www.honestreporting.com/articles/critiques/Dishonest_Reporting_-Award-_for_2001.asp#fisk
We thank all the members of HonestReporting for sending recommendations f or this year's Dishonest Reporting 'Award'. There were many candidates f or the ignominious honor, and we distilled the list down to the worst of fenders. HonestReporting took many factors into account: Was there a policy of del iberate bias? Did a reporter base reports on unreliable sources or no so urces at all? Did the reporter or publication refuse to admit its errors ? So now, without further ado, we regretfully present the Dishonest Reporti ng "Award" 2001. T he "dishonorable mentions" (in alphabetical order) are followed by the b ias champion. And we hope that next year, this list will be much, much shorter.
The Winner: BBC ===== ASSOCIATED PRESS ===== In March 2001, a Palestinian sniper looked through the crosshairs of his scope and murdered Shalhevet Pass, a 10-month old Jewish baby in Hebron. AP's headline writers declared: "Jewish Toddler Dies In West Bank." AP made no mention of who perpetrated the murder, and there is no indicat ion of the ghastly nature of the crime. According to AP, the baby just " died" -- as if from natural causes or an accident. More accurately, Shal hevet Pass was murdered, shot, gunned down, or assassinated -- by a kill er, gunman, terrorist, or sniper. More AP bias appeared in June, following the heinous suicide bombing at a Tel Aviv disco. AP published the headline: "Explosion Kills Bomber in T el Aviv." This was an early AP report, when the final death toll was not available, but at that point it was already known that there were scores of Israel i casualties. So why did AP downplay this bestial act as an "explosion," and focus on the suffering -- not of innocent teens -- but of the evil bomber? In November, when a Palestinian terrorist sprayed machine-gun fire at a b us in Jerusalem, killing two teenagers and wounding 40, AP reported: "On Sunday, a Palestinian shooting attack on a bus in a disputed section of Jerusalem killed two teen-agers, one of them a US-born settler."
htm The American citizen, 16-year-old Shoshana Ben-Yishai, is described by AP as a "settler." To add insult to inj ury, another AP report refers to the heroic Israeli civilian who killed the terrorist as, you guessed it, "a West Bank settler."
htm Associated Press boasts some 8,500 client newspapers around the world. Therefore, no news agency bears as much responsibility for honest reporting. In these 133 articles, CNN depicted Arabs in 128 photos, while Israelis w ere depicted in 60 photos. Photos are important in building reader sympa thies with one side or the other, and on this case, CNN's bias was skewe d more than double in favor of the Palestinians. In those same 133 CNN articles, 68 accusations by Arab spokespeople were allowed to stand unchallenged. By comparison, only 28 Israeli quotes wer e left unchallenged -- a CNN bias skewed more than double in favor of th e Palestinians. CNN bias during 2001 was typified by its coverage of a rally of 250,000 I sraelis gathered outside the Old City walls in support of Jerusalem. The early edition of CNN devoted a paltry 5 sentences to the event. In the later edition, when many more details were available, the rally was not mentioned in the headline at all -- and CNN did not give details of the rally until paragraph #14. The later CNN article, published after all the speeches had been made, di d not offer even one quote from any of the quarter-million attendees. Th e lone CNN quote came from Muslim Waqf Adnan Husseini, who called the ra lly "provocative." In the same article, CNN gravely diminished the Jewish connection. There was no mention of the Temple Mount as Judaism's holiest site, nor to Jer usalem as the capital of the Jewish people (as it has been for over 3,00 0 years -- 1,500 years before Islam ever existed). CNN's description: "T he site is known to Jews as Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble San ctuary, the third-holiest site in the Islamic world." Further, in a bizarre reference, CNN says the site of the rally was: "Jaf fa Gate, or Bab al-Khalil, the main western entrance to the walled city. " "Jaffa Gate" is the standard reference in any encyclopedia, university textbook, diplomatic document, media style guide, or any other acceptab le Western source. So why does CNN go out of its way -- particularly in the context of reporting a Jewish rally -- to dredge up Bab al-Khalil, a n obscure Arabic reference?
html = ROBERT FISK - THE INDEPENDENT (UK) = For more than two decades, Robert Fisk has used his correspondent card to proudly become a crusader for Arab and Palestinian causes. In the 1970s , Fisk reported from Beirut for the London Times. And now, writing for t he Independent (UK), Fisk blames Israel for all the Palestinians' ills, and blames the West for all Muslim disgruntlement. The day after the September 11 attacks, Fisk defied the civilized world a nd blamed Israel, America, and even the defeat of the Ottoman Empire for the WTC terrorist attack. This is not the war of democracy versus terror that the world will be asked to believe in the coming days. It is also about American missiles smashing into Palestinian homes and US helicopters firing missiles into a Lebanese ambulance in 1996 and American shells crashing into a villag e called Qana and about a Lebanese militia paid and uniformed by America 's Israeli ally hacking and raping and murdering their way through refug ee camps." Fisk claimed that there would be an "immoral" attempt to "obscure the his torical wrongs and the injustices that lie behind yesterday's firestorms ."
story=93623 Even as Taliban supporters in Afghanistan beat him to a pulp last month, Fisk rationalized: "I couldn't blame them for what they were doing. In f act, if I were the Afghan refugees of Kila Abdullah, close to the Afghan -Pakistan border, I would have done just the same to Robert Fisk."
story=109257 Fisk is overt in his anti-Israel crusade, and portrays any reporter not w illing to criticize Israel as a coward: "Our gutlessness, our refusal to tell the truth, our fear of being slandered as 'anti-Semites' -- the mo st loathsome of libels against any journalist -- means that we are aidin g and abetting terrible deeds in the Middle East."
story=66956 = SUZANNE GOLDENBERG - THE GUARDIAN (UK) = Suzanne Goldenberg's coverage consistently whitewashed Palestinian terror ist activity and painted Israeli reaction as aggression. In February 200 1, when a Palestinian driver plowed his bus into a bus stop, killing eig ht Israeli civilians, Goldenberg was quick to defend him: "Far from being... a dedicated terrorist," she wrote, he was a "man who h as been taking medication for depression for two years... That Wednesday morning he added antihistamines and antibiotics to the pharmaceutical c ocktail. Both can cause drowsiness, according to the pharmacist." This i s even after the bus driver admitted to Israeli General Security Service investigators that the attack was intentional and premeditated.
html Incredibly, Goldenberg has won several journalism awards this year from B ritish institutions. The London Press Club said her coverage was a displ ay of "courageous and objective journalism." At another award ceremony, Goldenberg was lauded: "This journalist has been subjected to a campaign of vilification" -- in reference to criticism levied by HonestReporting . The Guardian waged its own campaign of vilification against Israelis. In February 2001, in reference to Ariel Sharon's visit to the Western Wall (the standard Israeli custom after all elections), The Guardian carried the headline, "Sharon Twists Knife in Muslim Wounds." The Guardian also ran a cartoon that obscenely depicted Sharon's bloody handprints on the Western Wall. The cartoon desecrated the holiest Jewish site and encroac hed on brash anti-Semitism.
html In February 2001, the Guardian published an editorial column entitled "Me dia Manipulators," chronicling HonestReporting's criticism of the Guardi an. Yet the Guardian ignored the message and attacked the messenger -- c alling HonestReporting e-mails "bizarre... hara ssment," and referred to some HonestReporting members as "shadowy...
html The Guar...
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