1-Aug-06: Using Dead Lebanese Children for Ammunition

Those of us living in Israel or concerned for Israel's welfare have a pretty good idea what's happening in Haifa, Nahariya, Safed, Afula. This is in large measure because of the real-time, mainly-unfiltered reportage and live television coverage from there and from every other part of this robustly democratic and open country.

But do you know what really happened in Qana? In Tyre? In Beirut? No, neither do I. What we think we know is what the news media – papers, TV, blogs, radio – feed us, generally after the fact, sometimes days afterwards. How safe is a diet like that? Well, as with most diets it's a matter of how carefully you want to check. Here's a look at who's doing the feeding and at the additives, preservatives and other foreign materials that are mixed into what reaches us.

Qana question

As painful as what happened in Qana is to most of us, there are some very disturbing aspects about the tragedy which go to the root of what happened. Some of them:

• Did Hezbullah stage-manage the Qana incident? A Lebanese source (translated from French to English here) says yes. It suggests disabled children were brought to a building which served as a base for a Katyusha battery because the inevitable destruction of such a building by the IDF and the deaths of children would have such a powerful effect on world opinion.
• As revolting as this sounds, the cynical parading of dead children's bodies tells you we're dealing with people whose culture and humanity are unrecognizable to most of us.
• We're also dealing with newsagencies (Reuters, AFP, Associated Press) whose photographers are active collaborators in this disgraceful pornography. The evidence is in the bullet below.
• A small handful of Hezbollah low-lifes appear in one staged photo after another, posing with a dead child's body, hamming up a range of facial responses. If you can stomach it, see The Parade of Dead Children - Euphoric Reality; What Really Happened in Qana? - Wizbang; Qana: The photographic evidence (Update: Bodies from Tyre?) from Hot Air; and especially EU Referendum.
• It may be that the dead bodies from fighting some days earlier in Tyre were trucked in to Qana. Ridiculous? Maybe. But you may want to read this before dismissing the idea entirely.
• In its briefing for journalists at the end of the long day on which the Qana incident happened, the IDF raised several more serious questions. Customarily careful to avoid saying what might not be fully confirmed, the spokespeople presented whatever they were confident to show. This included video footage of missiles being fired from immediately next to the destroyed house several hours before the IDF attacked Qana. CNN's Brent Sadler has just been on our screens this afternoon (Tuesday), reporting live from Qana, pooh-poohing Israeli claims that the town was a launching pad for Hezbollah war ("Nope, no Hezbollah people here"), and asserting that Israel has failed to bring any evidence to the contrary. If you have Sadler's email address, we'd be glad to know he gets this link to the film footage.
• Sadler or his CNN producers might also be interested to hear - since they evidently have no clue - that Qana was the source for no fewer than 150 rockets fired into Israeli civilian settlements in the past three weeks, as documented here. Hezbollah salvos from Qana have crashed (among others) into Haifa, Nahariya, Ma'alot and Kiryat Shmona. They caused the documented, proven and undisputed deaths of 18 Israeli civilians and hundreds more wounded. Brent, our email address is on this page for when you get a free moment to send the people of Israel your apology.
• Reuven Koret over at Israel Insider has some additional, cogent and bothersome questions. Please visit his excellent site to read them.
• We know how hard it can be for some people to accept that Hezbullah would ever treat their Lebanese brethren poorly. But there is some evidence that this is not entirely beyond them. Try looking here and here and here.
• As for the general credibility of Hezbullah, its record as one of the bloodiest of the bloodthirsty speaks for itself... though evidently not loudly enough.

But the western media would surely blow the whistle on stage-managed news fakery, right?

Reporting from southern Lebanon (and quoted in the Columbia Journalism Review), freelance journalist and Time magazine contributor Christopher Allbritton drops this little gem:

To the south, along the curve of the coast, Hezbollah is launching Katyushas, but I'm loathe to say too much about them. The Party of God has a copy of every journalist's passport, and they've already hassled a number of us and threatened one.

To be clear, he doesn't say that Hezbollah fakes the news events. Or that they manipulate the journalists. But he doesn't need to. And we're left wondering: on what other aspects of this complex story are he and his colleagues loathe to report? And what have they reported as fact that perhaps ought not to have been reported as fact? Fair questions, no?

CNN's Nic Robertson can supply a helpful answer to that. Last week, Howard Kurtz – on his Reliable Sources show on CNN - interviewed Robertson about reporting from Lebanon. Here's Columbia Journalism Review's analysis of their exchange:

Just a few days before, Hezbollah minders had taken Robertson on a tour of a neighborhood in southern Beirut that had been hit by Israeli missiles. Robertson told Kurtz, "Hezbollah has a very, very sophisticated and slick media operation," and in southern Beirut, "they deny journalists access into those areas. They can turn on and off access to hospitals in those areas." He also said that Hezbollah "designated the places that we went to, and we certainly didn't have time to go into the houses or lift up the rubble to see what was underneath ... Hezbollah is now running a number of [press tours] every day, taking journalists into this area. They realize that this is a good way for them to get their message out, taking journalists on a regular basis. Robertson [said]: "We went in to those southern suburbs of Beirut with that media representative from Hezbollah. They haven't let western reporters into some parts of that very, very, very carefully controlled southern suburbs ... they took us in because they wanted to show us what was being damaged." He then ended by again reminding viewers that it was a "very, very brief and swift tour escorted by Hezbollah." The disclosure that Hezbollah acted as tour guide does put the report into perspective, but still, Robertson could have dwelled a bit more on the calculated photo op CNN's cameras were provided by an obviously interested party.

(Source: Paul McLeary, Lifting the Cover of the Hezbollah PR Effort). McLeary also quotes CNN's Anderson Cooper from a week ago (transcript here):

We found ourselves with other foreign reporters taken on a guided tour by Hezbollah ... They only allowed us to videotape certain streets, certain buildings... This is a heavily orchestrated Hezbollah media event. When we got here, all the ambulances were lined up. We were allowed a few minutes to talk to the ambulance drivers. Then one by one, they've been told to turn on their sirens and zoom off so that all the photographers here can get shots of ambulances rushing off to treat civilians ... These ambulances aren't responding to any new bombings. The sirens are strictly for effect.

So whom can you believe?

In our opinion, no one deserves our uncritical support. Questions need to be asked, and no one is beyond criticism. Politicians will do what politicians always do, and terrorists will do whatever they can get away with. Our question is why are so few journalists doing what journalists do -- dig, question, investigate. Thus, the one action point we would urge on everyone visiting this blog is: never assume that reporters, editors, photographers are more credible or more objective than anyone else. It's perfectly plain that they're not and never have been. More than this, they are as capable of being jackasses and dupes as anyone else.

And working for a brand-name media channel is no defence.