“We want to see Israel treated exactly the same as any country in the world, which is ‘innocent until proven guilty,’ and not the other way around.”
According to Gary Kenzer, this is one of two principles that guide the work of Honest Reporting, the Israel-based world-wide organization whose mission is “Defending Israel From Media Bias.”
The second principle, as Kenzer put it in his remarks at Congregation Shalom on Oct. 19, is, “Israel is not perfect, but being perfect is not a prerequisite for being treated fairly by the international [news] media.”
In fact, Kenzer, who is the executive director of Honest Reporting’s U.S. operation (based in Skokie, Ill.), told the audience of about 25 that they should “run from anyone who says Israel is a perfect country, because no country is.”
In the course of a presentation that was interrupted frequently by audience comments and questions, Kenzer cited numerous examples of bias against Israel or failures of honest and thorough reporting and writing in broadcast and print news media.
Some of these examples were subtle. During this past summer’s battles between Israel and the Hamas terrorist group in the Gaza Strip, Kenzer said that television and radio news tended to use the word “killed” instead of “died” to refer to Palestinian fatal casualties.
This usage is important because the word “killed” “plants in readers’ or listeners’ minds” the idea that “people did something to somebody,” as opposed to dying of accidental, natural or other causes, he said.
Cooked figures
The news coverage of the Gaza war eventually revealed another not readily apparent problem: The reporters relied on casualty figures provided by the Hamas-controlled health ministry in Gaza, “even though Hamas had an interest in inflating the figures,” Kenzer said.
In fact, later analysis showed that most of the killed Palestinian Arabs were males between the ages of 20 and 29, the prime demographic characteristics of Hamas fighters.
Moreover, Kenzer said, “Human rights activists acknowledged” that the Hamas figures of people “killed by Israel” included people Hamas killed as collaborators with Israel, people who died of natural causes and even some people killed in domestic violence incidents.
Other examples were blatant. Kenzer displayed an animated political cartoon by Ann Telnaes that the Washington Post posted on its YouTube channel in July.
Titled “Israel pounds Hamas targets in Gaza,” it shows Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu punching a baby while he glares at a uniformed, armed and masked Hamas fighter standing nearby.
“This is absolutely cruel,” Kenzer said. Honest Reporting and others protested to the Post, but did not obtain a retraction, he said.
Yet, even when HR does obtain a retraction and apology from a news media operation, it is often not effective, Kenzer said, “because you still remember” the provocation, and not the retraction.
Kenzer offered advice to the audience about how to regard news media coverage of Israel and about what they could do to help improve it.
He said people should read or watch or listen to more than the sources that agree with their own views. “Whatever side of the coin you’re on, read the other side, so you get an intimate perspective on what both sides of the issues are,” he said.
People should also “validate stories,” he said. “You’ve got to do your research… Never take a story and go right with it.”
Honest Reporting can help with this because it operates what Kenzer called an “aggregator service” that “draws down the 1,500 newspapers” that the organization monitors every day and “pulls out where Israel has been referenced,” both in good and bad ways.
News media consumers should also approach photographs cautiously. Kenzer showed what has become an iconic image of a Palestinian youth throwing a rock — and showed that cropped from the side of the photo was a corps of photographers, proving that the image had been staged.
Finally, Kenzer said people who want to do their part to improve news coverage of Israel should “pick one thing” to do — monitor one newspaper, forward an email, write an online response or a letter to the editor — “and stick with it” for a set amount of time — once a week, once a month, etc.
Kenzer also spoke to the synagogues seventh through tenth grade religious school students.
For more information, visit HonestReporting.com.
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