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In December 1987 I was a young officer in a battalion that was called to handled the violent riots in Gaza strip. The 4 months in Jabalia ware extremely unpleasant and a eye opener in many ways. Many things I believed were examined in the light of the things I saw and experienced.

Today I read an article in the New Republic that reminded me a small story from that time. The article discuss the fake reporting about Mohammad El Durah, a story that triggered loud criticism against the methods used by the Israeli army.

My story involve no violence or shooting. At a quiet day, we stop during a patrol to rest along side the road. Near us was a group of Palestinians working in an orchard, cutting trees - a job that the orchard owner paid them to do. It was quiet enough that we were able to drink coffee and rest from the patrol. It was that quiet that we didn’t pay to much attention to TV crew that stopped near us, interviewed the workers and took some pictures.

The day after I got 48 hours vacation so I was able to watch on that news channel how my patrol forced the poor Palestinians to cut the trees. It was my first lesson about the way news are being reported, or rather being made.

What is the reason faked news are being reported as true ones? It is a mix of pressure to bring “news”, and make them if necessary, Pre existing agenda and lack of professional ethics. What ever the reasons are, the results are bad. How can one trust the news from anywhere in the world, knowing that the reporters from the field are only paying locals for the field work, without doing any fact checking, or faking news without the locals help?

I don’t have clear answer, but I’m sure that awareness to the faults of our news reporting is a first step in fixing them.

 

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Written by Rogel

October 18th, 2006 at 7:27 pm

Posted in In The News

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Viewing 2 Comments

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    Rogel, as much as I can be opinionated and have my (yesyes) preconceived ideas, I do believe that it helps to read from different sources. (oh btw..I saw something in the WSJ, letters to the editor I believe re. 'objectivism' and thought of you, learned something new there) anyhow.. the problem with divisive situations/conflicts/issues is that somehow, our brain (or whatever you want to call it) translates the 'other' in an all black and white order. The other side is 'bad' and only bad. it sounds simplistic and I have caught myself getting swept into the emotion of some of those conflicts. Then, I started reading some Israeli blogs (just one example really) and yours with your own experiences, and you know (aside from just logical thinking but the emotions have a way of taking away from that) that it is not so.
    It is disheartening that made up stories like the one you describe rear their ugly heads. Therefore, it helps to read different publications with their different angles/viewpoints, and somewhere in there, you can at least distinguish the kernels of truth..
    Ingrid
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    One can obviously read many different sources of information and make his own judgment. What I'm after is the fact that news organizations become sensations and entertainment sources rather than news. And in fact they aren't so different one from the other; in the race for rating they all stop report the news.

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