HonestReporting Communique
07 January 2002
"DISHONEST REPORTING 'AWARD' FOR 2001"
* * *
Dear HonestReporting Member,
We thank all the members of HonestReporting for sending recommendations for this year's
Dishonest Reporting 'Award'. There were many candidates for the ignominious honor, and we
distilled the list down to the worst offenders.
HonestReporting took many factors into account: Was there a policy of deliberate bias? Did a
reporter base reports on unreliable sources or no sources at all? Did the reporter or
publication refuse to admit its errors?
So now, without further ado, we regretfully present the Dishonest Reporting "Award" 2001.
There were many fine candidates, but only one winner. The "dishonorable mentions" (in
alphabetical order) are followed by the bias champion. URLs have been included where
available. And we hope that next year, this list will be much, much shorter.
- Associated Press
- CNN
- Robert Fisk - The Independent (UK)
- Suzanne Goldenberg - The Guardian (UK)
- Joshua Hammer - Newsweek
- Chris Hedges - Harpers
- Lee Hockstader - The Washington Post
- Reuters
- Deborah Sontag - The New York Times
- The Winner: BBC
===== ASSOCIATED PRESS =====
In March 2001, a Palestinian sniper looked through the crosshairs of his scope and murdered
Shalhevet Pass, a 10-month old Jewish baby in Hebron. AP's headline writers declared: "Jewish
Toddler Dies In West Bank."
AP made no mention of who perpetrated the murder, and there is no indication of the ghastly
nature of the crime. According to AP, the baby just "died" -- as if from natural causes or an
accident. More accurately, Shalhevet Pass was murdered, shot, gunned down, or assassinated --
by a killer, gunman, terrorist, or sniper.
More AP bias appeared in June, following the heinous suicide bombing at a Tel Aviv disco. AP
published the headline: "Explosion Kills Bomber in Tel Aviv."
This was an early AP report, when the final death toll was not available, but at that point
it was already known that there were scores of Israeli casualties. So why did AP downplay
this bestial act as an "explosion," and focus on the suffering -- not of innocent teens --
but of the evil bomber?
In November, when a Palestinian terrorist sprayed machine-gun fire at a bus in Jerusalem,
killing two teenagers and wounding 40, AP reported: "On Sunday, a Palestinian shooting attack
on a bus in a disputed section of Jerusalem killed two teen-agers, one of them a U.S.-born
settler."
honestreporting.com
The American citizen, 16-year-old Shoshana Ben-Yishai, is described by AP as a "settler." But
she was murdered in Jerusalem. To add insult to injury, another AP report refers to the
heroic Israeli civilian who killed the terrorist as, you guessed it, "a West Bank settler."
honestreporting.com
Associated Press boasts some 8,500 client newspapers around the world. No other news agency
wields so much clout. Therefore, no news agency bears as much responsibility for honest
reporting.
===== CNN =====
Early in the Intifada, HonestReporting conducted a comprehensive study of CNN, analyzing all
133 lead articles in the Mideast section of CNN.com during October 2000, the first month of
violence.
In these 133 articles, CNN depicted Arabs in 128 photos, while Israelis were depicted in 60
photos. Photos are important in building reader sympathies with one side or the other, and on
this case, CNN's bias was skewed more than double in favor of the Palestinians.
In those same 133 CNN articles, 68 accusations by Arab spokespeople were allowed to stand
unchallenged. By comparison, only 28 Israeli quotes were left unchallenged -- a CNN bias
skewed more than double in favor of the Palestinians.
CNN bias during 2001 was typified by its coverage of a rally of 250,000 Israelis gathered
outside the Old City walls in support of Jerusalem. The early edition of CNN devoted a paltry
5 sentences to the event. In the later edition, when many more details were available, the
rally was not mentioned in the headline at all -- and CNN did not give details of the rally
until paragraph #14.
The later CNN article, published after all the speeches had been made, did not offer even one
quote from any of the quarter-million attendees. The lone CNN quote came from Muslim Waqf
Adnan Husseini, who called the rally "provocative." Were no Jews available for comment?!
