UPDATE
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has removed the video from its website. More details here.
* * *
Israel’s Foreign Ministry has released a 50-second video cartoon mocking the international press coverage of Gaza for its inaccurate reporting. Described by Robert Mackey in the New York Times as a “broadside,” he writes:
The Foreign Press Association in Tel Aviv was not amused by the video. The group said in a statement that it was “surprised and alarmed by the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s decision to produce a cartoon mocking the foreign media’s coverage of last year’s war in Gaza.”
“Posting misleading and poorly conceived videos on YouTube,” the journalists added, “is inappropriate, unhelpful and undermines the ministry, which says it respects the foreign press and its freedom to work in Gaza.”
Is the foreign press really that thin-skinned that it can’t take a satirical and tongue-in-cheek jab at its reporting? Indeed, perhaps the FPA is sensitive to this type of criticism precisely because it knows that behind the humor there is a genuine issue.
As for Robert Mackey, he takes things a step too far:
There is some evidence, however, that what officials see as no more than an attempt to get more favorable coverage of Israel by applying pressure to the referees of global opinion can make the job of reporting on the conflict more difficult.
As tensions, and the death toll, escalated last summer, the press association condemned what it called “deliberate official and unofficial incitement against journalists” who watched the bombardment alongside Israeli civilians, including “forcible attempts to prevent journalists and TV crews from carrying out their news assignments.”
Is Mackey implying that the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs cartoon video is tantamount to incitement against the press?
Not only that, but this video has not been released in the midst of an actual wartime situation. Mackey makes no distinction and thus exaggerates the significance of this video to a ridiculous degree.
For all of official Israel’s attempts to promote its cause and narrative through videos and other social media activities (some better than others), foreign journalists in Israel have it easier than any other location in the Middle East. Israel is the only country in the region where freedom of the press, both domestic and foreign, is respected.
This is a far cry and incomparable to the situation in the Palestinian areas where, for example, in the 2014 Gaza conflict:
The Times of Israel confirmed several incidents in which journalists were questioned and threatened. These included cases involving photographers who had taken pictures of Hamas operatives in compromising circumstances — gunmen preparing to shoot rockets from within civilian structures, and/or fighting in civilian clothing — and who were then approached by Hamas men, bullied and had their equipment taken away.
Mackey then asks:
Taken as a whole, the latest video, like its predecessors, would seem to raise the question of why, if wildly inaccurate, comically misinformed reports on the conflict from foreign correspondents are so common, Israeli officials cannot simply point to actual examples but instead find it necessary to resort to fiction again and again to illustrate this reality.
Clearly, Mackey hasn’t been reading HonestReporting for the past 15 years! If he had, he’d see countless examples of when the media got it wrong, including during the Gaza conflict where those responsible for the skewed coverage earned 2014’s Dishonest Reporter Award.
What’s more, it appears that Mackey hasn’t even read his own newspaper. The New York Times itself acknowledged the many complaints about its coverage. And maybe the MFA video is an over-dramatization of the NY Times’s own coverage of the Gaza war, considering the paper admitted that it failed to show any photos of Hamas terrorists at the time.
To claim that Israeli officials and others are failing to raise actual examples of errors or bias with the media is absolutely laughable.
Methinks Mackey doth protest too much.
