I’ve seen a lot of angry commentary about the media’s performance in the Gazan conflict. Things like John O’Sullivan’s criticism leap to mind (NRO – The Corner):
Why is Israel getting harsher media coverage for its artillery and bomb attacks on Gaza than the media coverage devoted to rocket attacks by Hamas on Israel?
As it happens, Alan Johnson provides the answer in the Telegraph – and it’s not what you might think:
The Foreign Press Association (FPA) issued an astonishing protest yesterday about “blatant, incessant, forceful and unorthodox” intimidation of journalists in the Gaza Strip by Hamas. “In several cases,” they complained, “foreign reporters working in Gaza have been harassed, threatened or questioned over stories.”
Johnson then goes into detail…
Indian television station NDTV broadcast and posted on its internet site on 5 August a report by Sreenivasan Jain showing rockets fired from a tent next to his hotel. In the accompanying text on NDTV’s website, Jain wrote that it was published “after our team left the Gaza Strip – Hamas has not taken very kindly to any reporting of its rockets being fired.”
…
Israeli filmmaker Michael Grynszpan described on Facebook an exchange he had had with a Spanish journalist who had just left Gaza. “We talked about the situation there. He was very friendly. I asked him how come we never see on television channels reporting from Gaza any Hamas people, no gunmen, no rocket launcher, no policemen. We only see civilians on these reports, mostly women and children. He answered me frankly: ‘It’s very simple, we did see Hamas people there launching rockets, they were close to our hotel, but if ever we dare pointing our camera on them they would simply shoot at us and kill us.'”
An op-ed in The Australian and other sources including The Jerusalem Post noted that after Nine Network reporter Peter Stefanovic tweeted that he had seen rockets fired into Israel from near his hotel, he was threatened by pro-Hamas tweeters and warned: “in WWII spies got shot”.
The Wall Street Journal‘s Nick Casey posted a photo of a Hamas spokesman being interviewed from a room in the hospital along with this tweet: “You have to wonder (with) the shelling how patients at Shifa hospital feel as Hamas uses it as a safe place to see media.” After “a flood of online threats”, the tweet was deleted.
John Reed of The Financial Times was reportedly threatened after he tweeted about rockets being fired from the same hospital.Following his departure from Gaza, Italian journalist Gabriele Barbati tweeted on 29 July. “Out of #Gaza far from #Hamas retaliation: misfired rocket killed children yday in Shati. Witness: militants rushed and cleared debris.”
French-Palestinian journalist Radjaa Abou Dagga wrote an article for French newspaper Libération, on July 23, detailing how he was “detained and interrogated by members of Hamas’s al-Qassam Brigade at a room in Shifa hospital next to the emergency room” and was forced to leave Gaza immediately without his papers. The day after publication, Mr Dagga asked Libération to remove his article from their website.
RT correspondent Harry Fear was told to leave Gaza after he tweeted that Hamas fired rockets into Israel from near his hotel.
We righties tend to assume the worst when it comes to legacy media bias, in part because our assumptions have been proved far too often. We should remember, though, that much like the Soviet Union of old, the tyrannies of the 21st Century can gravely influence on what is reported in areas under their control, including – and especially – the Hamas tyranny in Gaza.
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