“The truth must not only be the truth, it must be told.” – Fidel Castro
Press coverage of the latest Israeli assault on Gaza has once again exposed the role that the U.S. corporate media play in propagating the ruling class line. The American people can’t be expected to oppose U.S. support to the Israeli regime if they think that Israel is just “retaliating,” or if they think it is Israelis who are the ones suffering through a deadly assault. Ensuring that Americans believe that false picture is vital to keeping the American people in line.
When Israel unleashed its military might on Gaza, TV news stations almost universally labelled the graphic accompanying the story “Israel Retaliates” or “Israel Hits Back,” often accompanied by pictures of the three Israeli teens who were kidnapped and murdered in the West Bank. But the bombs are being dropped on Gaza, not the West Bank (which did suffer through weeks of home invasions and arrests). One would never guess that there is no evidence whatsoever that anyone in Gaza had anything whatsoever to do with the death of the three boys.
As the assault continued, coverage continued in the same vein. Virtually every newscast on the major networks and cable channels has led with a variant of “Rockets rain down on Israel” and featured stories about Israelis (who have so far suffered zero fatalities and virtually no injuries, or even property damage) having to flee to bomb shelters. Only later, for “balance,” do they mention Palestinian deaths.
Even then, the reporting is distorted. Rarely are the actual numbers mentioned, and as for civilian deaths, the usual word used is “some.” Tonight’s NBC Nightly News was outrageous but typical; after reporting the death toll in Gaza, the report went right to the Israeli government’s claim of taking every precaution to avoid civilian casualties and a segment on their “warning shots” and text messages and phone calls. Not once was the actual number of civilian casualties mentioned. The viewer has no clue that, according to the U.N., fully 77% of all the fatalities (116 total as of this writing) have been civilians, including large numbers of children (at least 14 aged 13 or less as of this writing).
How this mentality – that Israel and Israelis are the ones who “matter,” and that the lives of Palestinians are an afterthought at best – permeates even the minds of the newscasters themselves was illustrated two nights ago by a remarkable segment on ABC World News. After mentioning the “rockets raining down on Israel,” anchor Diane Sawyer then spoke about “an Israeli family trying to salvage what they can, one woman standing speechless among the ruins.”
The problem was that the pictures accompanying that segment were of a Palestinian family in Gaza and their totally destroyed house, and a Palestinian woman standing in front of another devastated house. Anyone remotely familiar with the reality would know that there isn’t a single house in Israel which has suffered anything like the kind of destruction shown in these photos. But to Sawyer, and her writers, who absorb their own propaganda, it is the Israelis who are the ones suffering, so it was natural for them to make such a mistake (of course, there is also the possibility that this was not a mistake, but quite deliberate).
The New York Times provided an utterly repugnant example of minimizing Palestinian suffering yesterday. On Wednesday, a deliberately targeted Israeli missile landed on a beachside cafe in Gaza where patrons were watching a World Cup match, killing nine and injuring 15 more. The Times headlined this story “Missile at Beachside Gaza Cafe Finds Patrons Poised for World Cup,” as if the missile had just dropped by for a chat (and as if the missile took this initiative by itself, and wasn’t deliberately fired by the Israeli military). After complaints the Times did change the headline, but even the change only mentioned the deaths implicitly: “In Rubble of Gaza Seaside Cafe, Hunt for Victims Who Had Come for Soccer.” The original headline was “screen captured” by activists, and, because of the way the web works, the URL for the story still also contains the original headline.
The story itself features a graphic showing yet another way the media misleads the public. Captioned “Locations hit or targeted Sunday through Thursday,” the map features 14 red squares and circles – five of them in Gaza, and nine in Israel. One might get the idea that it is Israel which is getting the worst of the exchange. The article did mention the number of Palestinian dead, but failed to note that 282 homes in Gaza have been completely destroyed and almost 9000 others damaged. Meanwhile in Israel, a cow shed was destroyed and ten cows killed, and some cars had cracked windshields. The graphic quite deliberately distorted that reality, which was, needless to say, the point.
These examples, and so many others, point to the key role that activists must play in opposing the crimes being committed by Israel with the full participation and complicity of the U.S. government, whether in supplying money and weapons or in making sure no U.N. resolution can ever properly address the situation. As the quote from Fidel Castro which leads this article notes, “The truth must not only be the truth, it must be told.” Whether it is through general-purpose revolutionary media like Liberation News, or with more focused media like Electronic Intifada or FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting), or with public demonstrations like those being held around the country, it is essential to “tell the truth,” as Fidel implores us. Because that is the only way that the American people are going to hear the truth. Because the truth, and especially the whole truth, is something they are definitely not going to get from the corporate media.
