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Media Bias Tag

Yesterday the Washington Institute for Near East published Six Ways Hamas Hamas Could Limit Civilian Casualties in Gaza by Jeffrey White. All of White's suggestions involve separating the combatants from civilians, but as White acknowledges, "... there is little chance the group will implement any of these measures." And why would Hamas change? Human shields have been an effective strategy protecting its fighters. White concludes:
As long as the world sees Israel as the primary mechanism of civilian casualties, and as long as many Gaza civilians continue to be more concerned with "resistance" than their lives, Hamas has no reason to change its way of war.
Though White doesn't write it explicitly, the media has a responsibility to tell the whole story and not just the one that Hamas tells or allows them to. Oren Kessler says this explicitly in Reporters Have Finally Found Hamas. What Took So Long? that was published in The New Republic.
Let me be clear: I admire the bravery required of war correspondents, and I recognize the onerous conditions under which they work. I see no conspiracy behind the inability of many of them to adequately cover Hamas. Instead, I see a collective failure by much of the world’s press to give an accurate rendering of one party to the Gaza fighting, and to lay bare—whether explicitly or more subtly—the restrictions it enforces upon them in so doing.
Take for example, As war with Israel shatters lives, more Gazans question Hamas decisions that appeared in The Washington Post. While there is important information in the report - that Hamas has been alienating the civilian population of Gaza - the report always reminds readers that Gazans resent Israel more. For example:

A Media Trackers open records request has revealed a secret Google group aimed at helping liberals influence public policy by driving the media narrative. "Gamechanger Salon" is a (now not-so-) secret Google group with a membership of over 1000 left wing influencers. Media Trackers discovered the group after filing an open records request concerning a professor and activist at the University of Wisconsin. Members include journalists from outlets like the Huffington Post, MSNBC, ThinkProgress, and Media Matters, and activists from groups like the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Change.org, Planned Parenthood, and the AFL-CIO. Screen Shot 2014-08-09 at 11.56.11 AM In 2010, Legal Insurrection reported on the first "Journolist," a similar group used to stack the deck against Republicans and conservatives:
For those of you who haven’t been here long, the JournoList was an email list serve organized prior to the 2008 election by Ezra Klein, now one of the lead writers at The Washington Post, in which various young bucks (uh oh, is that a dog whistle) and doe in the emerging melding of blogging and journalism traded various strategies.

One of the enduring claims related to the Gaza war is that pushed by New York Magazine author Katie Zavadski in a viral article originally titled: "It Turns Out Hamas Didn’t Kidnap and Kill 3 Israeli Teens After All (link goes to updated version, not original)(screenshot via Seth Frantzman): https://twitter.com/sfrantzman/status/494216021016723457/photo/1 That claim gave rise to the meme that Israel had concocted a Hamas connection to the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens in order to start the Gaza war.  At most, the story went, the kidnapping was carried out by a "lone cell" and thus could not be blamed on Hamas. The claim, however, is falling apart both because it wasn't backed up by facts and because Israel recently revealed that it had arrested the Hamas mastermind, and that there was a definite connection to Hamas.  For background, read these two posts: Today more information was released which further undermines the NY Magazine story, Hamas West Bank head arrested, indicted for planning wave of terror attacks:

We've been here before. The Jenin Massacre that wasn't. The Pallywood industry of deception. And a Western media that laps it all up without question when hostilities are active, and only in some cases bothers to look back later as the facts come out. In the current Gaza conflict, one of the biggest talking points, repeated endlessly by the media, anti-Israel groups, "human rights" groups, and the U.N., is that only a tiny portion, maybe 15% of deaths, were Palestinian combatants. That numbers game was put into play not by Israel, but by those against Israel. It's morbid to engage in these body counts, but it is the Palestinians and their advocates who put them in issue by claiming that the ratio of civilian to combatant deaths constitutes proof of a war crime. It doesn't, as disproportionate force is more than a number count, but in the public relations realm it matters. Slowly, as in past conflicts (including in Lebanon 2006), that statistic will be revealed to be a lie. That civilian deaths are a result of rockets launched from civilian areas is only part of the story. The Washington Post, to its credit, has two articles at least presenting the possibility that the media has been manipulated. In Reporters grapple with politics, erratic sources in reporting Israeli/Gaza death toll, WaPo examines the questionable civilian-to-combatant statistics used by Palestinians:

There have been reports for years that Hamas uses the main hospital in Gaza, Al-Shifa, as a headquarters. It reportedly has bunkers underneath, and uses the hospital itself. There have been tidbits of media reporting on Hamas' use of Al-Shifa as a de facto headquarters for Hamas leaders, who can be seen in the hallways and offices. But mostly it has been covered up by reporters in Gaza, as I detailed in Media cover-up of Hamas crimes starting to unravel. Tweets have been deleted and articles taken down by reporters for major publications. One Italian reporter who left Gaza blew the whistle on the fact that it was Hamas or Islamic Jihad misfired rockets that cause a large number of deaths in a refugee camps. The victims were transported to Al-Shifa, where another rocket had already hit. A Wall Street Journal reporter tweeted, then deleted, his observation that it was a Hamas rocket that hit the hospital. Once the evidence became clear that Israel was not responsible, the media moved on, as if it never happened. The media has a narrative it wants to tell, and that narrative does not include the deaths, injuries and damage Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and others are causing. Here is a good example of how the media played up an Israeli missile striking near Western reporters:

