Honest Reporting
(funny how my last honest reporting thread was deleted by the MODs without a trace.... perhaps they saw something they didn't like ... whatever the reason, here it is again.)
Honest Reporting is an organization set up to counter media bias against Israel available at honestreporting.com. It seems as though many media outlets have dropped they're standard of reporting when it comes to reporting on whats happening with Israel.
Many false accusation have been put forth by the media, and irreversable errors have been sent to print.
The Palestinian Authority shouldn't have launched they're PR war so soon, it seems as though the media is still in the middle of theirs against Israel.
In recent days the IDF has stepped up activity in Gaza, launching pinpoint strikes against known Hamas terrorist leaders. On Saturday, Ibrahim al-Maqadma, 51, a Hamas founder and active head of its "military wing," was eliminated by a pinpoint helicopter strike against his vehicle.
The Associated Press -- the world's most broadly syndicated news agency -- employs reporters Hassan Fattah, Nidal al-Mughrabi and Ibrahim Barzak to cover activities in Gaza. The following two AP dispatches reveal a palpable bias:
---- (1) ----
On March 6, AP tried to downplay the necessity of IDF activity in Gaza: "One of the Israeli goals is to stop the rocket fire. Palestinians have been firing primitive, homemade Qassam rockets from northern Gaza at the Israeli town of Sderot. Most of them miss their target, and those that land cause little damage with their small explosive warheads. No one has been seriously injured by a Qassam rocket, but Israel's government is determined to stop the attacks."
Yet as illustrated on the CNN website
(http://honestreporting.com/a/r/355.asp), the Qassam 2 rocket is anything but primitive. With a payload of up to 11 pounds of explosives, a range of over 6 miles, high mobility, and the potential to deliver non-conventional warheads, the missile constitutes an extremely serious threat. Given the close proximity of many Palestinian regions to Israeli citizens, the proliferation and deployment of the Qassam 2 must be addressed with utmost seriousness by any responsible Israeli government.
The ongoing, unhampered firing of Qassams into Israel (see
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2002/20020217/world1.jpg) breaches a fundamental defensive barrier, regardless of the low accuracy that
presently characterizes a Qassam salvo. To suggest, as AP does, that
Israel is unwarranted in defending itself against this new airborne
threat, is at the very least an unwelcome insertion of the author's
opinion into an ostensibly objective report.
Regarding the innocuous nature of the Qassam 2, perhaps AP would profit from a discussion with Sderot's Sima Naamat, the mother of one-year-old Shilo Naamat, who sustained injuries from a Qassam rocket that required two surgical procedures to repair broken bones this past Wednesday night.
As Ms. Naamat stated regarding her infant son, "I found him lying in
blood, full of pieces of shrapnel" (see http://israelinsider.com/channels/s...es/sec_0212.htm). This latest attack was by no means an isolated incident: For over eight months, residents of the Negev town of Sderot -- which lies inside the Green Line -- have been the target of ongoing Palestinian mortar shelling and rockets.
The fact that the Qassam rocket may be assembled in a residential building -- thereby rendering it "homemade" -- in no way lessens its deadliness, or the escalation it threatens to bring to the conflict. AP's Hassan Fattah would have the world believe otherwise.
Read the AP article at:
http://honestreporting.com/a/r/356.asp
Comments to:
[email protected]
---- (2) ----
Two major events occurred in the 24-hour period between Friday evening and Saturday evening: the aforementioned IDF helicopter strike against Hamas leader Ibrahim al-Maqadma, and a deadly terrorist attack against Jewish residents of Kiryat Arba that left the parents of four children dead at their Shabbat table.
In a not-so-subtle imbalance, Associated Press
(http://honestreporting.com/a/r/357.asp) allots the first 780 of its 890 words to the IDF strike and its political implications, stressing continually the revenge demanded by local Palestinians for the elimination of the Hamas leader. No fewer than six irate Palestinian responses are quoted, including condemnations from the Palestinian Authority, Hamas spokesmen, and Gaza street demonstrators.
Only those readers who wade through to the end of the piece are informed -- inaccurately and without meriting even the devotion of a complete sentence -- that "on Friday Hamas gunmen killed two Jewish settlers when they infiltrated the West Bank settlement Kiryat Arba and opened fire on settlers gathering for prayers."
In fact, American-born Eliahu and Dina Horowitz were gunned down while quietly enjoying their Shabbat evening meal in their own home. Five others were injured -- including a woman who remains in serious but stable condition -- by the Horowitz' murderers, who dressed up as Jewish yeshiva students to gain entry to the area.
In addition, AP attaches gruesome details only to the Hamas leader's
death, which turned his car "into a smoking skeleton and scatter[ed] body parts along a Gaza road." An earlier version of the AP story
(http://honestreporting.com/a/r/358.asp) adds a macabre eyewitness quotation: "'I was about to open my shop when suddenly a helicopter came from the sky,' said Abdullah Ali, 60, a grocery shop owner who was covered with blood from the strike. 'I saw legs and hands fly in the air and then suddenly I fell down on the ground.'"
No such dramatics accompany the coverage of the anonymous Horowitz', who receive merely the deprecating modifier "settlers" twice. We can assume there was no shortage of witnesses to the post-shooting scene at the Horowitz home.
To the eyes of the world, Jewish terror victims are left faceless, and the Israeli army is a provocative instigator of the fuming Palestinian mass.
Such were the past 24 hours in Israel, in the AP's official account.
Again, comments may be submitted to:
[email protected]
What happend to the Associated Press's objectivity?
Why employ 3 Arabs to do your 'unbias' reporting of whats happening with Israel. There are obviously personal agendas presented here through the AP, who have in recent months been bashed from they're unbalanced perspective of world affairs.
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Signature Suspended as it was deemed offensive.
Last edited by melech_mike on Mar-09-2003 at 16:45
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