Let it not be said that there isn't an Israel Lobby and every effort made by the Israelis to slant the "news" in their favor.
Mondoweiss [a blog well worth reading - daily] has the inside running - that is, from a recently published book by Emma Williams "It’s Easier to Reach Heaven Than the End of the Street", on how newspapers, in effect, censor the Palestinian "story" getting out there:
"In London a senior editor admitted he had been "brought to heel" by his management, and financially he couldn’t risk his position by including unacceptable–to management–balance. A radio journalist told me in Jerusalem: "When I do a Palestinian story, my editors are all over me. They tell me I must have an Israeli story to balance it, but when I do an Israeli story, there is no such request." Sometimes the journalists applied the silencing themselves: "That editor’s visit," said a Times correspondent, "was a waste of bloody time. Doing a story on the Palestinians, comes all the way to Israel, and refuses to go to the Occupied Territories. Still did the story though. From Tel Aviv."
One Jerusalem bureau chief was frank. "This is a machine," he said. "It’s not just the individuals, the officials, the influential friends. There are endless arms of the machine. There’s deciding who gets press passes, who gets recognition as a journalist. There’s singling out individuals for criticism. There’s pressure applied to individual journalists: complaints are made, accusations placed with the bureau or the paper back home. The journalist would know that he or she was a target and would have to deal with the pressure of ’surveillance’ without jeopardizing either organization or career. The balance is tipped against the journalist if the organization is not supportive: the pressure and constraints are sometimes bad enough for journalists to resign."
The bureau chief went on, "And there’s the department in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs set up with banks of television screens, to watch, count, time, assess, and report on each one of the networks 24 hours a day, seven days a week." He was matter of fact. "…if they think that you give more airtime to the Palestinian stories than to Israeli ones, or if the way you present the information doesn’t gel with their interpretation and the way they want the information to be seen, then they get on the phone or come and see you and tell you so. And then of course you have to defend yourself."
Mondoweiss [a blog well worth reading - daily] has the inside running - that is, from a recently published book by Emma Williams "It’s Easier to Reach Heaven Than the End of the Street", on how newspapers, in effect, censor the Palestinian "story" getting out there:
"In London a senior editor admitted he had been "brought to heel" by his management, and financially he couldn’t risk his position by including unacceptable–to management–balance. A radio journalist told me in Jerusalem: "When I do a Palestinian story, my editors are all over me. They tell me I must have an Israeli story to balance it, but when I do an Israeli story, there is no such request." Sometimes the journalists applied the silencing themselves: "That editor’s visit," said a Times correspondent, "was a waste of bloody time. Doing a story on the Palestinians, comes all the way to Israel, and refuses to go to the Occupied Territories. Still did the story though. From Tel Aviv."
One Jerusalem bureau chief was frank. "This is a machine," he said. "It’s not just the individuals, the officials, the influential friends. There are endless arms of the machine. There’s deciding who gets press passes, who gets recognition as a journalist. There’s singling out individuals for criticism. There’s pressure applied to individual journalists: complaints are made, accusations placed with the bureau or the paper back home. The journalist would know that he or she was a target and would have to deal with the pressure of ’surveillance’ without jeopardizing either organization or career. The balance is tipped against the journalist if the organization is not supportive: the pressure and constraints are sometimes bad enough for journalists to resign."
The bureau chief went on, "And there’s the department in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs set up with banks of television screens, to watch, count, time, assess, and report on each one of the networks 24 hours a day, seven days a week." He was matter of fact. "…if they think that you give more airtime to the Palestinian stories than to Israeli ones, or if the way you present the information doesn’t gel with their interpretation and the way they want the information to be seen, then they get on the phone or come and see you and tell you so. And then of course you have to defend yourself."
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