CBN News posted a story today about an article written by Associated Press reporter Matti Friedman. After the war last summer between Hamas and Israel, Mr. Friedman wrote an article entitled, “An Insider’s Guide to the Most Important Story on Earth.” The article is his account of how the press covered that war.
CBN News reports:
“I decided at the end of the summer to write an essay looking at what has gone wrong through the lens of my own experiences,” Friedman told CBN News.
For seven years, Friedman reported for the Associated Press, a giant news organization that provides information to many other media outlets worldwide. He says the AP and the mainstream press suffer from two malfunctions. One, Israel gets a disproportionate amount of coverage and two, the press has taken sides.
“The mainstream press corps here [in Israel] has largely adopted an advocacy role. They’ve decided to play a political role in the conflict,” he explained. “They’ve decided to lobby for the side that they think is right and political decisions are disguised as journalistic decisions.”
Friedman says Hamas took advantage of the bias.
Friedman described the strategy of Hamas as provoking Israel by attacking civilians with rockets and then using civilians to shield weapons and soldiers. Then Hamas would show the news media the civilian casualties without mentioning that they were being used as human shields. Unfortunately, the news media either did not see through the strategy or were taking sides.
The CBN News story concludes:
Friedman maintains the world is getting a skewed version of what’s actually happening here in Israel.
“The story is — if you read between the lines and through the lines of the stories themselves — is that Israel is faced with a clear moral choice and is making the wrong choice. Israel could have peace but it chooses war. That story is false. But everything is done to maintain it. Even in the face of contradictory evidence.”
Meanwhile, Hamas is attempting to use the United Nations to establish a terrorist state right next to Israel. This is not a good time to be on the wrong side of history, particularly where Israel is concerned.