UPI Publishes Anti-Israel Propaganda as "News", Is Really Bad At Hiding It
We don't think that Sana Abdallah is really the most objective journalist that UPI could have found for their 1701 story. The reason we don't think that is because, instead of writing a news story, she seems to believe that her job is to publish transparent Hezbollah propaganda:
Could Hezbollah leader Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah have been right in his prediction last month that Israel's war on Lebanon will be Israel's last? In an unpredictable Middle East, it is hard to tell... This gives Israel either 48 hours, a week, or as long as it takes UNIFIL and the Lebanese army to deploy in the area, to try to capture as much Lebanese territory as possible and more time to try to inflict as much damage as possible against its intended target: Hezbollah.
How does an anti-Israel journalist - forced to feign objectivity by whatever thin journalistic norms still exist - manage to turn a "report" into an anti-Israel policy statement? There are several ways. One way is to frame the issue in a particular, subtle way that tilts the story by establishing tone and relevance. When that happens - and it happens a lot - media critics have to spend significant time and energy untangling all of the sleights-of-hand and demonstrating how an unbiased story could have written. Another way is to quote two opposing sides as if they were both of equal reasonability and plausibility ("Israelis showed pictures of Hezbollah firing missiles from civilian areas, but Prime Minister Siniora implied that such pictures were fabricated to justify further Israeli atrocities"). That situation is even worse for media critics, because to demonstrate bias it's necessary to elaborate extensively on what assumptions ought to orient journalists and what positions should be acceptable in reasoned debate.
Or you could just to what Abdallah and the UPI editors did - quote exclusively Arab or anti-Israel "analysts" as if you were passing on their propaganda as objective observation. When that happens, media critics can basically just point and laugh:
Whether the Israeli operations will continue until a Cabinet decision or until the Lebanese and U.N. forces are deployed in Lebanon's southern border areas, Arab analysts believe the Jewish state is trying to "buy time" to try to achieve at least some of what it set out to do in this war. Arab military analysts insist the Israeli army is seeking to "retrieve some of its dignity" before the resolution is enforced, in the hope of capturing Lebanese areas south of the Litani River, from where Israel believes Hezbollah is firing rockets at northern Israel...
But the plan may not succeed so easily, just as the Israeli plan from the outset of the war on July 12 has failed in stopping Hezbollah's rockets from slamming into northern Israeli towns and settlements and into subduing the guerilla organization, which has exercised what Arabs see as impressive resistance against Israeli incursions into the country. Lebanese military officials say the Israeli forces in the past weeks have not remained in positions they tried to capture due to Hezbollah's fierce resistance on the ground, predicting that what the IDF has failed to achieve in the past month cannot be accomplished in the next two or seven days...
Arab analysts say the Security Council decision would not have accommodated Hezbollah demands -- backed by the Beirut government -- had it not been for group's military performance on the ground, which has given powerful blows to the Jewish state. Among these demands is that no new international deterrence forces are dispatched on the southern Lebanese borders and that Israel withdraws from areas it occupied in the country
This article is very good at telling you what "Arab analysts believe", what "Arab military analysts insist", what "Lebanese military officials say", and again what "Arab analysts say". Not so much with other kinds of analysts. Except at the end, where Abdallah finally tries to pull off the journalistic trick where you quote two opposing opinions - each ostensibly equally reasonable - so that you can be unbiased. Except Abdallah is really bad at this trick:
Some analysts say because this decision includes a clear framework for international action for a ceasefire solution, it will likely work on the ground and stop this war. And, they add, Hezbollah's Nasrallah may prove to be right that this will be Israel's last war after what is widely seen by Arabs as the Jewish state's defeat against the Lebanese resistance and an experience it will not want to repeat. But then again, other analysts argue this war, triggered by Hezbollah's capture of two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border operation last month, may have come to avenge the Israeli humiliation by Hezbollah six years ago when the guerilla group was credited for forcing Israel to end its 22-year occupation of southern Lebanon in May 2000.
So some analysts say that Hezbollah has finally defeated Israel, while "then again" (!!!) "other analysts" say that Israelis are warmongers. We're not sure that Abdallah or the UPI editors know what "then again" is supposed to mean. "Then again" doesn't mean that if you take two different statements and put them next to each other, they suddenly become opposing statements. We can right "Mary is allergic to cats, but then again the sky is blue" - that doesn't make us unbiased, it just makes us stupid. "Israel was defeated but then again Israelis are warmongers" are not two opposing statements!
And the final paragraph is just pure brilliance:
If Tel Aviv sees this 2006 war on Lebanon in the same way as the Arabs see it -- as an Israeli defeat -- it might take a shot at another war to regain its military prestige in the Middle East.
