HonestReporting is proud to announce that we’ve been named Best Mainstream Media Watchdog in Elder of Ziyon’s annual “Hasby” Awards.

In a close race, HR beat out fellow nominees BBC Watch, CIF Watch, CAMERA, David G Daily Mideast Media Sampler, and Huffington Post monitor.

Other winners included the Times of Israel for Best English Language Pro-Israel Media Outlet; Avi Mayer for Best Pro-Israel Tweeter; and Barry Rubin for Best Pro-Israel Commentator.

HonestReporting is honored by the recognition and plans to fight to retain the title in the coming year as well. We offer our sincere thanks to Elder of Ziyon and his “super-secret algorithm” for naming us the winners.

I can agree to disagree on the need for a UN probe of Israeli, US and UK drone strikes. But this Toronto Star staff-ed’s lede is really warped.

How would Americans feel if another country launched a drone strike in the streets of New York City to kill an enemy? It’s a far-fetched notion, to be sure.

Far fetched?

Al-Qaida already used manned aerial vehicles over the streets of, uh, New York City to take out a pair of skyscrapers. We call it 9/11.

How would the Toronto Star feel if terrorists used airplanes as missiles in the streets of Toronto?

(image via YouTube/MysticalGrooveWTC)

The Sunday Times’ damage control continues. The paper’s owner, Rupert Murdoch tweeted an apology for Gerald Scarfe’s Holocaust Memorial Day cartoon.

Israeli officials voiced their displeasure with the Times, with one even hinting at punitive measures I happen to disagree with. The Times of Israel writes:

Earlier on Monday, Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs Minister Yuli Edelstein told Army Radio that the government would probably refrain from filing an official complaint with the London-based paper. However, he said, “We will think about how to act against the paper’s representative here in Israel.”

As the story spread through Western papers, the disproportionate reach of Haaretz‘s contrarian views caught our eye as well, noted in AFP, Al Arabiya, and Sky News coverage. The latter wrote:

But, writing in the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper, commentator Anshel Pfeffer criticised condemnation of the cartoon, which he said ‘was not anti-Semitic by any standard.’

He noted the cartoon included no Jewish or Holocaust imagery, was as biting as the cartoonist’s usual treatment of non-Jewish subjects and was not similar to traditional ‘blood libel’ cartoons.

The Sunday Times is catching a lot of flack for cartoonist Gerald Scarfe’s take on the Israeli elections. As HonestReporting explained yesterday, the imagery’s odious enough; publishing it on Holocaust Memorial Day was even more offensive.

The paper’s damage control didn’t start off on the right foot. A Sunday Times spokesman in contact with Algemeiner said:

“This is a typically robust cartoon by Gerald Scarfe,” said a spokesperson for The Sunday Times, adding, “The Sunday Times firmly believes that it is not anti-Semitic. It is aimed squarely at Mr Netanyahu and his policies, not at Israel, let alone at Jewish people.”

The spokesperson said that appearance of the offending cartoon on Holocaust Memorial Day which is commemorated Sunday was coincidental, “It appears today because Mr Netanyahu won the Israeli election last week,” said the statement . . .

“The Sunday Times condemns anti-Semitism,” The Sunday Times added, pointing to another article that was published by the paper which focused on Holocaust denial, saying, it is “clear in the excellent article in today’s Magazine which exposes the Holocaust-denying tours of concentration camps organised by David Irving.”

In that article, Will Storr tagged along with Irving as the Holocaust denier gave a guided a tour of the Majdanek concentration camp. It was well-thought out and written; an excellent angle for Holocaust Memorial Day reading.

But it didn’t assuage anybody’s anger for several reasons.

1. Nobody characterized the Sunday Times as an anti-Semitic newspaper. People criticized the cartoon.
2. The statement didn’t acknowledge the painful timing — even though it was inadvertent.
3. Even if the Majdanek dispatch mitigated Scarfe’s painful cartoon, the vivid image of Palestinians being bricked up in a blood-stained wall spread way further on social media than any lesser-seen article in a paywalled magazine section could ever imagine.

