hours, the TV stations — starved for content since there was a communications blackout from the flotilla ships and Israel's military censor was no doubt squashing other aspects of the story — were running the Israeli viewpoint non-stop.
AJE compounded that by having its correspondents (one of them in particular not very quick-witted) constantly repeat what the Israelis were saying, and being ineffective in taking Israeli officials to task. And the Free Gaza flotilla organizers did not plan ahead — they did not have representatives who could be easily available in Israel/Palestine near where TV cameras were, few on the boats to talk by telephone, or others elsewhere who could go to studios. This oversight really impacted the early TV version of the crisis, allowing the other side's message to dominate.
Just in terms of international law, it might be noted that the blockade is illegal, as is piracy — which is what seizing control of a boat flying a non-enemy flag in international waters is. The focus should be on that the boat was full of unarmed activists, that the Israelis fired on the ship before boarding, as well as the wider issue of the humanitarian disaster in Gaza. We need reporters that raise these issues and don't just respond to unsubstantiated claims by officials.
Reader Comments (6)
V. good points about TV. The flotilla folks would appear to have been very naive in planning their own PR. Any cell phone cameras on board though? How can anyone judge the Israeli claim that they were attacked with gunfire? Or was that just a kneejerk statement they always make when they kill civilians and are they so used to getting away with it re: Palestine that they figured the world would believe them when they said that any Muslims anywhere could be shot at because they always shot first?
No they were good in having webcams and cellphone footage. A few people's numbers were available to the international media, but few could get through, they needed more spokespeople on the boat. And since the Israelis apparently jammed communications when the ships were taken to shore, they also needed people elsewhere (Turkey, Cyprus, as well as major media centers like Paris or London) ready to speak on their behalf (with, ideally, their own line of communication with the boats.) Of course, that's difficult to do when you're not a government!
And it appears that Israeli warships terrorized the flotilla for several hours before the assault.
Cher Monsieur El Amrani,
Thank you so much for your work--and for bringing this, the latest atrocity on the part of the Israeli government to the attention of the world. What the Nazi's did to the Jews was wrong. There are many Jews, I know, who join with you in condemning this latest abomination. To be Jewish does not imply support for the cruelty, inhumanity, and overall perversity of this government and those who support it. (To be clear, though it should not matter, I am not Jewish--just a person who loathes all human hideousness and would like to see less of it in this world). My current theory is that this is far less about religion than it is about a particularly nasty vestige of European colonialism. Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druzes, Zoroastrians, and more lived peacefully together in this region until Europe, in the wake of WW2, decided that giving away land over which it had no legitimate claim, to other Europeans it had recently attempted to wipe out, was the 'magic bullet' that would give it a way to appear accountable for its own anti-Semitism without actually having to be accountable. Sending a bunch of really angry fellow Europeans to occupy else's land and take their anger out on people who had never done them any harm, was one of the most reprehensible decisions anyone has ever made. 'Nuf said.
I do have one bone to pick with you, re:
"CNN was late to the story and featured analysis from the talented Ben Wedeman in Cairo, which suggests it did not have someone ready in Israel or Palestine. With all due respect to Ben, an excellent correspondent, CNN was just not on top of the story."
Ben Wedeman was transferred by CNN from East Jerusalem to Cairo about a year ago. However if you watch Muckrack (the journalistic version of Twitter--muckrack.com/bencnn/), you will see that for the past few days, he has been saying he wanted to get there. The question is: why did his employer not permit him to go? I believe I know.
CNN is a commercial enterprise. Over the past few decades, the FCC has basically allowed media outlets to consolidate just as the Fed did with banks. The great implosion of 2008 made clear that this was a lousy decision where banks are concerned. The communications industry is completely analogous. We haven't yet seen a full-out implosion, but implications of this consolidation are equally pernicious. The people's right to know has become secondary in importance to the insatiable appetites of the industry's kleptocratic elite. They'll distort, ignore, or kill any story that generates in them the slightest frisson of anxiety about the continuing "health" of their revenue stream.
I do not know if you are aware of this, but Ben Wedeman was the first western journalist to gain access to Gaza during last year's genocidal rampage on the part of the Israeli government (before the press ban was lifted). He also broke the story about the Israeli army's use of white phosphorus on civilians, a violation of International law. In 2006, he was trapped in Lebanon -- and continued to report on the horrors being inflicted on the Lebanese people--for several months, even after the Israelis bombed every bridge, road, and building into smithereens. On October 31, 2000, he was shot in the back by an Israeli army sniper at the Karni Crossing--in Gaza.
Then, as now, journalists are unarmed. Why would the Israeli government attack him? He, and his team, were covered with press insignia. The person who shot him was very skilled: the steel bullet that entered his body was able to sneak up under his bulletproof vest, narrowly missing his kidneys. In short, I recoil when you imply that a reporter who has repeatedly put his life on the line, as has Mr. Wedeman, somehow "fell down on the job" because he was late to this story. I doubt he wanted to be so.
Instead, I think we all need to recognize and to say out loud that:
1) The US media, like that country's government and its banks, has become captive to commercial interests. This has caused it to become an agent of dis-, mis- and/or non-information.
2) Demand change--dramatic change, now.
What we should not be doing is criticizing people whose audacity & commitment compels them to take enormous risks to bring us the news. That people such as Ben Wedeman put themselves on the line for us, even when discouraged from doing so by their employers, is a reason to be grateful, not critical. It is also a reason to ask why they were prevented from doing what they are clearly driven to do.
A propos of media savvy, it turns out the Israelis were taking a leaf out of Mubarak and his baltagis' book - confiscating cameras and laptops and phones and hitting camerapersons. That might explain the lack of PR on the part of the flotilla activists:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/middle_east/10206802.stm
Excellent post. It's important to note that the media blackout seems to have been pre-planned so as to be executed from the very moment Israeli troops landed on the ship (but did you expect any less from the world's most efficient propaganda machine?)
See the following video of a satellite broadcast from the ship; the audio is uncut and the video switches between different cameras around the ship, with journalists from different media outlets taking turns to speak. I'm sure many here have seen this already. At the 3:12 mark, roughly one minute after IDF troops boarded the ship, the journalist states, "All phones have been jammed, making it impossible to contact the outside world. They have tried to dismantle the satellite we are broadcasting from."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pn-l_JltCB4