"The trend toward secrecy is the greatest threat to democracy."
- Associated Press CEO, in a speech about the importance of openness
"The official response is we decline to respond."
- Associated Press Director of Media Relations, replying to questions about AP
In the midst of journalism's "Sunshine Week"--during which the Associated Press and other news organizations are valiantly proclaiming the public's "right to know"--AP insists on conducting its own activities in the dark, and refuses to answer even the simplest questions about its system of international news reporting.
Most of all, it refuses to explain why it erased footage of an Israeli soldier intentionally shooting a Palestinian boy.
AP, according to its website, is the world's oldest and largest news organization. It is the behemoth of news reporting, providing what its editors determine is the news to a billion people each day. Through its feeds to thousands of newspapers, radio and television stations, AP is a major determinant in what Americans read, hear and see--and what they don't.
What they don't is profoundly important. I investigated one such omission when I was in the Palestinian Territories last year working on a documentary with my colleague (and daughter), who was filming our interviews.
On Oct. 17, 2004 Israeli military forces invaded Balata, a dense, poverty-stricken community deep in Palestine's West Bank (Israel frequently invades this area and others). According to witnesses, the vehicles stayed for about twenty minutes, the military asserting its power over the Palestinian population. The witnesses state that there was no Palestinian resistance--no "clash," no "crossfire," not even any stone-throwing. At one point, after most of the vehicles had finally driven away, an Israeli soldier stuck his gun out of his armored vehicle, aimed at a pre-pubescent boy nearby, and pulled the trigger.
We went to the hospital and interviewed the boy, Ahmad, his doctors, family, and others. Ahmad had bandages around his lower abdomen, where surgeons had operated on his bladder. He said he was afraid of Israeli soldiers, and pulled up his pants leg to show where he had been shot previously.
In the hospital there was a second boy, this one with a shattered femur; and a third boy, this one in critical condition with a bullet hole in his lung. A fourth boy, not a patient, was visiting a friend. He showed us a scarred lip and missing teeth from when Israeli soldiers had shot him in the mouth.
This was not an unusual situation. When I had visited Palestinian hospitals on a previous trip, I had seen many such victims; some with worse injuries. Yet, very few Americans know this is going on. AP's actions in regard to Ahmad's shooting may explain why.
We discovered that an AP cameraman had filmed the entire incident. This cameraman had then followed what apparently is the usual routine. He sent his video--an extremely valuable commodity, since it contained documentary evidence of a war crime--to the AP control bureau for the region. This bureau is in Israel.
What happened next is unfathomable. Did AP broadcast it? No. Did AP place the video in safe-keeping, available for an investigation of this crime? No.
According to its cameraman, AP erased it.
We were astounded. We traveled to AP's control bureau in Israel. With our own video camera out and running, we asked bureau chief Steve Gutkin about this incident. Was the information we had been told correct, or did he have a different version? Did the bureau have the video, or had they indeed erased it. If so, why?
Gutkin, repeatedly looking at the camera and visibly flustered, told us that AP did not allow its journalists to give interviews. He told us that all questions must go to Corporate Communications, located in New York. He explained that they were on deadline and couldn't talk. I said I understood deadline pressure, and sat down to wait until they were done. When he called Israeli police to arrest us, we left.
Back in the US later, I phoned Corporate Communications and reached Director of Media Relations Jack Stokes, AP's public relations spokesman. I had conversed with Stokes before.
Over the past several years I have noticed disturbing flaws in AP coverage of Israel- Palestine: newsworthy stories not being covered, reports sent to international newspapers but not to American ones, stories omitting or misreporting significant facts, critical sentences being removed from updated reports.
I would phone AP with the appropriate correction or news alert. One time this resulted in a flawed news story being slightly corrected in updates. In a few cases stories were then covered that had been neglected. In many cases, however, I was told that I needed to speak to Corporate Communications. I would phone Corporate Communications, leave a message, and wait for a response. Most often, none came.
Several times, however, I was able to have long conversations with AP spokesman Stokes. None of these conversations, however, ever ended with AP taking any action. Some typical responses:
* The omitted story was "not newsworthy."
* The story deemed by AP editors to be newsworthy to the rest of the world--e.g. Israel's brutal imprisonment of over 300 Palestinian youths--was not newsworthy in the US (Israel's major ally).
* Burying a report of Israeli forces shooting a four-year-old Palestinian girl in the mouth was justified.
* Misreporting an incident in which an Israeli officer riddled a 13-year-old girl at close range with bullets was unimportant.
Despite this unresponsive pattern, when I learned firsthand of an AP bureau erasing footage of an atrocity, I again phoned Corporate Communications. I no longer had much expectation that AP would take any corrective action, but I did expect to receive some information. I gave spokesperson Stokes the numerous details about this incident that we had gathered on the scene and asked him the same questions I had asked Gutkin. He said he would look into this and get back to me.
