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Jewish World Review Sept. 10, 2003 / 13 Elul, 5763 No moral daylight on 'Nightline' By Andrea Levin
http://www.jewishworldreview.com |
What explains the irresistible journalistic urge to force moral equivalence into reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Stories devoted to emphasizing the alleged absence of differences between the sides, with elaborate stress on the equality of emotional anguish, are as numerous as they are deceitful.
Who can forget the New York Times' front-page story tracing likenesses between Rachel Levy, a teenage Jerusalemite, and Ayat al-Ahkras, the female Palestinian terrorist who murdered her? A letter to the editor about that story summed up the ethical issue that had eluded editors: "The comparison of Ayat al-Akhras and Rachel Levy is as revolting as a comparison of Mohammed Atta and Todd Beamer would be."
The letter writer knew what most people do - that it is impossible to render a human interest story accurately if it is devoid of key surrounding political reality and stripped of connectedness to responsibility for events. It is not "news" to show that all human beings experience pain. And it is certainly false "news" to suggest equity of innocence when one side is overwhelmingly the aggressor.
ABC's Ted Koppel, who gravitates to such specious analogizing, offered a piece emblematic of the type in an August 21, 2003 Nightline segment.
While he interjected an observation insisting moral equivalence can properly be drawn within the narrow realm of human emotion, separate from the political dimension, reporter Mike Lee nevertheless included distorted political assertions in a long comparison of two mothers, one Palestinian and one Israeli, whose little girls were killed by actions of the other side.
Koppel set up the piece, saying: "It is the rare person who can feel genuine empathy for the suffering of strangers. After a while, it's only the numbers that get your attention. Twenty dead and 100 or so injured in that Jerusalem bombing earlier this week."
He added: "If you are a parent of a dead seven-year-old, the question of who did what, when, to begin the cycle of violence is of incidental interest. You will meet the mothers of two such children tonight, one Israeli, the other Palestinian. In their grief, there is moral equivalence, even if it is all but impossible to find it in the history, the politics and the diplomacy."
First, it should be noted that Nightline itself did nothing in reporting on the "Twenty dead and 100 or so injured" in Jerusalem to enable viewers to feel "genuine empathy" for the Israeli victims of that atrocity, many of them children. An August 19 program covering the terror attack was primarily devoted to the bombing of the U.N. facility in Baghdad that occurred the same day. ABC told of the "terrible injuries" and "terrible pain" of U.N. victims, but there was not even token mention of the terrible pain of Israelis slaughtered and maimed in Jerusalem - just a short, perfunctory report. Focus was on the Hamas perpetrators, and viewers were told the group claimed it committed attacks only "when provoked."
Thus, when it came to a program about Arab and Israeli mothers equal in their "grief," Nightline had already - as it does routinely - obscured the context of unique savagery and onslaught against innocent Israelis.
It is undeniably true the Palestinian mother is suffering and grieving, like the Israeli mother. Their tears and haunted eyes are alike. But Nightline pretends there is also equal truth in the lament by the Israeli mother that Palestinians teach virulent hatred of Israelis and extol "martyrs" who murder civilians, and the Palestinian's statement that "Jews are responsible. They are the ones who launch shells and rockets on the Palestinian people."
Nightline pretends not to know the "shells and rockets"" are targeted at the perpetrators of the terror, and come in reaction to mass murder of Israeli civilians, a campaign fomented and fueled by Palestinian lies and propaganda - just as the Israeli mother says. Nightline pretends not to know that if the Palestinians stopped killing tomorrow, Israeli counter-measures would end. Nightline gives not even a suggestion of these facts, referring instead to a "cycle of violence."
Finally, the program on the grieving mothers was prefaced by and concluded with sympathetic focus on Palestinian sentiment. Koppel opened with a report on a positive conversation with Hamas leader Ismail Abu Shanab, killed that same day by Israel. Koppel cast him as eager for "a cease-fire" and wanting "to live in peace." Shanab is heard saying: "All the violence in the region comes from the occupation." Nothing is said of Hamas's constant assertion that its aim is Israel's annihilation.
Similarly, the segment's close turned to the views of Palestinians in Gaza, who are reported to be "upset" and to feel a "great deal of anger and indignation" at Israel.
Koppel and Lee are apparently most comfortable either tilting overtly against Israel or pairing Israeli suffering with Palestinian pain. Having to make distinctions that portray Israel subjected to unjust and existential besiegement would require a measure of "moral" courage alien to Koppel and to ABC.
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Andrea Levin is executive director of the media watchdog group CAMERA. Comment by clicking here.
© 2003, Andrea Levin | ||||||||||
