The Distorted Coverage of the War

This cartoon likening Olmert to the infamous SS killer Amon Goeth
appeared in a Norwegian daily. See the Jerusalem Post for coverage.

Watching the BBC coverage of the war in Lebanon over the past two weeks, I was often flabbergasted by the one-sided coverage. Time and again, I would heard commentators remarking that "Israel continues bombing Lebanon," without any explanation about why this might be the case or references to the fact that hundreds of thousands of Israelis were staying in bunkers. Yesterday, I saw a short sequence on the channel showing a man in a hospital bed, supposedly wounded by Israeli bombs. After showing him for a few seconds the camera panned to "his daughter" who magically walked in the door (as if taking the TV crew by surprise). The woman started shouting "father, father" in a manner so reminiscent of a bad soap opera that it should have been discernible to any viewer that we were witnessing a piece of theater.

Tom Gross of the National Post has written a detailed piece, "The media war against Israel," uncovering Hizbullah's successful manipulation of the international press and TV networks. He also documents some of the distasteful cartoons that have appeared again this time around in the world press. As usual, comparisons of Israel to the Nazis abound (see the cartoon above). Here are some excerpts from Gross's feature:

While the slanted comments and interviews are bad enough, the degree of pictorial distortion is even worse. From the way many TV stations worldwide are portraying it, you would think Beirut has begun to resemble Dresden and Hamburg in the aftermath of Second World War air raids. International television channels have used the same footage of Beirut over and over, showing the destruction of a few individual buildings in a manner which suggests half the city has been razed.

A careful look at aerial satellite photos of the areas targeted by Israel in Beirut shows that certain specific buildings housing Hezbollah command centres in the city's southern suburbs have been singled out. Most of the rest of Beirut, apart from strategic sites such as airport runways used to ferry Hezbollah weapons in and out of Lebanon, has been left pretty much untouched.

...

Another journalist let the cat out of the bag last week. Writing on his blog while reporting from southern Lebanon, Time magazine contributor Christopher Allbritton casually mentioned in the middle of a posting: "To the south, along the curve of the coast, Hezbollah is launching Katyushas, but I'm loath to say too much about them. The Party of God has a copy of every journalist's passport, and they've already hassled a number of us and threatened one."

See also Tom Gross's website.