Marcus Tullius Cicero said that
“Inter arma enim silent leges,” which translates
as “In time of war, the law falls silent.” A better-known spin-off is “when
cannons roar, the muses go quiet.” In our world, however, if the cannons roar,
the media seems to get louder.
One recent example is Rupert Murdoch’s
tweet: “Middle East ready to boil over any day. Israel position precarious.
Meanwhile watch CNN and AP bias to point of embarrassment.” He then tweeted:
“Why is Jewish owned press so consistently anti-Israel in every crisis?”
Murdoch’s voice is not a lone one. Buried By The Times, a 400-page book
published in 2005, authored by Laurel Leff, is a damning study of Jewish media
owners’ approach to coverage of the Holocaust.
The IDF spokesperson has
seemingly understood the message. Instead of relying solely on the established
media outlets, it opened its part in the present war in an announcement over
Twitter.
IDF spokeswoman Lt.-Col. Avital Leibovich, in an
interview with the BuzzFeed site, said she was “very proud” of the IDF’s social
media accomplishments.
“We still have a lot more to learn,” she said,
“and maybe other platforms to join, but I think in a relatively short time it’s
very progressive.”
YouTube, Flickr, a blog, Twitter and Facebook accounts
are the new “bank of weapons” for those with the goal of conveying a
message.
One cannot help but wonder whether the IDF’s use of social media
is also part of a realization that the established media cannot be relied upon
to tell the truth.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the BBC tweeted on Monday a
week ago: “@Twitter bans ‘threats of violence’, but will it stop tweets by
Hamas’s @AlqassamBrigade & Israel’s @IDFSpokesman.” The BBC equates
information coming from Hamas and the IDF.
In fact, its bureau chief, Jon
Donnison in Gaza, tweeted a picture which purported to be a local child in a
Gaza hospital, a picture which was given to him by Hamas sources. A few hours
later he retracted; the picture was an old one, taken in Syria and had nothing
to do with the IDF. But the damage was done.
In a professional media
organization, Donnison should have been fired, or at the least removed from his
position as a reporter in the present conflict. He did not check his sources and
gave his employer a black eye.
Arguably, Donnison would not even have
apologized had it not been for the social media which glaringly exposed
Donnison’s mistake.
No wonder the IDF is active in social
media.
According to Government Press Office figures, as of Sunday earlier
this week, almost 500 foreign journalists had requested press credentials,
joining approximately 1,400 journalists and crew members who are already in
Israel and the nearby region.
Most of these journalists do not speak
Hebrew or Arabic, are not aware of the intricacies of the situation in Israel
but must send reports back home to their employers.
This is only possible
if they rely on local sources. Sadly, our local sources are not doing their job,
and this is not the first time.
Already in the Second Lebanon War, Israel
became the victim of crude Hezbollah disinformation. A Reuters photographer was
fired for faking pictures of smoke coming from Beirut, purportedly a result of
Israeli bombing.
This was exposed by social media, not mainstream Israeli
media. The same is true for pictures of a lady who twice in two weeks had her
home destroyed, or the many dolls to be found wherever Israeli forces destroyed
a Hezbollah stronghold, and many more.
Yet our media not only failed to
be the first to find out about these incidents, it made very little effort to
make sure everyone knew about them. The same story is repeating itself as the
war in Gaza unfolds. Hamas will put out a story about a family of 12 killed by
Israel, and our media treats the story as truth from Moses at Sinai, neglecting
to mention the facts that the population had been warned and a terrorist
chieftain responsible for the death of Israeli civilians successfully
targeted.
Hamas figures of Gazan civilians killed are already painting
Israel as using disproportionate power and, as reported by NGO Monitor, this is
picked up by left-wing organizations, funded by the New Israel Fund, who do
their best to delegitimize Israel.
If it weren’t so serious, it could be
considered ludicrous.
On October 18, a picture was published of a mother
and three children killed in Syria. Hamas picked it up and on November 18
publicized it as evidence of Israeli “atrocities” in Gaza.
The BBC has
learned nothing.
As reported originally by blogger Elder of Ziyon, in
breaking news, the BBC showed a “wounded” Gazan civilian being removed by
stretcher following an Israeli attack. The headline was: “Hamas military: Attack
opens the gates of hell.” Yet 30 minutes later a clip shows the same person
walking about freely. As a result, CNN corrected its report on this
incident.
But the lies and misinformation do not come only from Hamas
sources. CNN, for example, showed a picture titled “The Israeli military
launches a missile Thursday from the Southern city of Beersheba.” This was not a
missile aimed at civilians but an Iron Dome rocket sent to intercept a Gazan
missile.
What is the behavior of the mainstream Israeli media? As noted
by Maurice Ostroff in a
Jerusalem Post op-ed, our press did not adequately
expose the huge disparity between the number of civilian casualties in Libya and
Kosovo and the total lack of NATO casualties. Doesn’t this constitute necessary
background when dealing with criticism of Israel’s supposed use of
disproportionate force? Israel’s citizens are being crippled by a lack of
information, and cannot judge their own government’s actions.
The media
feeds on information, and its main source from within the Gaza Strip is
controlled by Hamas. Even the reporters who do attempt to report in an
independent fashion are nevertheless very much aware of Hamas supervision, which
is always a threat to their freedom.
Neither reporters nor their bosses
choose to qualify such information with a standard statement noting that Hamas
is notorious for manipulating and falsifying facts. Even Kol Yisrael does not do
this, so why should the BBC or CNN? Our media’s disinterest in defending Israel
should be contrasted with the major effort taken by Yediot Aharonot to expose
what they considered to be bias in their competitor Israel HaYom.
When it
hurts their pocket, Yediot Aharonot is a valiant defender of the truth, but when
it hurts Israel, when millions of citizens must live in fear of missile strikes,
the truth is not so important.
The only real question that remains is why
so many readers continue to support media outlets proven to be consistently
unethical as well as unfair and biased toward Israel.
The authors are,
respectively, vice chairman and chairman of Israel’s Media Watch
(www.imw.org.il)