The Media Really Are the Enemy
Charles Johnson
Tue Jan 18, 2005 at 3:24 pm PST • Views: 318
It’s no wonder that reports from the Middle East are so laden with Arab/Palestinian propaganda.
The Jerusalem Post blows the whistle on Agence France Presse, Associated Press, Reuters, and other mainstream news sources, who all employ Palestinian journalists who also work for the Palestinian Authority: Where the reporting stops.
HonestReporting also comments: Palestinian Insiders.
This is the equivalent of a network’s Washington correspondent getting paid on the side by the Democrats or Republicans. Imagine the scandal that would produce. Yet with their coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, AFP and AP don’t seem to have a problem with it.
HonestReporting has repeatedly demonstrated that the local staff employed by western news outlets contributes in no small way to the problem of anti-Israel media bias. The major media outlets rely on Palestinian cameramen and stringers to tell the tale from the West Bank and Gaza, as the Jerusalem Post reports:
AFP is not the only member of the international news media to employ “journalists” who see themselves as “foot soldiers” serving the Palestinian cause. Other parts of the foreign media frequently allow their stories to be filtered through such fixers-consultants…All this calls to mind the declaration by Fayad Abu Shamala, the BBC correspondent in Gaza for the past 10 years, at a Hamas rally in May 2001:“I will never work on a story that defames my people or leadership,” boasts a Palestinian “fixer” (mediator/guide/translator) who works on a regular basis with many foreign journalists. “It is my duty to protect my people against Israeli propaganda.”
“Journalists and media organizations [are] waging the campaign shoulder-to-shoulder together with the Palestinian people.”
Frank says: