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Lizzie Dearden

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Pop superstar Madonna isn’t a likely topic of conversation for HonestReporting. Nonetheless we can only appreciate her willingness to raise the serious issue of anti-Semitism in France while visiting the country.

Clearly Madonna is no expert on the subject and one can agree or disagree with her comments, which were somewhat over-stated. The Independent’s Jenn Selby makes it quite clear where she stands in her report:

Madonna was born in 1958 in Michigan, USA.

 

But that hasn’t prevented her from likening the feeling in France right now to that of Nazi Germany, of which the German Reich presided with Adolf Hitler as the helm between 1933 and 1945.

 

Speaking to a Parisian radio station last week, she claimed anti-Semitism was at a record high in the country she doesn’t live in but occasionally passes through.

 

During the Second World War, more than 90,000 French Jews were rounded up and deported to concentration camps.

 

“We’re living in crazy times,” she said. “It feels like Nazi Germany.

What is striking here is The Independent’s gross hypocrisy for a number of reasons.

  • Did Jenn Selby, the journalist responsible for the Madonna story, adopt the same critical tone when reporting American singer Jon Legend’s anti-Israel comments? No.
  • Did The Independent have a problem giving a soapbox to musician Brian Eno to attack Israel? No, even though Eno was also commenting on a country that, like Madonna, he doesn’t live in and never passes through, presumably by choice.
  • Indeed, when was commenting on a country that one doesn’t live in ever pose a problem for The Independent? HonestReporting has seen biased stories about Israel written by Independent “online journalists” such as Lizzie Dearden who gather news from the internet and not from the actual location of the story.

Only when a celebrity happens to be openly pro-Israel and comments about anti-Semitism does The Independent take a critical and condescending tone.

And since when was living in the location of the story a prerequisite for criticizing a country?

UPDATE

Independent journalist Jenn Selby has tweeted the following response to HonestReporting Managing Editor Simon Plosker:

 

UPDATE 2

Jenn Selby has deleted her tweet, presumably after she was asked what her personal heritage had to do with the story. We still have a screenshot of the Twitter conversation however:

jennselbytweet

 

Image credit: Madonna’s Instagram account.

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Only last month HonestReporting critiqued a piece by Lizzie Dearden, a self-described “online journalist” for The Independent. Lizzie’s articles are written, not at the scene of the story, but from her home base, presumably in the UK. In the course of correspondence with Dearden, she acknowledged that her editor was the one who had commissioned her to focus on an anti-Israel story concerning Bedouin in the Negev.

That the story choice was imposed on the journalist raised questions concerning an anti-Israel agenda on the part of The Independent’s editors.

Unfortunately, the kidnapping of three Israeli teens by Hamas terrorists appears to have given us further evidence that this is indeed the case. This is Lizzie Dearden’s latest report:

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A Facebook page calling for the killing of Palestinian terrorists at the rate of one an hour should certainly be regarded as morally and ethically questionable. Indeed, the IDF’s first preference when dealing with terrorists is to arrest them so that they can be brought to justice through legal means. This is, of course, not always possible due to the nature of the terror threat and the obvious fact that terrorists very rarely simply give themselves up without a fight.

Putting these issues aside, why does The Independent consider a Facebook page liked by 17,000 people aimed specifically at terrorists to be newsworthy other than to take an opportunity to present Israel in a negative light? After all, the likelihood of any of these 17,000 Israelis actually acting upon their understandable anger is virtually non-existent.

Compare this to the incitement in the Palestinian media and the terror organizations that positively encourage acts of violence against Jews and Israelis. There is no comparison.

If The Independent wished to report on how two different societies are reacting to this latest crisis, perhaps it could have highlighted the disgusting online cartoons being promoted on a Fatah website, the very organization of PA President Abbas or any number of other equally nasty images. (See more from Tom Gross.)

fatahrats

Or what about the many photos of Palestinians handing out candies in celebration at the news of the kidnapping? (See more at Israellycool.)

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But no. Rather than focusing on the incredible unity of purpose and the public prayers being offered by the entire nation in this time of distress, The Independent prefers to portray Israeli society as immoral or unethical.