Yesterday one of the stories thrust into the mainstream media was nearly simultaneous explosions in a Palestinian neighborhood and at al-Shifa hospital. The media immediately took the Hamas line that it was Israeli missiles. Later, the IDF stated that it had not fired on those locations, and that the explosions were misfired Hamas or Islamic Jihad missiles. The media played it as he said, he said. But an Italian journalist has just left Gaza and is telling the truth about what happened now that he needs not fear Hamas retaliation -- Israel was right (h/t Israelly Cool): How many more of the civilian casualties have been cause by Hamas and Islamic rockets that fell short or misfired? Like Israel says happened at a U.N. school and shelter. We likely never will know because Hamas is so fast to cover up the scene and intimidates reporters:
The Times of Israel confirmed several incidents in which journalists were questioned and threatened. These included cases involving photographers who had taken pictures of Hamas operatives in compromising circumstances — gunmen preparing to shoot rockets from within civilian structures, and/or fighting in civilian clothing — and who were then approached by Hamas men, bullied and had their equipment taken away.
CAMERA discovered a Wall Street Journal reporter coming to the same conclusion as the Italian reporters, but then deleting the tweet:

My father just told me about this song by Peter Himmelman, "Maximum Restraint." Himmelman, in addition to being a singer-songwriter in his own right is also Bob Dylan's son-in-law. In the song, Himmelman mocks calls for Israel to exercise "maximum restraint" in response to rocket attacks. Here's a taste of the lyrics:
They’re shooting grads and quassams, from hospitals, mosques and schools When they photograph their dead and dying Hamas just sits and drools Another photo op to take, take straight to CNN they paint Israel as the aggressor – and then it all begins again When someone comes to kill you In the middle of the night Don’t try to defend yourself Don’t use an ounce of might Just sit there quietly and try hard not to faint As the world calls out for – maximum restraint
Himmelman like his father-in-law is a folk rocker from Minnesota. His defense of Israel and criticism of the world's hypocrisy echoes Dylan's 1980's release "Neighborhood Bully" which included this lyric:

According to Ynet nine soldiers were killed Monday in separate incidents. Israel also announced that one of the soldiers killed in Sunday's armored personnel carrier attack has not yet been accounted for. Although not all the circumstances are clear, it appears Hamas may have retrieved body parts and/or belongings to the dead soldier: https://twitter.com/CiFWatch/status/491539100491866113 Of the 27 Israeli soldiers killed so far in Operation Protective Edge, 6 of them have been killed inside of Israel, not Gaza. In separate incidents soldiers were killed by terrorists emerging from terror tunnels:

Last month the Editorial Board of The Washington Post endorsed the Obama administration's support of the unity deal between Hamas and Fatah. After reading, Restore trust to douse the fire in Gaza, the Post's take on Operation Protective Edge, it's clear that the editors are still stuck in an intellectual rut. One paragraph in the editorial stuck out as hopelessly uninformed and illogical (emphasis added):
Those goals hardly seem worth the bloodshed — nearly 50 people reportedly had been killed in Gaza by late Wednesday, including civilians — or the economic losses to both Palestinians and Israelis. In fact, neither side wanted war. Hamas had just agreed to back a united Palestinian government with the West Bank-based Fatah movement, while Israel quietly offered a truce before the escalation of hostilities on Sunday. As so often happens in the Middle East, acts by extremists forced these events: the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers allegedly by Hamas militants apparently acting on their own; the revenge murder of a Palestinian by Israeli thugs; the initial firing of rockets from Gaza by small militant groups challenging Hamas’s authority.
First of all how is Hamas's participation in the unity government a sign that "it didn't want war?" In a similar vein former Washington Post blogger, Max Fisher, now at Vox.com, wrote earlier this month:

As Operation Protective Edge it's worth anticipating the likely response to Israel's latest war against Hamas. Israel will be accused of a disproportionate response and of not taking care to avoid collateral damage. Already there's been at least one incident in which a number of civilians were injured and and 7 were killed. Israel has a policy of letting civilians know when they are about to bomb a target to give them a chance to get of the way. One would assume that observers would be impressed that Israel gives up the element of surprise in order to reduce collateral damage. But that assumption would be wrong, if one judges by the reporting and analysis from the New York Times and Washington Post. Here's how the New York Times reports the incident:
The call came to the cellphone of his brother’s wife, Salah Kaware said on Tuesday. Mr. Kaware lives in Khan Younis, in southeast Gaza, and the caller said that everyone in the house must leave in five minutes, because it was going to be bombed. A further warning came as they were leaving, he said in a telephone interview, when an Israeli drone apparently fired a flare at the roof of the three-story home. “Our neighbors came in to form a human shield,” he said, with some even going to the roof to try to prevent a bombing. Others were in the stairway when the house was bombed not long afterward.
Israel warned the residents and people went into the building. The casualties here occurred because Gaza residents because people intentionally put themselves in danger. The New York Times then informs us:
The Israeli military said that targeted houses belonged to Hamas members involved in launching rockets or other military activity, and that they had been used as operations rooms.
As the Washington Post also reported the story we have an indication that in this case, the Israeli military was 100% correct. After describing the warning call, the "knock on the roof," and the entry of neighbors into the building, the Post reports:
Ahmed Kawarea said he ran home when he heard about the first rocket. The second missile hit when he was in the stairwell on his way to the roof.