In the same article, CNN gravely diminished the Jewish connection. There was no mention of
the Temple Mount as Judaism's holiest site, nor to Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish
people (as it has been for over 3,000 years -- 1,500 years before Islam ever existed). CNN's
description: "The site is known to Jews as Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble
Sanctuary, the third-holiest site in the Islamic world."
Further, in a bizarre reference, CNN says the site of the rally was: "Jaffa Gate, or Bab al-
Khalil, the main western entrance to the walled city." "Jaffa Gate" is the standard reference
in any encyclopedia, university textbook, diplomatic document, media style guide, or any
other acceptable Western source. So why does CNN go out of its way -- particularly in the
context of reporting a Jewish rally -- to dredge up Bab al-Khalil, an obscure Arabic
reference?
honestreporting.com
===== ROBERT FISK - THE INDEPENDENT (UK) =====
For more than two decades, Robert Fisk has used his correspondent card to proudly become a
crusader for Arab and Palestinian causes. In the 1970s, Fisk reported from Beirut for the
London Times. And now, writing for the Independent (UK), Fisk blames Israel for all the
Palestinians' ills, and blames the West for all Muslim disgruntlement.
The day after the September 11 attacks, Fisk defied the civilized world and blamed Israel,
America, and even the defeat of the Ottoman Empire for the WTC terrorist attack. Fisk
proclaimed:
"...This is not the war of democracy versus terror that the world will be asked to believe in
the coming days. It is also about American missiles smashing into Palestinian homes and US
helicopters firing missiles into a Lebanese ambulance in 1996 and American shells crashing
into a village called Qana and about a Lebanese militia paid and uniformed by America's
Israeli ally hacking and raping and murdering their way through refugee camps."
Fisk claimed that there would be an "immoral" attempt to "obscure the historical wrongs and
the injustices that lie behind yesterday's firestorms."
honestreporting.com
Even as Taliban supporters in Afghanistan beat him to a pulp last month, Fisk rationalized:
"I couldn't blame them for what they were doing. In fact, if I were the Afghan refugees of
Kila Abdullah, close to the Afghan-Pakistan border, I would have done just the same to Robert
Fisk."
honestreporting.com
Fisk is overt in his anti-Israel crusade, and portrays any reporter not willing to criticize
Israel as a coward: "Our gutlessness, our refusal to tell the truth, our fear of being
slandered as 'anti-Semites' -- the most loathsome of libels against any journalist -- means
that we are aiding and abetting terrible deeds in the Middle East."
honestreporting.com
===== SUZANNE GOLDENBERG - THE GUARDIAN (UK) =====
Suzanne Goldenberg's coverage consistently whitewashed Palestinian terrorist activity and
painted Israeli reaction as aggression. In February 2001, when a Palestinian driver plowed
his bus into a bus stop, killing eight Israeli civilians, Goldenberg was quick to defend him:
"Far from being... a dedicated terrorist," she wrote, he was a "man who has been taking
medication for depression for two years... That Wednesday morning he added antihistamines and
antibiotics to the pharmaceutical cocktail. Both can cause drowsiness, according to the
pharmacist." This is even after the bus driver admitted to Israeli General Security Service
investigators that the attack was intentional and premeditated.
honestreporting.com
Incredibly, Goldenberg has won several journalism awards this year from British institutions.
The London Press Club said her coverage was a display of "courageous and objective
journalism." At another award ceremony, Goldenberg was lauded: "This journalist has been
subjected to a campaign of vilification" -- in reference to criticism levied by
HonestReporting.
