Three elements of distorted reporting plague a recent Financial Times piece about the Israel-Hezbollah conflict: Deceitful writing, selective choice of interviews and emotional framing.
The result is that the average reader of the piece, titled “The demolitions clearing Israel’s ‘first belt’ in Lebanon,” can’t help but view the Jewish state as a rogue nation arbitrarily carrying out mass destruction of Lebanese villages.
Deceitful Writing
The piece includes 34 lengthy paragraphs, intermingled with maps, videos, images, and infographics showing controlled demolitions conducted by the IDF in Lebanese villages along the border.
But Israel’s stated reason for these demolitions — destroying Hezbollah’s tunnel network that has threatened Israel’s north — appears only in the 24th paragraph.
In today’s fast-paced news consumption environment, few bother reading below the digital “fold” of the first two paragraphs.
It’s also a journalistic sin to bury the very reaction that provides an answer to one of the most fundamental 5 W’s of reporting: the “Why?” – Why does Israel do what the story reports on?
Instead of including such information high at the top, the Financial Times speculates that Israel wants to create a 3-kilometer buffer zone along the border. Why? No answer.
The article does not even mention Hezbollah’s mega-plan to invade Israel’s northern communities and duplicate the Hamas massacre of October 7, 2023.
Selective Interviews
But not only is the writing deceitful. The use of “experts” interviewed for the piece, as well as the use of demolition videos, is agenda-driven.
The piece quotes two “analysts” who make Israel look like the aggressor: A legal expert with a clear anti-Israeli stance and a retired Lebanese army general who is interviewed as an authority on the strategy of the Israeli army.
But despite using videos that clearly show the demolition of underground tunnel infrastructure — as any munitions expert can verify — no such expert has been interviewed by the Financial Times.
This is especially alarming considering the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit has distributed such videos as proof of the existence of Hezbollah’s tunnels underneath Lebanese villages — which makes those villages legitimate military targets under international law.
With 8 journalists working on the piece, not to mention editors, the omission of this information suggests ignorance, at best, or bias, at worst.
So HonestReporting has done what the Financial Times should have done and contacted Israeli military expert Sarit Zehavi, the President of the Alma Research Center. Here’s what she said after reading the article:
The overwhelming majority of the videos in this article clearly show the explosion of tunnel structures. Some of them were filmed by journalists that the IDF allowed into the area before they were detonated. Hezbollah has turned every house in southern Lebanon into a military site. According to international law, it is permissible to attack military sites. The amount of munitions that the IDF is removing from there, the explosion patterns in the videos of IDF strikes, and the secondary explosions in the munitions storage facilities—all of these are clear evidence supporting this claim.
Related reading: Attention, Media: Israel Is Striking Back After 11 Months of Hezbollah Attacks
Emotional Framing
But all of this is lost on the readers. Because the entire piece is framed with the emotional story of a Lebanese family whose ancestral village was demolished by the Israeli army.
In fact, five paragraphs at the top of the article and four at the bottom detail the emotional pain of one of the family’s sons, who currently lives in Beirut. It seems like none of his relatives was physically hurt.
Indeed, in journalism, it’s always a good idea to bring the voice of the people, but here it’s done explicitly to frame the narrative.
For it seems like the reporters didn’t even bother asking the family member whether his village was indeed near/above terror infrastructure — like the IDF has repeatedly shown regarding many “civilian” houses in the area.
But asking questions may ruin the imaginary narratives of biased reporters.
So they deceive, omit and frame reality instead.
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