BIG PAPERS SPIN COVERAGE OF PALESTINE

>BIG PAPERS SPIN COVERAGE OF PALESTINE
>
>PATRICK O'CONNOR, ZNET - One element fueling the current crisis in
>Gaza is the ongoing failure of US corporate media coverage of Israel -
>Palestine. . . On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert admitted
>that he intended to commit war crimes in Gaza, telling his cabinet
>that he wanted "no one to be able to sleep tonight in Gaza." Olmert
>thus officially acknowledged Israel's policy of collectively punishing
>1.4 million Palestinians, a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
>But none of the US' three leading newspapers - The New York Times,
>Washington Post and LA Times - reported Olmert's statement, even
>though it was widely quoted around the world.
>
>In the last week, these three leading US papers all also published
>editorials strongly supporting Israel's right to "retaliate" after the
>capture of an Israeli soldier. Their editorials never mentioned a
>single element of Israel's brutal 10 month siege on Gaza. In a
>reminder of The Washington Post's editorial advocacy of the Iraq war,
>The Post took the most belligerent position, applauding Israeli
>"restraint" and approving an Israeli overthrow of the Hamas-led
>Palestinian Authority. Although the major newspapers have published
>some good articles reporting Palestinians' views in the last days,
>their overall bias towards Israel has been glaring. . .
>
>New York Times' correspondents Steven Erlanger and Ian Fisher reported
>the quote in an on-line article that was also published in the
>International Herald Tribune. However, the quote never appeared in the
>Times' print edition. The Times' editors seem to have decided that
>Olmert's words were not "fit to print," and deleted them from their
>journalists' report. . .
>
>What is certain is that the leading US papers generally omit the
>frameworks of human rights and international law as well as related
>concepts like collective punishment, and proportionality, all of which
>have been consistently violated by Israel. . .
>
>Though collective punishment of Palestinians has historically been a
>cornerstone of Israeli policy, and characterizes Israel's siege of
>Gaza, the US' three leading papers have used the phrase "collective
>punishment" just four times since heightened crisis began on June 25. . .
>
>http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=107&ItemID=10521
>
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>* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
>Larry Gross
>Professor and Director
>School of Communication
>Annenberg School
>University of Southern California
>Los Angeles, CA 90089-0281
>[213] 740-3770
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