[Reader-list] The Press and footage of Palestinians "celebrating"

[Kali Tal]

Marcio Carvalho's claim that the Palestinian footage was from 1991, 
and the ensuing rush to debunk his assertion tell us more about 
right-wing strategies for spinning news and manipulating public 
opinion than they actually tell us about the footage itself.  If this 
was the claim of one guy who heard the story from a source he thought 
credible, and who jumped the gun and circulated the claim without 
seeing the evidence first, that's not such good fodder for the 
right-wing mill.  But if the story can be spun so that it appears to 
be about 1) a person who deliberately falsified information; 2) the 
knee-jerk reaction of the left in believing this person and spreading 
the story because we hate American so much; and, 3) the recantment of 
that person, then the war-mongers score points.

The fact that so many people thought the Brazillian students' claim 
about false CNN footage was credible is not testimony to 
anti-American sentiment on the left, or a stupid willingness to 
believe anything that bashes America.  It is, instead, testimony to a 
well-documented tradition of deception and deliberate misinformation 
on the part of the government and the media, particularly when the 
media is dealing with volatile topics.

We remember how TIME darkened OJ's fact to make him look more 
"criminal" (i.e., played on racism to create a pre-judgement of 
guilt): http://www.claykeck.com/patty/articles/timecover.htm

We remember how CNN (the first network to come up with a logo and 
theme song for a war) played and replayed the single image of the 
"smart bomb" striking its target, and somehow forgot to report that 
1) 93% of the bombs being dropped on Iraq were dumb as stumps; and, 
2) only around 60% of the "smart" bombs actually hit their targets: 
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=9741

We remember the 110 pounds of cocaine found in Noriega's home in 
Panama during the American invasion, and that it turned out to be ... 
tamales. Of course, that wasn't reported until a month later, while 
reporters continued to endorse the war by reporting the US 
Army-approved perspective without any apparent critique: 
http://www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/panamainv.html

We remember the Tonkin Gulf incident of 1964, when the media gave us 
stories of  "unprovoked" attacks on US ships -- later revealed to be 
provoked after all, and to have been only one attack when two were 
reported. American public sentiment about the misreported Tonkin Gulf 
incident moved us toward committing ground troops to a war in Viet 
Nam : http://www.fair.org/media-beat/940727.html

I was deeply concerned by the rhetoric in the 
http://www.snopes2.com/inboxer/outrage/cnn.htm attempt to debunk the 
story. First, I think it was incorrect to say that the author of the 
original claim "recanted."  The author said that he could not lay his 
hands on the tapes and had been relying on the word of his professor. 
He promised to let the reporter who questioned him know if he found 
any further information.   "Recant" is a term with a lot of emotional 
freight.  It implies a deliberate attempt to deceive, and an apology. 
Neither of those were visible in the email response of the man who 
made the statement.   But even more disturbing was the claim posted 
on snope2.com that even if the footage HAD been stock, the media 
could be excused for using it.

>  > >    Yet even if the footage had been recycled from an earlier time, we
>>  >    have to ask why there would have been an uproar over it. Credible
>>  >    journalists were on hand and were observing the celebrations. If they
>>  >    hadn't been able to make video recordings to display as a backdrop to
>>  >    their reports, would harm have been done if stock footage were run
>>  >    instead, footage that would give the viewing audience a far better
>  > >    idea of the feel of events than a flat voice-only report would have?

Journalistic ethics underline the importance of making a clear and 
visible distinction between stock and documentary footage each and 
every time the footage is shown.  (Remember how furious the right was 
at Oliver Stone for NOT making that distinction in JFK?) The 
disingenous tone of the writer (and his political biases) are evident 
in the assumptions underlying his his later claims:

>  > >    The primary issue should not really be whether older video footage was
>>  >    used to represent a current event, but whether the news of event was
>>  >    reported accurately. That is, was it correct to report that at least
>>  >    some Palestinians were "celebrating" the news that terrorist attacks
>>  >    had been made against the United States of America? Certainly CNN
>>  >    wasn't the only news organization to report that information, as other
>>  >    outlets such as Reuters and the Los Angeles Times carried the same
>>  >    story. Also, other news outlets such as Fox News and The Jerusalem
>>  >    Post reported that journalists were threatened for capturing images of
>>  >    Palestinian celebrations, making real footage of the event harder to
>  > >    obtain [...]

As all media-watchers understand, the selection of images, the 
contextualization of images, and the repetition of images all shape 
the viewers' response.  Again, the disingenuous tone masks a bias 
towards a right-wing, pro-Israel perspective.  The single film clip 
was shown over and over and over on all networks.  Despite the fact 
that all one could see in the relatively short clip were some 50 
people, the number of participants in the celebration were magnified 
in the minds of viewers through the process of sheer repetition, 
turning, by implication, a single taped incident into a nation- and 
possible region-wide celebration of American death.  The lack of 
corroborating footage has been been "explained" by US media outlets, 
who claim that journalists were threatened that if they photographed 
celebrations they would be harmed.  There is not, as yet, any 
documentation of that claim, only a vague reference to "Israeli 
sources."  It is the job of war reporters to take risks, and every 
war reporter understands that possible retaliation on the part of 
offended parties is included in the job description. The presence of 
Israeli forces in Palestinian neighborhoods makes it unlikely that 
any retaliation could have or would have taken place at the scene, 
and were Palestinian neighborhoods erupting in jubilee it is highly 
unlikely that only one film would have made it out of Israel.  On the 
other hand, the Israeli paper, Ha'aretz, reported in its September 13 
edition:

http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=74027&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y

>Israel, according to the sources, is seeking full-length videotapes made by
>Reuters and The Associated Press TV News agencies showing such
>celebrations. Images broadcast on TV stations around the world yesterday
>showed Palestinians near Damascus Gate celebrating by cheering and
>passing out candy.

The fact that, over a week later, such tapes have NOT been shown on 
US media outlets indicates that the Israelis have, despite their 
efforts, failed to locate film of more celebrations.  Ha'aretz, in 
contrast to the US media, does not claim that the Palestinian 
Authority is "threatening" anyone about the films.  The word that 
they used was the far more low-key "pressuring."  Israeli news 
outlets have little hesitation when it comes to reporting genuine 
Palestinian threats, so it is fair to assume they used the word 
"pressure" advisedly. It may simply be that more footage did not 
exist because the celebrations were not particularly wide-spread or 
long lasting.  But the snopes2.com "analysis" is so embedded in the 
US media interpretation, and in support for anti-Palestinian 
sentiment, that it doesn't do what any responsible journal should do 
-- analyze the claims of both sides objectively.

War journalism isn't, by nature, objective, particularly when the 
large majority of media outlets are owned not by independent 
citizens, but by corporations with interests that often conflict with 
those of the American people.  In order to defend ourselves from the 
relentless propaganda of a global-corporate media, we must simply 
approach everything presented to us via media as somehow "packaged" 
with an intent to manipulate the viewer. We can no longer afford the 
naive practice of trying to discern whether news is "true" or 
"false," for even "true" news can be spun in ways that create 
emotional reactions in the audience that work to the advantage of 
certain interests.  And we should, whenever possible, patronize and 
support independent media.  Those sources will also have their own 
biases, but they serve as counterpoint to the hegemonic 
global-corporate view of the world that inundates us.

"When war is declared, Truth is the first casualty." -- Arthur Ponsonby

Peace,
Kali Tal
_____________________
Professor of Humanities
Arizona International College
The Universtiy of Arizona
kali at kalital.com