(* With apologies to Monty Python's Nobody Expects The Spanish Inquisition...)
Now here's an interesting Q&A from Australians for Palestine's 2016 Media Symposium.
Stuart Rees is the former head of Sydney University's Centre for Peace & Conflict Studies. Maher Mughrabi is the foreign editor of The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald:
Stuart Rees: I want to ask you about courage and cowardice. What is required by journalists not to be so intimidated by the Israel lobby? Because compliance with the Israel lobby always looks to me like a form of cowardice. IOW, how do you develop the courage to resist this compliance?
Maher Mughrabi: My experience in dealing with Australian journalists who wander into the Middle East area unawares... the nature of the complaints, the extremely amped up nature of the conflict, the references to World War 2, to the Bible, to genocide, for a common-and-garden journalist who's not a specialist on the Middle East, are extremely frightening and alarming. And what is usually required at that point is not so much courage as knowledge. The standard of knowledge in newsrooms in this country about Islam and about the history of the Middle East is still far too low, and usually, if one of these people come running to me with his hands in the air going 'Look at this complaint I received!' the most important thing I can say to them is 'It's fine, you haven't done anything wrong. That's if you've seen what they've done. The problem is if you don't see what they've done. When it comes out of left field... But what I would say in general is that the first thing that people need is to make sure they check their facts, to make sure they know about what they're talking about... and then the courage is only the courage of knowing your on solid ground. What happens with these people is they're frightened they've missed something because they feel their knowledge is inadequate and that's a deeper problem than the Israel/Palestine problem, that's a problem about the culture inside newsrooms when it comes to dealing with foreign affairs."
What may we deduce from Maher Mughrabi's testimony?
That our journalists know bugger all about the Middle East and about foreign affairs in general. Surely, a damning verdict on our representatives of the fourth estate.
But if only that were it.
Far, far worse is the fact that Israel's fifth columnists in the West appear to have our journos well and truly spooked, with news rooms in a blind funk lest The Zionist Inquisition burst through the door.
Has the 'fearless investigative reporter' been replaced by the spineless investigative reporter?
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6 comments:
When Israeli whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu offered a number of 'mainstream' metropolitan Australian newspapers the most explosive [literally] story of the decade, together with photographs and damning evidence of Israel's hitherto 'secret' nuclear programme, he was turned away.
Journalists would normally give an arm and a leg for such a story. In this case the Israel factor, on media self-censorship auto-pilot, ruled out the story. Mordechai Vanunu eventually took his story to the UK media who published with relish, including photographs. The story created a sensation around the world, a journalistic coup. By way of thanks Vanunu's new UK media 'friends' then betrayed him to Israel's Mossad thugs. This resulted in his kidnaping, imprisonment and continuing mistreatment to this day. There was no inquiry or apology. Shame Australian and UK media.
So much for media confidentiality, honesty and journalistic ethics.
Has anything changed and how can we tell the difference?
Agreed MERC and Anonymous. Look at what's going on in the UK media currently. The Independent today (the only UK paper I can bring myself to read) has a statement by Herzog - leader of the Israeli Labor Party (what's in a name) - saying that what Ken Livingstone said is anti-semitic. As one of the commenters there pointed out, this same Herzog is openly and egregiouslly anti-Arab. Of course that's not mentioned in the article.
I nominate Mordechai Vanunu for the next Nobel Peace Prize. What courage and honesty, bravo.
Good intention but Alfred Nobel himself was known as the 'merchant of death'.
Alfred Nobel simply invented a more efficient explosive. Others, not Nobel, chose to use this for warlike purposes, therefore the moniker. Nobel himself, full of regret, chose to rehabilitate his name with the Nobel Prize.
Of course the other inventor of a more efficient explosive, extracting acetone from chestnuts for bomb making, Chaim Weizmann, had no regrets, revelled in wars for advancing his repugnant philosophy and by contrast no name calling on account of his invention. Weizmann as the leading Zionist figure of his time could be more properly considered as 'Dr Death'.
Just compare the recipients of the Nobel Prize with the recipients of the Weizmann Prize. I know which one Mordechai Vanunu would prefer to receive.
When Mordechai Vanunu was finally released from the Zionist prison after decades of mistreatment the [approved] media were there to film the event.
Australia's ABC concentrated on Fighting Father Dave Smith, Vanunu's friend and supporter, alone among the crowd of hostile and agressive Zionist bully boys.
Father Dave, who runs a boxing gymnasium at his church hall, was in clerical garb with a prominent christian cross around his neck.
As soon as the crowd turned on on Father Dave, kicking, spitting and screaming, 'our' national broadcaster pointedly turned off the lights and cameras. No memo from ABC head office was needed, even the camera men run on auto-pilot.
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