The editor of Ha'aretz, Hanoch Marmari, spoke last month at an editors' conference in Brussels and lashed out at the international media's coverage of the conflict. Marmari pointed to the case of the Abu Ali family; the media reported on the alleged death of their nine children, and it was later revealed that no harm befell them. Says Marmari:
"The last 20 months of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have created a crisis of values for journalism. The coverage and comment have exhibited four fundamental sins: obsessiveness, prejudice, condescension and ignorance. The story of Abu Ali conveniently exemplifies all four. The intensive media coverage of the conflict is often so self-absorbed and so harmful to the region that it is a disgrace to our profession. I wonder whether the disseminators of the Abu Ali story were conscious of the impact they may have had on readers, from the back streets of Jakarta to the universities of Boston, from the Muslim neighborhoods in Marseilles to the Jewish community in Toronto. Were they conscious, one wonders, of the effect of their story on the parties themselves?"
Marmari also attacked the media's willingness to accept at face value the wild claims of Palestinian spokesmen: "The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is deceptive. Practically, acquiring information from the region is easy, but it is no simple task to assess to what extent that information reflects reality. What the ears hear, particularly in the Middle East, can be seriously misleading, if it isn't backed up with additional information -- or carefully attributed to its source. It can be difficult to distinguish between a solid source providing an accurate account, and someone lying through his teeth in the service of his nation, or pushing an elaborate but baseless conspiracy theory. Exaggeration, disinformation and provocation are the region's stock-in-trade."
Excerpts of Marmari's speech were carried by The Los
Angeles Times:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-000042191jun16.story?coll=la%2Dnews%2Dcomment%2Dopinions
