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| REVIEWS | BY LINDA CHRISTMAS |
 An Israeli tank maneuvers in front of three, 12-storey Palestinian buildings in October 2003, which were later destroyed by the Israeli army in Gaza. (AP photo) |
Bad News from Israel by Greg Philo and Mike Berry Pluto Press, £10.99 Messrs Philo and Berry are fearless. They have attempted in this book to analyse how the news bulletins of both BBC1 and ITV have covered the ongoing conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians. Few people are able to write about this subject without incurring the wrath or one side or other. Philo and Berry have concentrated on the period covering the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising (intifada) on September 28, 2000 to October l6, 2000, the date of an attempted peace summit in Egypt. This offers a total of 91 bulletins, covering lunchtime, early and late evening. They also examined news items from outside this period to see whether the trends they spotted in coverage were sustained. These periods were October l7, 2001 to December 13, 2001 and March 2 to 9, 2002 and April 9 to l6 (making a total of 98 bulletins). What they found is alarming. They found a preponderance of official “Israeli perspectives”, particularly on BBC1, where Israelis were interviewed or reported more than twice as much as Palestinians. On top of this, UK politicians who support Israel were very strongly featured. They appeared more than politicians from any other country and twice as much as those from Britain. I threw the charge at a respected BBC journalist. He was speechless: “I don’t know what to make of this,” he said. Nor do I. I have worked as a reporter for BBC 2’s Newsnight and found the efforts at balance admirable. But then, I have not worked for the news bulletins. Does the pressure of producing three bulletins a day and the shortness of the items (after all they are ‘bulletins’) cause the problem? Or is it simply that it is so much easier to get Israelis to appear? It is well known that their public relations operations are superior to that of the Palestinians. I’ve encountered this myself. I was working in Sydney for The Australian newspaper soon after the uprising covered in this book broke out. An international Jewish lobby group was quick off the mark in collating the increase in the number of attacks on Jews around the world. I resisted the temptation to take the easy route and merely publish what had been given me on a plate and went in search of figures for the numbers of attacks on Arabs. This was not easy. But we succeeded and led our story on the Arab figures, which showed a similar rise. Alongside the book’s accusations of imbalance, lies a further charge: that television news says almost nothing about the history or origins of the conflict and this leaves viewers in appalling ignorance. Most people interviewed by the authors did not know that the Palestinians had been forced from their homes and land when Israel was established in l948 (yes, I know the Israelis claim they left of their own accord or were told to do so by their leaders, but there are Israeli historians who now question this interpretation). And the viewers certainly did not know that the Six Day War in l967 saw the Israelis occupy by force the territories to which the Palestinian refugees had moved, take control of the key resources such as water and condemn the Palestinians to military rule. But what can you do in a news bulletin? You can’t give a history lesson three times a day. I guess one flaw in this research is that the authors took no account of what was going on in “current affairs” programming during the periods under review. For all I know both ITV and BBC might have run half hour or hour-long documentaries explaining the whole background to the 2000 uprising. This is, after all, the responsibility of the current affairs arm. The news teams, driven as they are by a love of bombs, bullets and bloodshed, are there to report the daily happenings. I don’t wish to make excuses for the broadcasters. It is the journalist’s job to walk a tightrope between those who know heaps about a subject and those who know little. Clearly news reporters are not doing this. I do hope those with the power to improve the situation read this book. I also hope it is read by the viewers who have some responsibility to gather their own facts. The history of the conflict occupies the first 90 pages of the book and it is a good, if utterly depressing, read. I’d forgotten the detail of the creation of Israel. UN Resolution l8l recommended the division of Palestine, with the Jewish state allotted 5,700 square miles including the fertile coastal areas, while the Arab state was allotted 4,300 square miles comprised of many arid, hilly areas. No wonder the Arabs said no thanks. They weren’t happy that the Jewish immigrants, most of whom had been in Palestine for fewer than 30 years and who owned less than l0 per cent of the land, should be given more than half of Palestine including the best arable land. And before anyone accuses me of bias, I have a healthy dollop of Jewish blood! n Linda Christmas lectures in journalism at City University. |
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