The Guardian waged its own campaign of vilification against Israelis. In February 2001, in
reference to Ariel Sharon's visit to the Western Wall (the standard Israeli custom after all
elections), The Guardian carried the headline, "Sharon Twists Knife in Muslim Wounds." The
Guardian also ran a cartoon that obscenely depicted Sharon's bloody handprints on the Western
Wall. The cartoon desecrated the holiest Jewish site and encroached on brash anti-Semitism.
honestreporting.com
In February 2001, the Guardian published an editorial column entitled "Media Manipulators,"
chronicling HonestReporting's criticism of the Guardian. Yet the Guardian ignored the message
and attacked the messenger -- calling HonestReporting e-mails "bizarre... inconvenient...
scary... harassment," and referred to some HonestReporting members as "shadowy...
extremists."
honestreporting.com
The Guardian outdid itself in January 2001 when it ran an opinion piece entitled, "Israel
Simply Has No Right To Exist." With such blatant anti-Israel bias, what else is there to say?
honestreporting.com
===== JOSHUA HAMMER - NEWSWEEK =====
In May 2001, Newsweek's bureau chief in Israel, Joshua Hammer and his photographer, conducted
an interview with Palestinian leaders in Gaza. As the interview was completed, the
Palestinians informed Hammer and the photographer they were being held captive. After four
hours, they were released. One would expect a kidnap victim to be traumatized and angry. But
Hammer had only compliments for his Palestinian captors, as described in Newsweek:
"...Hammer says he never feared his captors would hurt him or Knight. 'They never threatened
us or pointed their guns at us,' Hammer says. 'They actually fed us one of the best meals
I've eaten in Gaza.'"
In another report, Hammer wrote that most "Palestinians have given up hope of real political
progress" as long as Sharon is in power. He questions if the Palestinians have the patience
to wait for a "more moderate Israeli leader." The fact is that Palestinians have already
rejected far-reaching compromises offered by "a more moderate leader," Ehud Barak.
msnbc.com
In December, Newsweek presented "A Tale of Two Enemies," a side-by-side comparison of Arafat
and Sharon. Arafat is described glowingly as a "revolutionary," a "civil engineer," and a
trailblazing diplomat who was the first to be accorded special status at the United Nations.
Yet nowhere is Arafat described as a founder of a terrorist organization, nor is there any
mention of his connection to terror acts.
msnbc.com
===== CHRIS HEDGES - HARPERS =====
In the October edition of Harpers, Chris Hedges wrote his sensationalized "Gaza Diary: Scenes
from the Palestinian Uprising." The entire article is a diatribe against Israel without any
response by Israeli spokesmen. The climax is a section in which Hedges accuses Israeli
soldiers in Gaza of goading Palestinian children to their death: "I have never before watched
soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport."
harpers.org
Hedges offers no corroborating evidence -- no photos, no videos, no outside verification.
Hedges never even saw or heard the shots of the alleged crime. He wrote that the Palestinian
youth "descend out of sight behind a sandbank in front of me. There are no sounds of gunfire.
The soldiers shoot with silencers."
In preparing his slander, Hedges apparently was unaware that silencers do not exist in the
Israeli arsenal, and it is difficult -- if not impossible -- to outfit an M-16 high velocity
rifle with a silencer. Hedges apparently confused "silencers" with canisters of rubber
projectiles -- a non-lethal alternative used by the IDF soldiers on the end of their M-16s.
===== LEE HOCKSTADER - THE WASHINGTON POST =====
In July 2001, Hockstader presented a shocking 1,300-word defense of Aziz Salha, the
Palestinian who proudly waved his bloody hands out of the window of a Ramallah police station
after the brutal lynching of two Israelis. Hockstader provided a sympathetic psychoanalysis
of the murderer:
"The young man was very ill when he was a baby, he stuttered, he was shy... maybe it really
wasn't him photographed in the window... people's emotions were boiling over because of
Palestinians teens shot by Israeli soldiers... Israel's settlements and occupation were on
Salha's mind... he was a calm, good-natured and athletic kid..."
honestreporting.com
In August, Hockstader filed "Palestinians Find Heroes in Hamas," a profile of the terrorist
organization that dispatches suicide bombers against Israeli targets. Hockstader paints the
organization in moderate shades:
"The group's goal is an independent homeland in at least the West Bank and Gaza Strip -- and,
Israelis fear, on the territory of the Jewish state."