Just how many more anti-Israel articles will Lizzie Dearden write on behalf of her editors before she starts to question whether there is an agenda at work?

You can register your complaints through The Independent’s online complaints form.

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UPDATE – MAY 30:

Following correspondence with Lizzie Dearden, this article has been amended. We accept that Dearden did, in fact, interview Michal Rotem of NCF via email and we also accept that she in no way copied her story from the +972 Magazine site. A photo of Lizzie Dearden taken from her Twitter site has also been removed at her request. Unlike many of the media outlets that it deals with, HonestReporting is fully prepared to acknowledge and correct any errors if they have been made and we apologize to Lizzie Dearden for those errors.

Dearden did, however, state that she respects the viewpoint that her article was not balanced and should have included more response from the Israeli authorities. HonestReporting therefore stands by the amended article below.

* * *

Churnalism is a form of journalism in which press releases, wire stories and other forms of pre-packaged material are used to create “news” content. It fills a basic need for editors: cheap content supposedly researched and fact-checked. Just add water.

Within the complex situation of coverage of Israel, where fact checking is crucial and both sides need to be heard to maintain balance, churnalism is particularly unprofessional. Unfortunately, this has not prevented The Independent from producing a shocking piece of propaganda masquerading as a news story.

A closer look at a piece “Israeli authorities ‘try to evict dead people’ from Arab village” supposedly about Israeli authorities allegedly issuing eviction orders to dead people to clear an unrecognized Bedouin village in the Negev, reveals critical flaws:

The location of the journalist

The story is credited to Lizzie Dearden. On her Twitter feed she describes herself as an “online journalist.” This means that she gathers her news from the internet and not from the actual location of the story. A look at her previous articles for The Independent shows reports on stories from Paris, London and South East Asia all within a one day time frame. Put simply, she is not reporting from the Negev region of Israel.

The source of the story

Having established that Lizzie Dearden was not in Israel, where then did she get this story from? The entire package is supplied by the Negev Coexistence Forum (NCF), a non-governmental organization whose political advocacy is profiled by NGO Monitor:

 – Active in delegitimizing Israel internationally, and one of the most active NGOs in lobbying European governments to oppose Israel’s Bedouin-Negev policies.

– Submits appeals to the United Nations calling for “world intervention to aid the Bedouin community” and identifying Israel as a “discriminate country” that denies many rights by “forced politicization” and “policy of displacement.

negev_coexistence_forumDearden’s story contains no comment from any official Israeli source or any opposing viewpoints. The story’s illustrative photos have been taken and supplied by the NCF’s Michal Rotem.

More lack of credible sources

Dearden’s story includes an embedded YouTube video produced and uploaded by the Alternative Information Center, another radical anti-Israel organization. According to NGO Monitor the AIC accuses Israel of “ethnic cleansing,” “apartheid-like discrimination,” of being a “settler colonialist… intransigent, racist and militarized… regime,” and implementing a “multi-tiered system of oppression.” The AIC also promotes the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign.

Furthermore, the only other “news outlet” that has run this particular story is Russia Today a few days prior to The Independent’s piece. RT, the Kremlin’s state-funded propaganda channel is not a credible media outlet and regularly parrots anti-Israel extremists. A case in point is a tweet embedded in the RT story on the Bedouin by notorious anti-Israel activist Max Blumenthal.

A lazy excuse for journalism

Ultimately it appears that Lizzie Dearden, while trawling the internet for interesting stories, has chosen to rely on blatantly one-sided sources. She has simply repackaged a story promoted by an anti-Israel NGO without carrying out any due diligence of verification and fact-checking.

In the complexity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this is simply inexcusable. This is not a story involving fluffy clouds or cuddly animals. It is part of a highly politicized and multifaceted situation that deserves proper journalistic attention and not the superficial treatment of churnalism.

The end product is a piece of anti-Israel propaganda parroted by a newspaper, The Independent, too lazy or unwilling to allocate the resources for producing proper and professional journalism.

Lizzie Dearden may wish to stick to reproducing less controversial or one-sided stories in the future if she wishes to be considered a journalist rather than a churnalist.

You can register your complaint to The Independent through its online complaints form.

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Image: CC BY-SA HonestReporting, www.freestock.ca