Later on, Scarfe told the Jewish Chronicle he regretted the timing, not being aware that Sunday was also Holocaust Memorial Day.

The paper, realizing it had to do something sent out a statement also recognizing the nerve it touched. Martin Ivens, the acting editor of the Sunday Times sent an email to the media saying:

“The last thing I or anyone connected with the Sunday Times would countenance would be insulting the memory of the Shoah or invoking the blood libel. The paper has long written strongly in defence of Israel and its security concerns, as have I as a columnist. We are however reminded of the sensitivities in this area by the reaction to the cartoon and I will of course bear them very carefully in mind in future.”

That’s a very modest recognition of the cartoon’s offensiveness.

Meanwhile, The Guardian reports that the Board of  Deputies of British Jews filed a complaint with the UK Press Complaints Commission. And Israel’s ambassador to Britain, Daniel Taub, also slammed the Times.

HonestReporting decided to fight the imagery with imagery. Share the Flickr link to let the Times know it crossed the line. And see the story behind the graphic above.

Is the chapter closed on this? Stay tuned . . .

HonestReporting’s graphic stance on Scarfe’s infuriating cartoon was the result of the right idea meeting the right content.

Just last week, Social Media Editor Alex Margolin and I were discussing more ways of engaging readers using images and infographics. We agreed on a simple style, clearly displayed in the yellow strips in our graphic, that integrated text with images; the design was influenced by do-it-yourself magazines from the 1980′s. We also felt that a quote, in this case by HonestReporting CEO Joe Hyams, would balance an eye-catching image with some contextual authority.

The Sunday Times’ cartoon demanded a graphic response. We pulled together a colorful background, a strong quote, and a typeface we used before in the Why You Should Care About Iran slideshow. The font has a bit of a hand-drawn feel to it, with spaces in the stenciled letters reminiscent of the mortar in the wall.

I think we succeeded in making a bold statement in which each element gets the right amount of attention. As always, thank you for your feedback that helps us complement and elevate HR’s message.

In its coverage of Holocaust Memorial Day, the BBC reports:

The millions of Jews and others killed during the Holocaust are to be remembered in services across the UK, as part of Holocaust Memorial Day.

Guess which story the “Unnamed page” on the BBC News site’s most shared section goes to. What an unfortunate error to say the least.

Now that Egyptian President Morsi’s comments about Jews being “descendants of apes and pigs” have been picked up by the mainstream media, particularly the New York Times, perhaps they might want to follow up on the meeting of US senators with Morsi in Cairo, as reported by The Times of Israel:

At first, the Egyptian president defended himself by saying he did not harbor negative feelings about Judaism or Jewish people.

He then launched a diatribe about Israeli policies against the Palestinians, Senator Chris Coons (D-DE) told Foreign Policy. “He was attempting to explain himself … then he said, ‘Well, I think we all know that the media in the United States has made a big deal of this and we know the media of the United States is controlled by certain forces and they don’t view me favorably,’” Coons told the magazine’s The Cable blog.

Asked if Morsi specifically named the Jews as the forces that control the American media, Coons replied that all the senators believed the implication was obvious. “He did not say [the Jews], but I watched as the other senators physically recoiled, as did I,” Coons said. “I thought it was impossible to draw any other conclusion.”

So let’s get this straight. According to Morsi, the Jews distorted his anti-Semitic comments.

You just couldn’t make this up. But will the mainstream media report it?

In case you haven’t seen them, here are Morsi’s comments from 2010:

Referring to Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party, the surprise success of the Israeli elections, The Guardian’s Harriet Sherwood writes:

it positioned itself in the centre of the Israeli political spectrum – which is further to the right than in most European countries.

But if The Guardian sees Israel as a “right-wing” country by European standards, then how does it refer to the Palestinians?

