YNet Journalist May Have Been Dishonest in Attack On Anti-Israel Media Dishonesty
Some time late last Tuesday, YNet went online with an article by Yaakov Lappin about a journalism conference that had just finished wrapping up in Jerusalem. The conference was organized by Media Line to analyze and discuss the journalism surrounding Lebanon II, although the vast majority of Lappin's article is spent describing just one panel. On that particular panel sat some very important people representing some very important international media organizations. Those very important people, in their role as representatives of some very important international media organizations, said some things. For now, you don't have to know specific details about what they said. All you have to know is that it was a slow day (nothing unusual, just Kofi Annan selling out Israel and John Mearsheimer being hysterical), that pro-Israel bloggers were already a little bit grumpy (because of Kofi Annan and John Mearsheimer), and that the headline of Lappin's article about these very important people from these very important international media organizations was "Journalists blame Israel for war coverage". Suffice to say that, among other things, we were certainly not above participating in the half feeding-frenzy / half piling-on that ensued.
Believe it or not, the full headline was even more inflammatory: "Journalists blame Israel for war coverage: International journalists discuss Lebanon war coverage; NYT bureau chief: Israel 'not interested in Lebanese deaths'". The article elaborated on these three themes, quoting people on the following issues: Israel was to blame for media inaccuracy; there wasn't much media inaccuracy anyway; that NYT quote about Israeli Lebanese deaths. It's tough to tell which theme was picked apart most in subsequent blog posts, but there was enough attention to go around so that each part got its fair share.
As far as we knew, that was that. Everything was moving along fine - by which we mean everyone had moved backed to how badly the UN is screwing Israel - until this morning. David Gerstman of Soccer Dad had been another of the bloggers that had blogged that YNet story, but he had been growing suspicious about its contents based on some comments he got. He emailed Media Line to get their side of the story, they emailed him back, and he passed around that email this morning. It turns out that while Lappin's article was never false - everything he transcribed was actually said by the people he says said them - he left out enough clarifications and caveats that some bloggers may want to take back some of the mean things they said.
In particular, it looks like the Steven Erlanger quote about Israelis not caring about Lebanese deaths was taken out of context. It's tough to know exactly what happened without a transcript, but from what we can glean Erlanger was explaining some of the dynamics that caused a disconnect between the Israeli public and the rest of the world on proportionality. The original article quotes Erlanger saying that Israel's didn't "quite grasp how the war was perceived outside of Israel" and Media Line's email to David said that this was "nothing more than a passing comment". We wouldn't be surprised if it turns out that Erlanger said something like "of course, Israelis focused on Israeli deaths while the rest of the world was seeing mostly Lebanese deaths, which is why Israelis didn't quite grasp how the war was perceived". If that's the context, then Lappin is probably guilty of a at least a little intellectual dishonesty. Another part of the original article has Erlanger saying that Israelis "were not interested in whether 1,000 Lebanese civilians needed to die". That's going to be a little harder to explain, unless it turns out that the quote was something like "to the rest of the world, it seemed like Israelis were not interested in whether 1,000 Lebanese civilians had to die". In any case, Media Line will put up the full audio/video some time soon as part of their defense, and then we'll be able to figure out what happened. There's probably no clear ethics violation here, since now that we reread the article it's clear that Lappin was very careful to avoid implying any context for the quotes - he just strung them together and let the reader fill in the blanks.
As it happens, our post was about a different part of the article. We went after ABC News Chief Simon McGregor-Wood, who was portrayed as complaining that the IDF locked out foreign reporters from the battlefield. We more or less called him a cry baby, took a cheap shot about media photoshopping, and then copied another part of the article that said that the IDF provided plenty of battlefield access. Not particularly compelling, but it didn't seem like more was required since that's a really stupid thing to complain about. "Israeli media got too much access" is just the wrong side of the debate - it seems that there's an agreement that foreign reporters got plenty of access and even if they didn't, Israeli reporters should get first crack at that news anyway. In fact, it's such a dumb complaint that not only did Wood probably not make it, but there's a decent chance that he actually was talking about how stupid it would be to complain about Israeli media getting battlefield access... because foreign reporters got plenty of access and even if they didn't, Israeli reporters should get first crack at that news anyway. Which makes a lot more sense.
