In his weekly Canadian Jewish News media analysis column "According to Reports," Paul Michaels, CIC Director of Communications, says that the mainstream media, for the most part, was able to get the facts straight regarding the recent Lebanese-Israeli border clash.
We frequently read these days that news is getting "dumbed down" because, among other reasons, in the highly competitive 24/7 news cycle, many journalists simply don't have time to do their homework and ensure that basic facts are established in the first place. They're too busy, so we're told, recording the claims of one side against the other, and thus lack the time to find out where the truth lies.
Under such severe deadline pressure they don't have time to make the necessary calls to determine salient facts. Worse still, even where no ideological conviction is involved, a few may not bother recording the truth when it's later made available to them, as this would require a follow up story amending a previous one.
That's why, one day after the Aug. 3 clash on the Israel-Lebanon border (which media almost uniformly reported that day as "Lebanon claims this, Israel claims that" – a classic "he said/she said"), it was important to see that several major news outlets made a point of conveying new, key facts: that according to the United Nations, Israel was right in insisting, from the outset, that its troops had not encroached on Lebanese territory and that, without any justification, Lebanese army snipers had shot Israeli officers, killing one and badly wounding another.
For instance, in "U.N. Supports Israeli Account of Border Clash" (Aug. 4), New York Times reporters Isabel Kershner and Nada Bakri began their story with the following: "The United Nations peacekeeping force in South Lebanon, UNIFIL, said on Wednesday it had concluded that Israeli forces were cutting trees that lay within their own territory before a lethal exchange of fire with Lebanese Army troops on Tuesday, largely vindicating Israel’s account of how the fighting started."
Reuters, not known for cutting Israel slack in almost any circumstance, titled an Aug. 4 report by Yara Bayoumy "U.N. supports Israeli claim on Lebanon clash." Bayoumy wrote: "In a diplomatic boost for Israel, the UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon (UNIFIL) said Israeli soldiers were inside Israeli territory when the border clashes erupted. 'UNIFIL established … that the trees being cut by the Israeli army are located south of the Blue Line on the Israeli side,' said UNIFIL military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Naresh Bhatt, referring to a border line drawn by the United Nations after Israeli troops withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000."
Also on Aug. 4, Mark Lavie of Associated Press made the same points, but he added that, despite the clear UN ruling, Lebanon's information minister Tarek Mitri "said Lebanon respects the [Blue Line] border but still contests part of it, insisting that the fateful cypress tree, while on the Israeli side of the border, 'is Lebanese territory.'" In the context of Lavie's report, Mitri's plea looked desperate and illogical.
On Aug. 5, the National Post online updated a Reuters report printed the previous day (and different from the Reuters story mentioned above) to covey the UN ruling. It noted that “Philip Crowley, a U.S. State Department spokesman, cited the UN finding as evidence Lebanon bore responsibility for the incident. 'The United Nations has now established that the trees cut by the Israeli Defence Forces were on the Israeli side of the line that separates Israel and Lebanon, he said. ‘The firing by Lebanese armed forces was wholly unjustified and unwarranted.'"
There were exceptions to this reporting trend. For instance, by Aug. 5, there was no update to Patrick Martin’s Globe and Mail story “Deadly skirmish raises stakes in Israel-Lebanon conflict of nerves” (Aug. 4), in which the location of the enclave where Israel was operating was left ambiguous, as was the responsibility for the clash.
In its Aug. 5 editorial “From Lebanon’s army, terrorism in uniform,” the National Post denounced those who are “simply ignoring the UN-stipulated facts and blaming Israel for what we now know was a Lebanese act of murder.”
On a positive note, however, the reality is that, with few exceptions, mainstream media will not ignore the truth once it has been established. The best of them will pursue it diligently, no matter what.
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