The New York Times, in the past week, has twice drawn a false moral equivalence between Israeli society and Palestinian society. Last week after the killing of Mohammad Abu Khdair, Isabel Kershner of the New York Times wrote:
The two events exposed the extent to which parts of each side have dehumanized the other. After the kidnapping of the three Israeli teenagers last month, messages posted on social networks by Palestinians celebrated the capture of “three Shalits,” in reference to Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier held captive by Hamas militants in Gaza, who was eventually released in exchange for 1,027 prisoners. A 17-year-old created the Facebook group calling for revenge for the kidnapping of the three Israelis, and an Israeli blogger, Ami Kaufman, pointed to a photograph submitted to the Facebook group by two smiling girls who held a sign reading, “Hating Arabs is not racism, it’s values!”
This was a sentiment repeated in an editorial in today's New York Times, Four Horrific Killings:

Hillary didn't have to defend the child rapist. Once she took the case, she had to do everything ethical to provide the defense. But she didn't have to take the case. Hillary could have just said no. And she didn't have to cackle about getting the guy off easy. There's nothing funny about it. Nothing. It's Mitt's dog, haircut, and secret tape cubed. If the media wants it to be. It also goes to a core political issue, Hillary’s sisterhood questioned again as rape victim speaks out. This will be a big f-ing deal if and when Hillary runs. It already is. (video via Free Beacon) Added:  Some background on the MSNBC segment, noting Hillary's explanations are inconsistent with past statements and correcting errors, from the Free Beacon:

While the media has been focused on the arrests of up to six Jews in the killing of Mohammed Abu Kheidr, Arab violence against Israel has been continuing. The Jerusalem Post reports:
The Sha'ar Hanegev Regional Council area was battered with ten rockets from Gaza. Residents of the communities in the Sha'ar Hanegev area were instructed to remain in fortified shelters. Three rockets hit the Eshkol Regional Council area , one of which started a brush fire, and an additional two rockets landed in open territory in the Ashkelon Coast Council region.
In addition for the first time since 2012, a rocket hit Be'ersheva. 2014-07-06_094248_IDF_Tweet Elder of Ziyon notes a number of attacks in and near Jerusalem and elsewhere over the weekend; including the torching of Joseph's Tomb in Nablus (Shechem)...

A few articles this week effectively absolve Hamas (and more generally the Palestinians) for the latest escalation in the Middle East and put the bulk of the blame on Israel. I'm only going to focus on two. Max Fisher wrote How Israel is punishing ordinary Palestinians for three murdered Israeli students for Vox. Fisher's premise is in the title. Israel is not justified in striking back, so any retaliation is "punishment." Of course this brought plenty of criticism. David Harsanyi sums up Fisher's illogical case against Israel.
In Fisher’s view, Israel is pining to kill, longing to occupy, aching to inconvenience. Israel wants to waste millions of dollars tracking down Hamas terrorists; it craves the international backlash that will inevitably follow, and it just never feels quite whole until hundreds of its own citizens, and thousands of Palestinians, are put at risk. There’s nothing quite like persecuting the elderly Arab shopkeeper. Mission accomplished!
The Free Beacon asks why GE is underwriting such anti-Israel propaganda and Twitchy put together the best critical tweets.

If anyone working in media today wants to help restore some of the damage done to the reputation of their industry, an apology like this would be a great start. Rather than using their influence to prop up Obama, the editors of the Billings Gazette in Montana are simply admitting they were wrong:
Gazette opinion: Obama earned the low ratings Sometimes, you have to admit you're wrong. And, we were wrong. We said that things couldn't get much worse after the sub par presidency of George W. Bush. But, President Barack Obama's administration has us yearning for the good ol' days when we were at least winning battles in Iraq. The latest NBC/Wall Street Journal polls show that Americans are giving Obama lower marks than in 2006 when Iraq was going poorly for Bush and a tepid response to Hurricane Katrina sunk Bush's ratings. It's not that popularity polling should be the final or even best measure of a president. There is that old saw that points out there's a difference between doing what is right and what is popular. For us, though, it's the number of bungled or blown policies in the Obama administration which lead us to believe Obama has earned every bit of an abysmal approval rating.
John Nolte of Breitbart summarizes the rest of the piece: