According to Reports: AP Sets Standard With Balanced Reporting
Posted on: December 3, 2009

In his weekly Canadian Jewish News media analysis column “According to Reports,” Paul Michaels, CIC Director of Communications, finds that AP is consistently measured in its reporting on east Jerusalem housing starts.

The recent announcement that Israel intended to build 900 housing units in the Jerusalem neighbourhood of Gilo was met with the most critical Canadian coverage not in the Toronto Star or Globe and Mail but rather in the National Post.

A Nov. 18 National Post front page story titled “Obama criticizes Israeli plan to expand,” by Daily Telegraph reporter Adrian Blomfield, began: “U.S. President Barack Obama warned Israel yesterday that a plan to build 900 homes for Jewish settlers in predominantly Arab East Jerusalem could prove dangerous by provoking the Palestinians.”

True, in reference to Gilo, Obama strongly objected to what he termed “additional settlement building.” This was emphasized by National Post editors, who printed the quote over a prominent photo of Gilo.

In an accompanying article on an inside page, titled “U.S. Tough talk Is Mere Bluster,” Lachlan Carmichael of Agence France-Presse wrote that the housing units are to be built “in annexed east Jerusalem,” adding that “Obama said such moves make it harder for the Jewish state to make peace with its neighbours and ensure its own security.”

Both stories, however, omit the Israeli perspective on Gilo, which provides a different view of its status and importance to the peace process.

There is a virtual consensus in Israel that Gilo, with a population of about 40,000, is an integral neighbourhood in southwest Jerusalem – not a settlement. Even left-leaning Israelis who oppose settlement activity in the West Bank do not look at Gilo, or other such developments in Jerusalem, such as Ramot in the northwest, in the same way. They know that during the negotiations at Camp David and Taba (2000-2001), it was understood that Jewish neighbourhoods would remain under Israeli control and Palestinian neighbourhoods would move to Palestinian control, but Jerusalem would not be physically redivided. That is why the announcement of more housing in Gilo did not elicit any reaction in Israel – in contrast to the outrage expressed abroad.

Contrary to the Post’s focus on “settlers” and “settlement,” the Associated Press (AP), which describes itself as the world’s largest news agency, has adopted neutral terminology in this case, reflecting a desire to balance the competing Israeli and Palestinian narratives.

For example, an AP report that ran on CTV.ca (Nov. 17) began by describing plans to build 900 more “housing units” in a “Jewish neighbourhood” in “the part of Jerusalem claimed by Palestinians.”

While AP pointedly avoided the term “settlement,” this unfortunately was not reflected in CTV.ca’s own choice of headline over the AP report: “Israeli plan to expand settlement comes under fire.” (Readers might understandably be confused about the different terminology and what it signifies.)

AP also paid attention to previous Israeli-Palestinian understandings, writing: “In past peace negotiations that broke down without agreement, formulas have been raised to allow Israel to keep its new Jerusalem neighbourhoods, while Palestinians would receive control of Arab sections of the city and land from Israel to compensate for the neighbourhoods and West Bank settlements Israel would keep.”

AP might be unusual among Western news sources in its balanced and judicious use of terms, in addition to its appreciation of the role of Jerusalem in the peace process. But its careful, level-headed appreciation of basic facts sets the standard for other editors to follow.

The public relations problem that Israel continues to face, though, is that we live in a world where perceptions matter more than facts.

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A conflict that has been intensifying in Yemen, involving Saudi Arabia, (allegedly) Iran and even possibly Hezbollah has gone almost entirely unmentioned by the Canadian media. One exception was the Nov. 24 Globe and Mail which ran a Reuters report under the headline, “Saudis bomb rebel targets inside Yemen.”

The conflict has important regional implications given Shiite Iran’s increasing efforts to spread its influence and power into the Sunni-dominated Arab states, while Saudi Arabia works to thwart it.

The Globe story mentions only the Saudi bombing of rebel Houthis in northern Yemen. However, European media have reported allegations that Iran has been supplying weapons to the Houthis, who have also received training in Hezbollah camps in Lebanon.

A long-standing tribal rebellion in Yemen is being taken advantage of by outside radicals. Because of its broader regional implications, this is a story deserving greater attention.