15 seconds of Googling this morning was enough to confirm that past Lappin articles about the international media have a very marked editorial tone. That's obviously not a reason not to trust him when he says that a fact is a fact, but it's retroactive confirmation that something may be amiss. Even in the worst case for him, there's nothing in this article that could get a journalist fired. But the number and kind of the tricks that he used (stringing together quotes, excluding context, etc) make things confusing enough that we feel uncomfortable basing a post on his quotes. What we might have is a biased reporter being dishonest in order to undermine a panel of media figures convened for the purpose of explaining media dishonesty. Very elegant.
Believe it or not, the full headline was even more inflammatory: "Journalists blame Israel for war coverage: International journalists discuss Lebanon war coverage; NYT bureau chief: Israel 'not interested in Lebanese deaths'". The article elaborated on these three themes, quoting people on the following issues: Israel was to blame for media inaccuracy; there wasn't much media inaccuracy anyway; that NYT quote about Israeli Lebanese deaths. It's tough to tell which theme was picked apart most in subsequent blog posts, but there was enough attention to go around so that each part got its fair share.
As far as we knew, that was that. Everything was moving along fine - by which we mean everyone had moved backed to how badly the UN is screwing Israel - until this morning. David Gerstman of Soccer Dad had been another of the bloggers that had blogged that YNet story, but he had been growing suspicious about its contents based on some comments he got. He emailed Media Line to get their side of the story, they emailed him back, and he passed around that email this morning. It turns out that while Lappin's article was never false - everything he transcribed was actually said by the people he says said them - he left out enough clarifications and caveats that some bloggers may want to take back some of the mean things they said.
In particular, it looks like the Steven Erlanger quote about Israelis not caring about Lebanese deaths was taken out of context. It's tough to know exactly what happened without a transcript, but from what we can glean Erlanger was explaining some of the dynamics that caused a disconnect between the Israeli public and the rest of the world on proportionality. The original article quotes Erlanger saying that Israel's didn't "quite grasp how the war was perceived outside of Israel" and Media Line's email to David said that this was "nothing more than a passing comment". We wouldn't be surprised if it turns out that Erlanger said something like "of course, Israelis focused on Israeli deaths while the rest of the world was seeing mostly Lebanese deaths, which is why Israelis didn't quite grasp how the war was perceived". If that's the context, then Lappin is probably guilty of a at least a little intellectual dishonesty. Another part of the original article has Erlanger saying that Israelis "were not interested in whether 1,000 Lebanese civilians needed to die". That's going to be a little harder to explain, unless it turns out that the quote was something like "to the rest of the world, it seemed like Israelis were not interested in whether 1,000 Lebanese civilians had to die". In any case, Media Line will put up the full audio/video some time soon as part of their defense, and then we'll be able to figure out what happened. There's probably no clear ethics violation here, since now that we reread the article it's clear that Lappin was very careful to avoid implying any context for the quotes - he just strung them together and let the reader fill in the blanks.
As it happens, our post was about a different part of the article. We went after ABC News Chief Simon McGregor-Wood, who was portrayed as complaining that the IDF locked out foreign reporters from the battlefield. We more or less called him a cry baby, took a cheap shot about media photoshopping, and then copied another part of the article that said that the IDF provided plenty of battlefield access. Not particularly compelling, but it didn't seem like more was required since that's a really stupid thing to complain about. "Israeli media got too much access" is just the wrong side of the debate - it seems that there's an agreement that foreign reporters got plenty of access and even if they didn't, Israeli reporters should get first crack at that news anyway. In fact, it's such a dumb complaint that not only did Wood probably not make it, but there's a decent chance that he actually was talking about how stupid it would be to complain about Israeli media getting battlefield access... because foreign reporters got plenty of access and even if they didn't, Israeli reporters should get first crack at that news anyway. Which makes a lot more sense.
15 seconds of Googling this morning was enough to confirm that past Lappin articles about the international media have a very marked editorial tone. That's obviously not a reason not to trust him when he says that a fact is a fact, but it's retroactive confirmation that something may be amiss. Even in the worst case for him, there's nothing in this article that could get a journalist fired. But the number and kind of the tricks that he used (stringing together quotes, excluding context, etc) make things confusing enough that we feel uncomfortable basing a post on his quotes. What we might have is a biased reporter being dishonest in order to undermine a panel of media figures convened for the purpose of explaining media dishonesty. Very elegant.