After several days he had not gotten back to me, so I again phoned him. He said that he had looked into this incident, and that AP had determined that this was "an internal matter" and that they would give no response.
While I should have known better, I was again astounded. AP was blatantly violating fundamental journalistic norms of ethical behavior, and clearly felt it had the power to get away with it.
Journalism, according to the Statement of Principles of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, is a "sacred trust." It is the bulwark of a free society and is so essential to the functioning of a democracy that our forefathers affirmed its primacy in the very first amendment of the Bill of Rights.
According to the Society of Professional Journalists, one of the four major pillars of journalistic ethics is to "Be Accountable." According to SPJ's Code of Ethics:
"Journalists are accountable to their readers, listeners, viewers and each other.
"Journalists should:
* Clarify and explain news coverage and invite dialogue with the public over journalistic conduct.
* Encourage the public to voice grievances against the news media.
* Admit mistakes and correct them promptly.
* Expose unethical practices of journalists and the news media.
* Abide by the same high standards to which they hold others.
Finally, this week, on deadline with a chapter about media coverage of Israel-Palestine, I again tried to confirm some of my facts with AP. Certainly, I felt, during "Sunshine Week" AP would respond. As part of the Sunshine campaign, AP's CEO and President Tom Curley is traveling the country giving speeches on the necessity of transparency and accountability (for government) and emphasizing "the openness that effective democracy requires."
"The trend toward secrecy," AP's president has correctly been pointing out, "is the greatest threat to democracy."
I emailed my questions to AP, talked to Stokes by phone, and again was told he would get back to me. Again, I got back to him. Then, in a surreal exchange, he conveyed AP's reply: "The official response is we decline to respond." As I asked question after question, many as simple as a confirmation of the number of bureaus AP has in Israel-Palestine, the response was silence or a repetition of: "The official response is we decline to respond."
The next day I tried phoning AP's President Curley directly. I was unable to reach Curley, since he was on the road giving his Sunshine Week speeches ("Secrecy," Curley says, "is for losers"), but I left a message for him with an assistant. She said someone would respond.
I am still waiting.
It is clearly time to go to AP's superiors. The fact is, AP is a cooperative. It is not owned by Corporate Communications spokespeople or by its CEO or even by its board of directors. It is owned by the thousands of newspapers and broadcast stations around the United States that use AP reports. These newspapers, radio and television stations are the true directors of AP, and bear the responsibility for its coverage.
In the end, it appears, the only way that Americans will receive full, unbiased reporting from AP on Israel-Palestine will be when these member-owners demand such coverage from their employees in the Middle East and in New York. As long as AP's owners remain too busy or too negligent to ensure the quality and accuracy of their Israel-Palestine coverage, the handful of people within AP who are distorting its news reporting on this tragic, life-and-death, globally destabilizing issue will quite likely continue to do so.
In the final analysis, therefore, it is up to us--members of the public--to step in. Everyone who believes that Americans have the right and the need to receive full, undistorted information on all issues, including Israel-Palestine, must take action. We must require our news media to fulfill their profoundly important obligation, and we must ourselves distribute the critical information our media are leaving out.
If we don't take action, no one else will.
AP can be reached at 212-621-1500.
* Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew. Photos and videos referenced in the article can be viewed on the website (http://ifamericansknew.org) She can be reached at contact@ifamericansknew.org
{ 13 comments }
Oh dear. I fear that international journalism is desperately in need of a rennaissance, and until said rennaissance happens, we will be treated to more of the same.
I have long found that the reporting (or lack thereof) of a news event serves as a kind of Rhorshack test for the viewer. That viewer is often prone to see what he wished to see.
Often such perception is based entirely on the perspective the viewer brings to the situation.
For instance, if asked, I would not be surprised to find that many in Israel see a slant toward Palestinian favoritism in the way the AP presents the news. And I’m sure the AP has received letters and phone calls indicating as much.
There is no doubt that some bias exists. But I would suggest that such a bias exists on the part of both the news provider and the reader. Sometimes not in equal measure.
He who wins the war writes the history.
This child died because the US and Israel are winning the war.
To them it doesn’t mean who is right.
I am starting to hate lobbiests. I am starting to hate people who support the Jewish state that are doing this and are not reporting this in the news.
This is censorship. And the US is condoning it.
The persecuted race is persecuting the Palestinians.
How dare they!
Obviously they control the Senate and Congress.
If you wonder about my anger? I was born a Goldberg.
Jews are now persecuting Palestinians as they were persecuted by Germany.
Yes, Ali, no doubt some bias exists. And yes, the Israelis do think that the world is against them, even when the world fails to report their greatest crimes. Clearly, too many people afraid to be called anti-Semitic, even when they are merely exposing the truth.
Anti-Semitic, what a racist philosophy!
The last time I checked, Arabs are Semites too!