But Hockstader has been around long enough to know that the destruction of Israel is one of
Hamas' main tenets and not just a figment of "Israeli fears." The Hamas covenant clearly
states, "There is no solution to the Palestinian problem except by Jihad." The U.S. State
Department's annual terrorism report defines Hamas' goal as "establishing an Islamic
Palestinian state in place of Israel."
Dishonorable mention goes to Washington Post ombudsman Mike Getler, who in March 2001,
unhappy by the flood of HonestReporting e-mails, complained at having been "smeared by your
robot-like members [who] responded in knee-jerk fashion."
===== REUTERS =====
Reuters set new standards of inappropriate "even-handedness," by refusing to refer to
Palestinian suicide bombers -- or even the September 11 attackers -- as "terrorists." Steven
Jukes, Reuters' global head of news, said:
"We all know that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter and that Reuters
upholds the principle that we do not use the word terrorist... To be frank, it adds little to
call the attack on the World Trade Center a terrorist attack."
Even-handedness characterized Reuters coverage throughout the year. In April, a Reuters
report on the 1948 War of Independence stated: "Palestinians mark the birth of Israel on May
15, 1948, as their 'Nakba' or catastrophe, which led to the loss of 78 percent of historic
Palestine. Some 700,000 Palestinians left or were forced to flee their homes in the fighting
that accompanied the declaration of the Jewish state."
Reuters made no mention of the fact that Israel was invaded by 5 Arab armies, and no mention
that Israel lost key parcels of land including the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem and towns in
Gaza and the West Bank. And Reuters made no mention of the 650,000 Jewish refugees from Arab
countries who similarly "left or were forced to flee their homes."
Reuters' Israel correspondent Christine Hauser delivered her own unique form of "even-handed"
bias. In a report on Israel actions in the Arab town of Beit Jala, Hauser ignored the fact
that Israeli troops were responding to Palestinian salvoes and snipers shooting at Gilo.
Hauser mimicked the Palestinian line, saying that "Gilo is a settlement," without presenting
the other view of Gilo as a mainstream Jewish neighborhood within Jerusalem's municipal
boundaries. According to Hauser, the Palestinians were "fighting for an end to Jewish
settlements and the Israeli occupation."
In the same report, Hauser exhibited either ignorance or propaganda when she wrote: "All of
the [Beit Jala residents] have ashtrays brimming with collected spent bullet casings." Sorry,
Christine. Spent bullet casings are found at the point of origin of the shooting, not at the
target.
In December, when terrorists attacked a busload of Israeli civilians near Emmanuel, killing
10, Reuters offered justification for the murder spree: "Most of the Israeli dead were
settlers, whom [Palestinian] militants consider targets as occupiers of Palestinian land."
honestreporting.com
===== DEBORAH SONTAG - THE NEW YORK TIMES =====
Deborah Sontag thankfully left Israel in July, but before leaving she took a parting shot at
Israel in a front-page, 6,000-word tome entitled, "Quest for Mideast Peace: How and Why It
Failed." Sontag took great pains to defend Yasser Arafat: "[M]any diplomats and officials
believe that the dynamic was far more complex and that Mr. Arafat does not bear sole
responsibility for the breakdown of the peace effort."
nytimes.com
Sontag's article has many serious flaws, but one stands out as particularly glaring and
biased: She quoted extensively from various Palestinian and American negotiators, but totally
ignored the comments made one week earlier in a major policy address by Israel's chief
negotiator, Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who outlined Arafat's culpability.
In April, Sontag portrayed 10-moth-old Shalhevet Pass, murdered by a Palestinian sniper, as a
despised settler: "Many Israelis have long considered the Hebron settlers to be extremists,
living in a world apart. But they rallied behind the community after Shalhevet was killed;
newspaper headlines referred to the killing of an Israeli baby and not a "settler baby."
nytimes.com
Sontag made the outrageous implication that Jews might normally disregard the ruthless murder
of another Jew, simply because they don't share the same political views. Is the average
Israeli so cold-hearted? No. But perhaps Sontag is.
