Last update - 00:00 01/09/2006
'Can the public ever get the real story?'
"Did you do the best job you could have done? Really?" veteran TV newsman Marvin Kalb challenged the media to ask itself in the wake of the second Lebanon war. Kalb was addressing a panel of journalists convened in Jerusalem this week to discuss coverage of the war.
Billed as a "town meeting" and staged as a television production for broadcast in America, the two-hour event was sponsored by The Mideast Press Club, a project of The Media Line. Kalb, who opened the evening via video clip, is an adviser to the American nonprofit news agency.
The panel included Abdelraouf Amout (Al-Ayyam), Yoni Ben Menachem (Israel Radio), Steven Erlanger (The New York Times), Stephen Farrell (The Times of London), Simon McGregor-Wood (ABC), Ravi Nessman (AP), Walid Omary (Al-Jazeera) and Danny Rubinstein (Haaretz).
In his opening clip, Kalb noted that the media has become "a major actor in policy formulation" and attributed this to technological advances and a heightened "push for profit." He also acknowledged that there is widespread distrust of the media, which "has been used and manipulated by everyone ... but rarely so effectively as by Hezbollah."
David Harris, Jerusalem bureau chief of The Media Line, served as moderator of the event, alternately quizzing the panel and taking questions from the audience of 400 that filled the auditorium at the Jerusalem YMCA. This dual format and the large size of the panel did not lend itself to in-depth discussion, but provided a range of insights into the issues journalists faced in covering the recent war.
McGregor-Wood (ABC News) complained that media coverage of the war suffered from a lack of access to the battlefield, with the IDF averse to allowing "embedded" journalists to accompany troops. Erlanger (NY Times) concurred, suggesting that the Israel Defense Forces preferred to have journalists focus on the home front, rather than report about shortages of flak jackets and water on the battlefront. He noted that Israeli journalists naturally enjoyed better access than foreign reporters.
"Without real access to the battlefield," Nessman (AP) added, "we were left with what the IDF says and with what Hezbollah says. And if we can't see for ourselves, we can't know what the actual truth is, and that leaves us open to a lot of criticism."
Farrell (The Times) said he spent much of the war looking across the border with binoculars in an attempt to gain a direct view of what was happening. "When you see something [with your own eyes], it's accurate," he emphasized.
Nessman noted that Israel's modern infrastructure made it possible to quickly confirm facts when Katyushas fell, while the situation in Lebanon was much more elusive. He also mentioned the "unprecedented" impact of Internet bloggers on perceptions of the war. For example, following the discovery of a doctored Reuters picture, he said, "the credibility of bloggers skyrocketed and our credibility plummeted."
Omary, Jerusalem bureau chief of Al-Jazeera, said he phoned the IDF Spokesman when the war erupted in order to clarify the ground rules for media coverage. Several days into the war, however, Israeli authorities launched a "campaign" against Al-Jazeera, he said.
Omary was detained by police in Acre for six hours, he recalled, and was offered two explanations: "We want to protect your life" and "You are giving information to the enemy." Disputing the latter, he described a scene that drew a hearty laugh from the polite audience at the YMCA: While waiting in police custody, Omary was watching a Channel 10 broadcast when the reporter described a Katyusha landing in Haifa. "That man must be working for Hezbollah!" he told the police officers.
Despite the obstacles, Omary said, Al-Jazeera made an effort to produce two stories in Israel every day - one focusing on the civilian perspective and another on political and military issues. In this way, the Qatar-based network strived to maintain balance in its Israel reporting, he explained. Omary also admitted that it was personally difficult for him to remain objective because he has relatives in Lebanon.
Yoni Ben Menachem (Israel Radio) raised a few notes of discord in the otherwise tranquil discourse. He said, for example, that he was "upset as an Israeli and as a journalist" that Al-Jazeera published information about IDF casualties before their next of kin were notified. He also suggested that in order to bypass the military censor, some Israeli journalists had "laundered" information via Al-Jazeera so they then could quote it themselves.
Harris asked several of the journalists to list the mistakes thsey made in covering the war. Ben Menachem said that Israel Radio was wrong in allowing itself to get caught up in the "euphoria" of the war during its initial days, subscribing to the notion that a victory could be achieved solely through air strikes. "We went along with this illusion, this fata morgana, and then we had to wake up."
Erlanger said that he erred in taking the head of Military Intelligence too seriously and in not taking Lebanese politics seriously enough. He also regretted publishing a picture focusing on a damaged section of Beirut without showing the larger context of the city. Ferrell said his organization should have given the ongoing story in Gaza more attention while covering the war in the north.
"Can the public ever get the real story?" Harris asked in conclusion, echoing a question Kalb posed in the introductory video. "It's very difficult. There are always two sides to a story," Amout (Al-Ayyam) responded.
And the following advice came from Nessman: "Be critical and synthesize for yourself. Try to read a breadth of material and you'll probably find a pretty good picture of what's going on."