(just one more case of the victims claiming ALL the victimhood)
Semite: A member of a group of Semitic-speaking peoples of the Near East and northern Africa, including the Arabs, Arameans, Babylonians, Carthaginians, Ethiopians, Hebrews, and Phoenicians.
Almost forgot,
Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Merriam-Webster offers a similar definition, as does Princeton University’s WordNet, and the Compact Oxford English Dictionary.
Self-hating never held such meaning.
Israeil’s are clearly the biggest cowards on earth. To target innocent children is simply disgusting.
I sometimes am amazed at how happy the Jews must be for being persecuted mercilessly by Hitler. If it weren’t for the Nazis, the Jews today would not have Israel, nor would they have the sympathies of Christian nations around the world.
They know that nobody would dare to say anything against them because all they would have to do is say you’re a Nazi and charge him with racism and discrimination.
Because of their sad past, they can get away with anything.
But how sad, the world learned about discrimination at its worst through their persecution. But they are the ones who learned nothing. They persecute Muslims and Christians today the same way the Nazis persecuted them. They are truly sick people. They think they have God on their side. Don’t they know that God would never condone what they are doing?
The hypocrisy is shocking.
When I read about the situation that Alison Weir described which took place in the town of Balata, I couldn’t help but be reminded of Schindler’s List when he was describing how the Nazis would invade Jewish ghettos and hunt down any Jews they could find, just to throw them on the trains that took them to concentration camps.
I always thought that of all people in the world, the Jews would be the ones who understood what is like to be persecuted the most. Sadly, it looks like they forgot. They are too drunk on their own power given to them by their best friend the U.S.
Raymond,
Hope you didn’t take me wrong on comment #5. What I was saying exactly is that the Jewish people like to brush off all criticism by calling people anti-Semetic which carries with it a racist connotation. Hopefully people know that Arabs (both Moslem and Christians) are Semites too. My ex even went so far as to say the Jews are the Arab’s cousins (Biblically speaking, Isaac and Jacob). It gripes me to no end because when someone who speaks out at all against Zionist policy this is what is said and the person is automatically labeled a racist and the guilt trip piled on. Victimhood is a label they use for their own benefit in order to justify their own brutalizations or simply to shut people up. It’s worked well for them for a very long time, even since Biblical days. It continues to work well for them today especially here in the States. No where, any where in our main stream media will we ever hear the story of this site or others like it. And unfortunately even when told many people will turn away again protecting themselves from being accused of being anti-Semitic. After all they have suffered, most people think they have EARNED the right to do these things. It is a crime of humanity, pure and simple. Like Dena said, victims should not turn around and victimize others. But just like in child abuse cases, the brutalizer was usually a victim himself at one time. Absolutely no excuses being offered, it is a crime what is being perpetrated by the Zionists.
Haitham, never ever stop trying to get it out there. Never ever tire in your efforts. Take rests and come back kicking and screaming. Know that your message and others are those of truth and that inshallah PBUH you WILL be heard.
For any Americans reading (or others who are interested)
Here are a few links to tell you about the JDL’s (Jewish Defense League)terrorist acts here on our soil. The JDL has held America hostage with it’s claims of anti-Semitism for many years. For anyone who might want to see just how far they will go here in the States to insure we abide by Zionists policies, please logon:
http://www.cnn.com/2002/LAW/11/04/jdl.leader/index.html – 30k -
us.altermedia.info/zionism/ the-jdl-jewish-hate-group_447.html – 45k -
http://www.jewishjournal.com/home/preview.php?id=7888 – 41k -
http://www.jewwatch.com/ jew-organizations-JDL-Zionist-Terror-Network-IHR.htm – 104k
http://www.adl.org/extremism/jdl_chron.asp – 85k -
And please everyone, do not think that I think that this is the only example of Judaism. This is simply an example of Zionist hate perpetrated in my country.
Robin,
I didn’t see any of your links. I didn’t need to.
The truth is that they are using the past to protect their future. It will come back and haunt them.
I saw the pictures and they made me cry. I have two daughters and it could have been one of them.
How dare they do this in the name of self preservation, of country, of religion!
This is a murder commited in the name of soldier experience (fun).
It is still murder.
Damn him!
Don’t kill him but put him in jail for life. Let the country pay for his jailtime so they can suffer too.
Everyone,
In my above posting, #10, I made a mistake which I fully regret. I posted a link to “Jew Watch”. While this site does contain usefull information and usefull links, it is also deemed by many to be highly racist against Judaism. Many of the topics on there are not palatable to myself and many others. If you do link on to this site, please let it be known that I posted this by mistake and in no way wish for it to reflect upon this blog. I do not believe that the Judaic faith is a target of anyone here, including Moslems who accept Jews as “people of the book” but not the Zionist philosophy
I am sorry everyone, and if you do choose to link on, do so knowing I regret posting it. Thank you
Do not worry, I saved it to my hard drive before it dissapeared, as I always do these days.