Media in the Mideast

PAT JOHNSON

While Western media were enthusiastically reporting the resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict after 1993, they missed the real story, said a former CNN correspondent. The anti-Israel incitement that had been epidemic before the Oslo Accords – and the cessation of which was the Palestinians' primary responsibility under the peace agreement – continued unabated through the entire seven-year Oslo process.

International journalists, who reported keenly on the incremental steps Israel took toward peace, somehow managed to overlook the continuing demonization of Israel and the inculcation of hatred in Palestinian children, said Linda Scherzer, who was guest speaker at the annual general meeting of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, May 27.

At the time, Scherzer said, she and other reporters were aware that dissidents remained, but they assumed extremists would be sidelined as the peace process advanced.

"Well, I was wrong," she said. "Frankly, we were all wrong, from President [Bill] Clinton to [U.S. special envoy] Dennis Ross to then-prime minister [Yitzhak] Rabin."

"We journalists were ignoring what I believe was the biggest story out there," Scherzer said. "Five-year-old children in kindergarten were being taught to hate, even as [Yasser] Arafat was shaking hands on the White House lawn."

Scherzer, a Jewish Montrealer living in the United States, specifically addressed the topic of media coverage of the conflict, exploring whether, in her terms, coverage is "biased or balanced." Her perspective comes from her years as a correspondent for CNN and Israel television. In 1993, she travelled the Arab world, creating a documentary on changing attitudes there.

"There was an air of expectation and hope," she said of that time. She interviewed Syrians who spoke openly – and on camera – about their hopes for peace with Israel. The dismal conclusion of that era has had ramifications in the Middle East, but also in North America, where events, she said, are "turning leftists into conservatives."

In the aftermath of the 2000 collapse of the peace process and the onset of the new intifada, Scherzer said that, for much of the Arab leadership, "it is fundamentally contrary to their principles and ideals," to have a Jewish state in the Middle East. To overcome this obstacle, she said, will take longer than U.S. President George W. Bush's optimistic objective of having an agreement in place by the time he leaves office in less than eight months.

"I fear that it will take at least another generation and possibly another war," Scherzer said.

While condemning Arafat for encouraging and inciting violence, Scherzer acknowledged Arafat's public relations savvy, crediting him with ensuring that the world is mesmerized by the plight of Palestinians to a degree completely out of proportion to their numbers and the degree of suffering compared with other refugee groups.

Scherzer took a swipe at CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour, whose three-part series God's Warriors devoted an hour to extremism in Islam, Christianity and Judaism. The documentary series equates building settlements with suicide bombing, Scherzer said.

But while some reporters may be biased, "some reporters are just downright ignorant," said Scherzer, adding that some reporters arrive in Tel Aviv with little historical understanding of the region.

There are also the limitations of television, a magnificent medium for communicating the pain and passion of the Middle East conflict, she explained, but which does so in 90-second spurts. Reporters have to condense sometimes 10 hours of footage into a minute-and-a-half storyline on tight deadlines.

"The pressures are tremendous and the amount of time we have to put these stories together is very small," she said.

Still, Scherzer said, the majority of reporters cover these events with "a fair degree of honesty and integrity."

"There is no giant cabal of anti-Semitism that has somehow infiltrated the foreign media," said Scherzer. She added, "The media is a far more competitive marketplace than it was." Because of this, news producers and editors are more concerned with feedback and Scherzer believes coverage is improving and becoming more balanced. "I am at heart an optimist," she said.

Pat Johnson is, among other things, director of development and communications for Vancouver Hillel.

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