You know how you could find out if Israelis think about the war in the same way Arabs do? Maybe ask some of them.
[Cross-posted at Israpundit]
Could Hezbollah leader Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah have been right in his prediction last month that Israel's war on Lebanon will be Israel's last? In an unpredictable Middle East, it is hard to tell... This gives Israel either 48 hours, a week, or as long as it takes UNIFIL and the Lebanese army to deploy in the area, to try to capture as much Lebanese territory as possible and more time to try to inflict as much damage as possible against its intended target: Hezbollah.
How does an anti-Israel journalist - forced to feign objectivity by whatever thin journalistic norms still exist - manage to turn a "report" into an anti-Israel policy statement? There are several ways. One way is to frame the issue in a particular, subtle way that tilts the story by establishing tone and relevance. When that happens - and it happens a lot - media critics have to spend significant time and energy untangling all of the sleights-of-hand and demonstrating how an unbiased story could have written. Another way is to quote two opposing sides as if they were both of equal reasonability and plausibility ("Israelis showed pictures of Hezbollah firing missiles from civilian areas, but Prime Minister Siniora implied that such pictures were fabricated to justify further Israeli atrocities"). That situation is even worse for media critics, because to demonstrate bias it's necessary to elaborate extensively on what assumptions ought to orient journalists and what positions should be acceptable in reasoned debate.
Or you could just to what Abdallah and the UPI editors did - quote exclusively Arab or anti-Israel "analysts" as if you were passing on their propaganda as objective observation. When that happens, media critics can basically just point and laugh:
Whether the Israeli operations will continue until a Cabinet decision or until the Lebanese and U.N. forces are deployed in Lebanon's southern border areas, Arab analysts believe the Jewish state is trying to "buy time" to try to achieve at least some of what it set out to do in this war. Arab military analysts insist the Israeli army is seeking to "retrieve some of its dignity" before the resolution is enforced, in the hope of capturing Lebanese areas south of the Litani River, from where Israel believes Hezbollah is firing rockets at northern Israel...
But the plan may not succeed so easily, just as the Israeli plan from the outset of the war on July 12 has failed in stopping Hezbollah's rockets from slamming into northern Israeli towns and settlements and into subduing the guerilla organization, which has exercised what Arabs see as impressive resistance against Israeli incursions into the country. Lebanese military officials say the Israeli forces in the past weeks have not remained in positions they tried to capture due to Hezbollah's fierce resistance on the ground, predicting that what the IDF has failed to achieve in the past month cannot be accomplished in the next two or seven days...
Arab analysts say the Security Council decision would not have accommodated Hezbollah demands -- backed by the Beirut government -- had it not been for group's military performance on the ground, which has given powerful blows to the Jewish state. Among these demands is that no new international deterrence forces are dispatched on the southern Lebanese borders and that Israel withdraws from areas it occupied in the country
This article is very good at telling you what "Arab analysts believe", what "Arab military analysts insist", what "Lebanese military officials say", and again what "Arab analysts say". Not so much with other kinds of analysts. Except at the end, where Abdallah finally tries to pull off the journalistic trick where you quote two opposing opinions - each ostensibly equally reasonable - so that you can be unbiased. Except Abdallah is really bad at this trick:
Some analysts say because this decision includes a clear framework for international action for a ceasefire solution, it will likely work on the ground and stop this war. And, they add, Hezbollah's Nasrallah may prove to be right that this will be Israel's last war after what is widely seen by Arabs as the Jewish state's defeat against the Lebanese resistance and an experience it will not want to repeat. But then again, other analysts argue this war, triggered by Hezbollah's capture of two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border operation last month, may have come to avenge the Israeli humiliation by Hezbollah six years ago when the guerilla group was credited for forcing Israel to end its 22-year occupation of southern Lebanon in May 2000.
So some analysts say that Hezbollah has finally defeated Israel, while "then again" (!!!) "other analysts" say that Israelis are warmongers. We're not sure that Abdallah or the UPI editors know what "then again" is supposed to mean. "Then again" doesn't mean that if you take two different statements and put them next to each other, they suddenly become opposing statements. We can right "Mary is allergic to cats, but then again the sky is blue" - that doesn't make us unbiased, it just makes us stupid. "Israel was defeated but then again Israelis are warmongers" are not two opposing statements!
And the final paragraph is just pure brilliance:
If Tel Aviv sees this 2006 war on Lebanon in the same way as the Arabs see it -- as an Israeli defeat -- it might take a shot at another war to regain its military prestige in the Middle East.
You know how you could find out if Israelis think about the war in the same way Arabs do? Maybe ask some of them.
[Cross-posted at Israpundit]
