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Sept. 14, 2007
Media and the Lebanon war
Coverage should be a balance of truth and patriotism, writers
say.
RHONDA SPIVAK
According to Nachum Barnea, "There are two kinds of journalism
when Israel is at war. There is journalism with no boundaries or
there is patriotic journalism."
Barnea, who writes for the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronoth,
was one several leading Israeli journalists taking part in a symposium
on the accountability of the media in the Second Lebanon War, held
this summer at Tel-Aviv University. The symposium was held in memory
of Ha'aretz military correspondent Ze'ev Shiff, who passed
away on June 19.
"Between us, I am a Jew," said Barnea. "In wartime,
a journalist has an additional obligation [not just to report on
events], but to take Israel's security needs into consideration."
Defence Minister Ehud Barak, who spoke at the event, praised Shiff
as being a journalist who was a patriot and an Israeli who was concerned
with security. As Barak said, "Ze'ev Schiff didn't ever hesitate
to criticize the IDF.... He was always at the forefront of giving
harsh criticism from our side. [But] he was responsible in what
he published and in what he didn't."
Barak indicated that there were times when Shiff decided "it
wasn't right to publish in order that we [the Israel Defence Forces]
could repair [the situation]."
In his remarks, Barnea noted that the war last summer was different
than earlier wars, when there were no cellphones. "In this
war, a soldier made two phone calls, one to his mother ("Emaleh")
and the other to "Carmela" (a nickname for the media),"
he said. "Practically everyone had the cellphone number of
a journalist. The information journalists received didn't arrive
in small leaks, but flowed in streams.
"As a journalist, you can't ignore the information you get.
But there were some journalists who were there when Katyushas fell
and gave out too much information too fast. This can interfere with
security. As journalists, we have to consider which information
we want to get out to the other side," he said. In Barnea's
view, journalists have a duty to subject the military to criticism,
but also to remember the expression "Sheket yorim"
("Quiet, they are shooting").
Barnea said that when he interviewed Palestinians, they told him
that there was military information that they got from the Internet.
"Some Israeli journalists reported on the war as if it were
a soccer game," he said, disapprovingly.
Barnea's sentiments were echoed by Knesset foreign affairs and defence
committee chairman Tzachi Hanegbi (Kadima), who testified before
the Winograd committee that the IDF ought to have closed off more
areas to reporters. "It is inconceivable that broadcasters
will report from Metulla and tell the enemy what they think the
army is going to do next," he said.
Motti Dankner, an Israeli photographer who attended the event, agreed
with Barnea's assessment. "Everything about this war, including
confidential IDF maps, could be found on Google," he said.
"Israeli journalists were willing to sell anything, and that's
how information got passed onto Hezbollah."
When asked why he thought this was the case, Dankner responded:
"It's not the first time in Jewish history that we were our
own worst enemies. Why was the Temple destroyed? When Moses was
up on Mount Sinai receiving the Torah, what were the children of
Israel doing? They were making the golden calf."
Amos Harel, defence correspondent for Ha'aretz, said that
the path of patriotic journalism as espoused by Schiff was the correct
path for a journalist to follow.
"As a journalist, I have to try to tell the truth," he
declared. "There are times when I know that, even though Nablus
is only one hour away, most Israelis don't know what's going on
there. There are times I have to tell them, so they can't ignore
it."
At the same time, however, Harel added that "Ze'ev Schiff understood
that there was more at stake than just tomorrow's headline. He was
professional, but along with that he had the ability to see the
wider picture."
Harel criticized some Israeli journalists who believe that, "The
IDF isn't something to be proud of," and who "automatically
believe that the IDF is lying and the other side is correct."
He remembered a talk with Schiff in which "I moaned about the
pace of events in the intifada. Then he told me: Think of covering
the events in Sinai, how hard it was then, with no mobile phones
or beepers."
Harel noted that, in the last number of years, when he and other
Israeli journalists went up to visit Israel's northern border, they
did not have a real understanding of what Hezbollah was up to. "We
[journalists] did not know enough about what was happening on our
northern border.... Ze'ev Shiff understood more than other journalists,"
Harel said.
"Today, we [journalists] still don't have a clear enough picture
vis-a-vis Syria," he added.
Added Israel Press Council president and former Supreme Court justice
Dalia Dorner: "Freedom of expression cannot be unlimited, but
must be balanced with rules of ethics. If journalists follow [Schiff's]
lead, the press council's tribunals will be out of work."
Rhonda Spivak is a Winnipeg freelance writer who spends
several months of the year in Israel.
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