From the perspective of Israel, much of the media was hopelessly biased in favor of Hezbollah during last summer’s war. On a purely journalistic basis, the mistakes, the distortions and the failure to follow basic rules of reporting were mortifying. Now the first serious study of the media’s behavior has confirmed these impressions.
The study was not written by some partisan watchdog organization that would be expected to arrive at these conclusions. Rather, it was produced by a respected journalist: Marvin Kalb, Senior Fellow at Harvard’s Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. Kalb details the way the press allowed itself to be manipulated by Hezbollah, some of the mistakes made by Israel in trying to manage coverage, several of the outright distortions published and broadcast, the impact of the digital media and the fundamental disadvantage a democracy such as Israel faces in a public relations battle with a nondemocratic state or organization.
Israel is automatically at a disadvantage in any conflict because it is an open society. “During the war,” Kalb noted, “no Hezbollah secrets were disclosed, but in Israel secrets were leaked, rumors spread quickly, leaders felt obliged to issue hortatory appeals often based on incomplete knowledge, and journalists were driven by the fire of competition to publish and broadcast unsubstantiated information.”
He added that Hezbollah was able to control how it was portrayed to the world and could therefore depict itself as “a selfless movement touched by God and blessed by a religious fervor and determination to resist the enemy, the infidel and ultimately achieve a ‘divine victory,’ no matter the cost,” while no mention was made of its dependence on Iran and Syria.
Perhaps the most serious charge made throughout the war was that Israel was indiscriminately targeting civilians. Groups such as Human Rights Watch made the allegation, which was then publicized uncritically by the media. Israel consistently said that Hezbollah was using civilians as shields, but the media bought the denials of HRW’s director.
Kalb notes that reporters should have been aware that Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, had said before the war that Hezbollah fighters “live in their [civilians’] houses, in their schools, in their churches, in their fields, in their farms and in their factories.” Early in the war, Kalb says, reporters did note that Hezbollah started the war and casualties were a consequence of the fighting, “but after the first week such references were either dropped or downplayed.”
Kalb also produces statistics that clearly show the bias of coverage in the Arab press. It is not surprising that 78 percent of the stories on Al-Jazeera would label Israel as the “aggressor.” Western news services, however, would be expected to show some semblance of balance. The BBC ran 117 stories on the war, of which 38 percent blamed Israel as the aggressor compared to only 4 percent that blamed Hezbollah. Most stories said they were equally to blame.
On American networks, more than half of the stories focused on Israeli attacks against Lebanon. With the exception of Fox, Kalb said “negative-sounding judgments of Israel’s attacks and counter-attacks permeated most network coverage.”
Israel was repeatedly criticized for alleged attacks around or on U.N. troops in Lebanon. Meanwhile, Kalb notes that the “impartial” UNIFIL Web site published information about Israeli troop movements while no such information was posted regarding Hezbollah’s military activities.
Kalb also reiterates what media watchdogs knew all along, but journalists rarely admitted, that their access to stories in Lebanon was strictly controlled by Hezbollah: “Foreign correspondents were warned, on entry to the tour [of a southern Beirut suburb], that they could not wander off on their own or ask questions of any residents. They could take pictures only of sites approved by their Hezbollah minders. Violations, they were told, would be treated harshly.”
Kalb compared the terms to that of the Soviet era and said that only CNN’s Anderson Cooper described the ground rules that Hezbollah imposed to try to control the story. Kalb says “all of the other reporters followed the Hezbollah script: Israel, in a cruel, heartless display of power, bombed innocent civilians. Casualties were high. Devastation was everywhere.”
Cameramen didn’t need permission to film devastation, but they were warned against taking pictures of Hezbollah terrorists. “The rarest picture of all,” Kalb observes, “was that of a Hezbollah guerilla. It was as if the war on the Hezbollah side was being fought by ghosts.” The Herald Sun of Australia also published equally rare photos showing Hezbollah preparing to fire rockets from civilian neighborhoods.
Reporters always want more access to the war and the people making the decisions about it, so it is not surprising that many complained about restrictions placed on them by Israel. Kalb reports, however, that reports were filled with interviews with Israeli troops, generals and officials. By contrast, he notes, “Hezbollah provided only limited access to the battlefield, full access to an occasional guided tour, and encouraged visiting journalists to check its own television network, Al-Manar, for reports and information about the war.”
The discovery of doctored photos used by major media during the war was a major embarrassment, and Kalb skewers the press for its misuse of photographs. In addition to several frequently cited examples, he mentions a photo of a southern suburb of Beirut that appeared in the New York Times that Times Jerusalem bureau chief Steve Erlanger later admitted was out of context. The Times used a satellite photo showing the destruction of a Beirut neighborhood that gave the impression of massive devastation throughout the city, but a larger photo of Beirut would have shown that the rest of Beirut was undamaged.
Nothing in Kalb’s report will come as any surprise to media critics or Israel’s supporters. What is shocking is that these well-documented abuses have continued for so long without the media itself taking corrective measures. The report should be required reading for journalism schools, not to mention working reporters. The serious maladies Kalb describes must be fixed if the media is to expect the public to have any confidence in its reporting.
Mitchell Bard is the director of the Jewish Virtual Library and author of the forthcoming book “Will Israel Survive?”