U.K. media's coverage of Salam Fayyad is starkly different to U.S. reporting

 

	Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad addressing the media in Berlin on May 18, 2010.
	Photo by: Reuters

British media handling of Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and the substantial economic progress in the West Bank which has taken place under his auspices, suggests that there are certain journalists who are somewhat reluctant to accommodate such "awkward" developments. The story in the United States, however, is very different.

A report released by Just Journalism, documents how Fayyad’s achievements in securing these economic and security improvements for Palestinians are majorly downplayed by the British broadsheet newspapers – The Guardian, The Independent, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and Financial Times. This stands in stark contrast with reporting of the same subject in both left and right-leaning U.S. publications, which have covered the positive developments in the West Bank more faithfully.

A typical approach in the U.K. can be seen in an editorial published on the day after Fayyad announced in London in August 2009 that he intended to have laid the groundwork for an independent Palestinian state within two years, outside the framework of political negotiations with Israel. The Financial Times headline accused: "Netanyahu’s peace is a cynical evasion," and the piece went on to caution: "During his1996-99 premiership, instead of land-for-peace he offered peace-for-peace; now he obfuscates about an 'economic peace'."

Extraordinarily, Fayyad and his policy announcement were not even mentioned in the leading article, which attributed solely to the Israeli PM the idea that improving the West Bank economy was a first priority in the creation of a viable Palestinian state.

Contrast this with an article the New York Times ran on the same day, in response to the same events. The headline says it all in many respects: ‘Palestinian Leader Maps Plan for Separate State’. Isabel Kershner described the plan as the ‘first of its kind from the Palestinian Authority’ and cited the U.S. Consul General Jacob Walles lending his approval: "He said that it was the first time he had seen such a 'concrete plan' and that the Palestinians were working in a practical way toward their goal."

Another occasion triggering these opposing presentations was Fayyad’s unprecedented appearance alongside Ehud Barak at the Herzliya Conference in February 2010. This passed largely unnoticed in U.K. Middle East reporting. The Independent’s Robert Fisk, who did cover the event, wrote of Fayyad’s participation with utter disdain and the only other British broadsheet to cover the event only did so on the back of a story primarily about Barak’s warning about the dangers of a failure to create a Palestinian state, in an article provocatively entitled: "Barak: make peace with Palestinians or face apartheid."

Once again, across the pond at The Washington Post, a totally different portrayal emerged, in the form of, "Palestinian premier speaks at Israeli conference,"
in which the journalist commented that Fayyad’s attendance at such an event in Israel was ‘novel’, as was his sharing a podium with Defense Minister Ehud Barak ‘at a time when the two sides are not formally meeting.’

What can adequately explain these dramatically differing treatments of the phenomenon, last year coined "Fayyadism" by veteran New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman?

In the case of the U.K., I propose that the media’s intense dislike of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a big part of the answer. Netanyahu’s publicly stated desire to focus on the economic, rather than political, track, regarding the putative Palestinian state, obliterated any chance of a fair hearing of Fayyad’s similar approach, hence the Financial Times editorial which fixated on Netanyahu’s "cynical evasion," to the exclusion of Fayyad’s innovation.

American journalists, on the other hand, while not wildly keen on Netanyahu, have been able to adjust their narratives to make room for the hugely important developments which have positively affected Palestinians across the West Bank. I would suggest that if U.K. journalists want to uphold their responsibility to portray events in the Middle East faithfully, they start awarding the Palestinian prime minister the relevance he has plainly earned, regardless of whether it upsets their framing of Netanyahu as habitually wrong.

It is not difficult to understand why people find it hard to amend their political positions to reflect changing realities. One you have a framework in place for understanding a particular topic then the slightest shift can cause an inconvenient mess. But if you are a journalist, and therefore, largely responsible for public perceptions of that very subject, surely it is your duty to make such adjustments and tidy up the ensuing mess regardless of the inconvenience?