In February 2001, Sontag and the Guardian's Goldenberg engaged in classic "pack journalism"
by filing nearly identical stories about a Ramallah "martyrs" museum. Both Sontag and
Goldenberg used the uncommon word "totem" and then delivered this identical (plagiarized?)
one-two bias punch, using the "critics would say" technique of assigning words to a
hypothetical Israeli -- had the reporters bothered to ask.
Sontag: "Israeli critics would say that the exhibit, '100 Martyrs - 100 Lives,' glorifies
death and encourages the cult of the shaheed, or martyr."
Goldenberg: "Israeli critics would argue that the exhibit glorifies violent death, and
promotes a cult of martyrdom."
If two university students had handed these in as term papers, the professor probably would
have tossed one or both of them back at the students for cheating.
======================================
============ THE WINNER: =============
BBC - BRITISH BROADCASTING CORPORATION
======================================
The ignoble winner of the Dishonest Reporting "Award" 2001 is the BBC, for consistently
demonstrating fierce anti-Israel bias.
In May 2001, BBC fabricated a film clip in an attempt to show Israeli brutality. When
Israelis struck a Palestinian base in Gaza, there were no pictures of victims -- since Israel
struck at empty buildings. But BBC editors inserted a film clip of Israeli victims of
Palestinian terror arriving at an Israeli hospital, to suggest that these were victims of
Israeli attack. The newsreader in London, a former BBC correspondent in Israel herself, ended
the segment with "These are the pictures from Gaza."
In June 2001, BBC's flagship "Panorama" program (http://honestreporting.com/a/r/132.asp)
tried to portray Ariel Sharon as a war criminal, in connection with the Lebanese Christian
massacre of Palestinians in Sabra and Shatilla in 1982. An Israeli commission of inquiry
decided that Sharon was not responsible for any direct involvement, but BBC asked: "In the
light of developments in international war crimes prosecutions... [should] the evidence lead
to indictments for what happened in the camps."
Much of BBC's case rested on the view of War Crimes Judge Richard Goldstone, who subsequently
accused the BBC of badly distorting the context of his words: "I agreed to speak to [the BBC]
as an expert on the law in general, on command responsibility, but I said I would not in any
way comment on any liability, criminal or civil, of Ariel Sharon and I didn't do so. I
haven't yet seen the program, but if it comes across that way it's incorrect... I certainly
didn't comment on the responsibility of Sharon." (Jerusalem Post)
Further, BBC's duplicity in handling the Israeli-Arab conflict was evident in its refusal to
label Palestinian atrocities against Israeli civilians as "terrorism." In correspondence with
HonestReporting, BBC admitted to a double standard, saying:
"It has long been the policy of the [BBC] domestic service to refer to terrorists in Northern
Ireland of any religious persuasion as [terrorists], but the policy of the World Service is
not to refer to anyone in those terms."
BBC's coverage was so outrageous that it came under attack by a leading British politician,
Duncan Smith, head of the Tory party. "Surely it is time that our national broadcasters, not
just, but including the BBC, stopped describing Hamas and Jihad with such euphemisms as
radical and militant," Smith declared. "Let us call things what they are: they are terrorist
organizations. Such fudging of what Hamas or Islamic Jihad are confers some sort of
legitimacy on people who are terrorists."
honestreporting.com
BBC's bias is perhaps summed up best by one of its own employees, Fayad Abu Shamala, the BBC
correspondent in Gaza for the past 10 years. Speaking at a Hamas rally on May 6, 2001, he
declared:
"Journalists and media organizations [are] waging the campaign shoulder-to-shoulder together
with the Palestinian people."
In the face of this blatant violation of journalistic ethics, BBC mustered a pathetic
response: "Fayad's remarks were made in a private capacity. His reports have always matched
the best standards of balance required by the BBC."
If that is the standards of balance required by the BBC, then there is no doubt: BCC has
justly earned the Dishonest Reporting "Award" 2001.
======================================
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nor to the left. We are only interested in ensuring that Israel receives fair coverage in the
media. We scrutinize the media for examples of blatant bias, and then inform our subscribers
of any offending articles, asking to complain directly to the news organization concerned.
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