According to this Guardian editorial from 2011:

Israel had the most moderate Palestinian leader in Mahmoud Abbas it was ever likely to meet over a negotiating table in several generations and blew it.

Perhaps Mahmoud Abbas is relatively moderate compared with Hamas but when was the last time The Guardian pointed out to its readers that, compared to European countries, the Palestinian political spectrum runs from all the way from extreme to very extreme?

And let’s not forget that the Palestinians chose Hamas in their last ballot.

Even when Israelis start to vote in a way that could be seen as moderate, The Guardian still has to make sure that Israel is seen to be beyond the political pale by coming up with its own definition of the political center.

Israel is going to the polls, which means suffering Big Media’s post-election cliches and spin.

Instead of fighting the buzz this year, I’m embracing it all in with the (non-political) Israel Elections Drinking Game.

What do you need?

Not much, actually.

Just a mix of newspapers, TV reports, and talking heads, along with the liquor of your choice. The rules are quite simple:

Take a sip

Labels such as Arch-hawk, ultra-nationalist, racist.

“Results are a setback for peace.”

Photos of candidates proudly casting their votes

Take 2 big sips

“Israel doesn’t want peace.”

“Israeli democracy’s broken.”

“A nail in the coffin for the two-state solution.”

“Results marginalize Palestinian moderates.”

Photos of soldiers proudly casting their ballots.

Drink a full cup

Anonymous Washington sources floating trial balloons in the NY Times.

UK media quoting fringe Israeli leftists as mainstream.

Wire services citing some outrageous Haaretz article.

American reporters cherry picking quotes from analysts and policy wonks.

“It’s Israel’s fault the PA hasn’t had presidential elections since 2005.”

The Guardian’s word count goes through roof explaining in passing why Jerusalem isn’t Israel’s capital.

Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu, Musa Abu Marzook.

Photos of Israeli minorities proudly casting their votes.

Finish your bottle

“Small party kingmakers obstruct everything right and decent in the world.”

“The             needs to do some soul searching.”

The prime minister’s overzealous bodyguards.

Political cartoonists in Australia, South Africa and the UK.

Anyone claiming inside knowledge of the next coalition make-up.

Tayyep Recep Erdogan, Gideon Levy, Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Photos of Sheikh Raed Salah and the Ben Gurion U. poli-sci dept. proudly casting their votes

Buy a round of drinks

Diane Sawyer and other drunk journos celebrating the results.

Anything nice about Israeli democracy in action.

Photos of Bar Rafaeli proudly casting her vote.

It was a banner week for HonestReporting in the media, with HR Managing Editor Simon Plosker publishing no less than two op-eds on Thursday alone. The following day, the Jerusalem Post singled out HonestReporting for praise for its work on behalf of HR’s image abroad.

Plosker’s op-ed in the Times of Israel examined the media’s initial silence over anti-Semitic comments from Egypt’s President Mohammed Morsi before he was elected to office:

How can the media and ultimately the public, possibly begin to understand the currents within the Arab world when only statements from Arab politicians made in English to an international audience are reported? All too often, what is said, broadcast or written in Arabic bears no relation to the statements specifically aimed for western consumption.

Plosker’s other op-ed in The Commentator revealed trends in media coverage of Israel as the Palestinians impose a strategy of low-level violence against Israeli soldiers and West Bank residents.

Finally, Jerusalem Post columnist Barry Shaw looked at Israel’s government failures in the area of public diplomacy, concluding that the best effort is being carried out by independent organizations like HonestReporting.

Look instead at the private NGOs that are battling the anti-Israel delegitimization and demonization campaigns.

All of the prominent action groups, in their respective fields, were created, developed and achieved external funding by Israelis emanating from English-speaking backgrounds.

A few of the most outstanding examples include NGO Monitor’s Gerald Steinberg, Palestinian Media Watch’s Itamar Marcus, Joe Hyam’s HonestReporting.

We look forward to more media appearances in the coming weeks.