LETTER: Examining journalism gives new hope
Double standard held by media outlets warps view of Israeli situations
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"Israel should be treated like any other country: innocent, until proven guilty," stated Gary Kenzer, the national executive director of HonestReporting who lectured at Iowa State this past Tuesday. HonestReporting.com is a media watchdog organization committed to ensuring accurate and balanced media coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
According to Kenzer, a double standard is applied to Israel by major media outlets, and because of that, a distortion of facts, manipulation of photos, opinions disguised as facts and general bias are often in the news that has been regarded as a trustworthy source.
Some of the examples given by Kenzer were mind-boggling indeed. One example was of a Reuters photo, which was printed in numerous publications during the war between Hezbollah and Israel in summer 2006, where clouds of smoke were doctored into the photo to make the damage caused by an Israeli bombardment appear much greater than it had actually been. After the deceit had been exposed, Reuters withdrew the photo, admitting that "photo editing software was improperly used on the image."
Another example from The New York Times was a photo of an Israeli soldier holding a club and a bleeding young man crouching in front of him. The caption read "An Israeli policeman and a Palestinian on the Temple Mount." In reality, the bleeding person was a Jewish youth who had been attacked by a Palestinian mob and the Israeli soldier had intervened to protect him. The New York Times had no choice but to admit their lack of judgment and apologize for the mistakes.
The audience in Kenzer's lecture included students from an ISU journalism class, which gives one hope that they will give rise to a new generation of journalists who strive for truth, fairness and balance. Hopefully, their generation will prove wrong Mark Twain's observation: "If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed."
Pnina Luban
Alumnus
Ames
According to Kenzer, a double standard is applied to Israel by major media outlets, and because of that, a distortion of facts, manipulation of photos, opinions disguised as facts and general bias are often in the news that has been regarded as a trustworthy source.
Some of the examples given by Kenzer were mind-boggling indeed. One example was of a Reuters photo, which was printed in numerous publications during the war between Hezbollah and Israel in summer 2006, where clouds of smoke were doctored into the photo to make the damage caused by an Israeli bombardment appear much greater than it had actually been. After the deceit had been exposed, Reuters withdrew the photo, admitting that "photo editing software was improperly used on the image."
Another example from The New York Times was a photo of an Israeli soldier holding a club and a bleeding young man crouching in front of him. The caption read "An Israeli policeman and a Palestinian on the Temple Mount." In reality, the bleeding person was a Jewish youth who had been attacked by a Palestinian mob and the Israeli soldier had intervened to protect him. The New York Times had no choice but to admit their lack of judgment and apologize for the mistakes.
The audience in Kenzer's lecture included students from an ISU journalism class, which gives one hope that they will give rise to a new generation of journalists who strive for truth, fairness and balance. Hopefully, their generation will prove wrong Mark Twain's observation: "If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed."
Pnina Luban
Alumnus
Ames
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