- "The trend toward secrecy is the
greatest threat to democracy."
- - Associated Press CEO, in a speech about
the importance of openness"The official response is we decline to
respond."
- - Associated Press Director of Media
Relations, replying to questions about AP
-
-
- In the midst of journalism's "Sunshine
Week"--during which the Associated Press and other news organizations
are valiantly proclaiming the public's "right to know"--AP insists
on conducting its own activities in the dark, and refuses to answer even
the simplest questions about its system of international news reporting.
-
- Most of all, it refuses to explain why
it erased footage of an Israeli soldier intentionally shooting a Palestinian
boy.
-
- AP, according to its website, is the
world's oldest and largest news organization. It is the behemoth of news
reporting, providing what its editors determine is the news to a billion
people each day. Through its feeds to thousands of newspapers, radio and
television stations, AP is a major determinant in what Americans read,
hear and see--and what they don't.
-
- What they don't is profoundly important.
I investigated one such omission when I was in the Palestinian Territories
last year working on a documentary with my colleague (and daughter), who
was filming our interviews.
-
- On Oct. 17, 2004 Israeli military forces
invaded Balata, a dense, poverty-stricken community deep in Palestine's
West Bank (Israel frequently invades this area and others). According to
witnesses, the vehicles stayed for about twenty minutes, the military asserting
its power over the Palestinian population. The witnesses state that there
was no Palestinian resistance--no "clash," no "crossfire,"
not even any stone-throwing. At one point, after most of the vehicles had
finally driven away, an Israeli soldier stuck his gun out of his armored
vehicle, aimed at a pre-pubescent boy nearby, and pulled the trigger.
-
-
-
-
-
-
- We went to the hospital and interviewed
the boy, Ahmad, his doctors, family, and others. Ahmad had bandages around
his lower abdomen, where surgeons had operated on his bladder. He said
he was afraid of Israeli soldiers, and pulled up his pants leg to show
where he had been shot previously.
-
- In the hospital there was a second boy,
this one with a shattered femur; and a third boy, this one in critical
condition with a bullet hole in his lung. A fourth boy, not a patient,
was visiting a friend. He showed us a scarred lip and missing teeth from
when Israeli soldiers had shot him in the mouth.
-
-
-
-
- This was not an unusual situation. When
I had visited Palestinian hospitals on a previous trip, I had seen many
such victims; some with worse injuries. Yet, very few Americans know this
is going on. AP's actions in regard to Ahmad's shooting may explain why.
-
- We discovered that an AP cameraman had
filmed the entire incident. This cameraman had then followed what apparently
is the usual routine. He sent his video--an extremely valuable commodity,
since it contained documentary evidence of a war crime--to the AP control
bureau for the region. This bureau is in Israel.
-
-
-
-
- What happened next is unfathomable. Did
AP broadcast it? No. Did AP place the video in safe-keeping, available
for an investigation of this crime? No.
-
- According to its cameraman, AP erased
it.
-
- We were astounded. We traveled to AP's
control bureau in Israel. With our own video camera out and running, we
asked bureau chief Steve Gutkin about this incident. Was the information
we had been told correct, or did he have a different version? Did the bureau
have the video, or had they indeed erased it. If so, why?
-
-
-
-
- 12 years old "Mohamed El Dorra"
seen crying with terror less than one minute before being killed in cold
blod by the Israelis.
-
- Gutkin, repeatedly looking at the camera
and visibly flustered, told us that AP did not allow its journalists to
give interviews. He told us that all questions must go to Corporate Communications,
located in New York. He explained that they were on deadline and couldn't
talk. I said I understood deadline pressure, and sat down to wait until
they were done. When he called Israeli police to arrest us, we left.
-
- Back in the US later, I phoned Corporate
Communications and reached Director of Media Relations Jack Stokes, AP's
public relations spokesman. I had conversed with Stokes before.
-
- Over the past several years I have noticed
disturbing flaws in AP coverage of Israel-Palestine: newsworthy stories
not being covered, reports sent to international newspapers but not to
American ones, stories omitting or misreporting significant facts, critical
sentences being removed from updated reports.
-
-
-
-
-
- I would phone AP with the appropriate
correction or news alert. One time this resulted in a flawed news story
being slightly corrected in updates. In a few cases stories were then covered
that had been neglected. In many cases, however, I was told that I needed
to speak to Corporate Communications. I would phone Corporate Communications,
leave a message, and wait for a response. Most often, none came.
-
- Several times, however, I was able to
have long conversations with AP spokesman Stokes. None of these conversations,
however, ever ended with AP taking any action. Some typical responses:
- * The omitted story was "not newsworthy."
-
- * The story deemed by AP editors to be
newsworthy to the rest of the world--e.g. Israel's brutal imprisonment
of over 300 Palestinian youths--was not newsworthy in the US (Israel's
major ally).
-
- * Burying a report of Israeli forces
shooting a four-year-old Palestinian girl in the mouth was justified.
-
- * Misreporting an incident in which an
Israeli officer riddled a 13-year-old girl at close range with bullets
was unimportant.Despite this unresponsive pattern, when I learned firsthand
of an AP bureau erasing footage of an atrocity, I again phoned Corporate
Communications. I no longer had much expectation that AP would take any
corrective action, but I did expect to receive some information. I gave
spokesperson Stokes the numerous details about this incident that we had
gathered on the scene and asked him the same questions I had asked Gutkin.
He said he would look into this and get back to me.
-
- After several days he had not gotten
back to me, so I again phoned him. He said that he had looked into this
incident, and that AP had determined that this was "an internal matter"
and that they would give no response.
-
- While I should have known better, I was
again astounded. AP was blatantly violating fundamental journalistic norms
of ethical behavior, and clearly felt it had the power to get away with
it.
-
- Journalism, according to the Statement
of Principles of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, is a "sacred
trust." It is the bulwark of a free society and is so essential to
the functioning of a democracy that our forefathers affirmed its primacy
in the very first amendment of the Bill of Rights.
-
-
-
-
- Ariel Sharon 'man of peace' according
to G.W.Bush
-
- According to the Society of Professional
Journalists, one of the four major pillars of journalistic ethics is to
"Be Accountable." According to SPJ's Code of Ethics:
-
- "Journalists are accountable to
their readers, listeners, viewers and each other.
-
- "Journalists should:
- * Clarify and explain news coverage and
invite dialogue with the public over journalistic conduct.
-
- * Encourage the public to voice grievances
against the news media.
-
- * Admit mistakes and correct them promptly.
-
- * Expose unethical practices of journalists
and the news media.
-
- * Abide by the same high standards to
which they hold others.Finally, this week, on deadline with a chapter about
media coverage of Israel-Palestine, I again tried to confirm some of my
facts with AP. Certainly, I felt, during "Sunshine Week" AP would
respond. As part of the Sunshine campaign, AP's CEO and President Tom Curley
is traveling the country giving speeches on the necessity of transparency
and accountability (for government) and emphasizing "the openness
that effective democracy requires."
-
- "The trend toward secrecy,"
AP's president has correctly been pointing out, "is the greatest threat
to democracy."
-
-
-
- More than six Israeli soldiers
beating a young Palestinian boy
-
- I emailed my questions to AP, talked
to Stokes by phone, and again was told he would get back to me. Again,
I got back to him. Then, in a surreal exchange, he conveyed AP's reply:
"The official response is we decline to respond." As I asked
question after question, many as simple as a confirmation of the number
of bureaus AP has in Israel-Palestine, the response was silence or a repetition
of: "The official response is we decline to respond."
-
- The next day I tried phoning AP's President
Curley directly. I was unable to reach Curley, since he was on the road
giving his Sunshine Week speeches ("Secrecy," Curley says, "is
for losers"), but I left a message for him with an assistant. She
said someone would respond.
-
- I am still waiting.
-
-
-
-
- It is clearly time to go to AP's superiors.
The fact is, AP is a cooperative. It is not owned by Corporate Communications
spokespeople or by its CEO or even by its board of directors. It is owned
by the thousands of newspapers and broadcast stations around the United
States that use AP reports. These newspapers, radio and television stations
are the true directors of AP, and bear the responsibility for its coverage.
-
- In the end, it appears, the only way
that Americans will receive full, unbiased reporting from AP on Israel-Palestine
will be when these member-owners demand such coverage from their employees
in the Middle East and in New York. As long as AP's owners remain too busy
or too negligent to ensure the quality and accuracy of their Israel-Palestine
coverage, the handful of people within AP who are distorting its news reporting
on this tragic, life-and-death, globally destabilizing issue will quite
likely continue to do so.
-
- In the final analysis, therefore, it
is up to us--members of the public--to step in. Everyone who believes that
Americans have the right and the need to receive full, undistorted information
on all issues, including Israel-Palestine, must take action. We must require
our news media to fulfill their profoundly important obligation, and we
must ourselves distribute the critical information our media are leaving
out.
-
- If we don't take action, no one else
will.
-
- AP can be reached at 212-621-1500.
-
- Alison Weir, a former journalist is Executive
Director of If Americans Knew, which is currently conducting a statistical
analysis of AP's coverage of Israel-Palestine, to be released within a
few months. The organization has created cards that describe AP actions
for people to disseminate in their communities.
-
-
- "....the daily killing of innocent
people in Iraq, the execution of mainly black prisoners in the U.S., the
massive sale of guns to U.S. citizens every day...."
-
- Canadian Sen. Celine Hervieux-Payette
-
-
- http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/clues.html
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