EYE ON THE MEDIA: A media conspiracy? No, just fashion By David Bar-Illan (December 16) In a world where events are only as important as the news they make, the difference between media silence and headlines can determine the fate of individuals, issues and nations. This is why public-relations firms and political consultants make fortunes by mastering the alchemy of converting information into news. Yet why some items become major news and others cannot get an inch of print in a supermarket tabloid is an exasperating enigma. In the Israeli context, the conspiracy-minded find it difficult to believe that the almost total media blackout on the exploits of Avishai Raviv, or the press reluctance to address the question of Prime Minister Ehud Barak's campaign finances is not a result of a Machiavellian plot. But the examples of puzzling media choices throughout the world militate against such conspiracy theories. The only reasonable explanation seems to lie in the all-too-human proclivity for following the fashion. In the current vernacular, such socio-intellectual fashion is known as "politically correct." It is not tacit censorship, nor a mysterious cabal that determine what should appear in tomorrow's paper. It is just fashion. It is not fashionable, for example, to expose Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's corrupt regime. This does not mean that no opinion piece bewailing the lot of the Palestinians under his yoke will ever appear, or that a report on his venality and personal wealth will automatically be spiked. But it does mean that a dogged, persistent investigation of his government, a merciless analysis of his actions, and harrowing stories about victims of deprivation, injustice and torture in the Palestinian areas - the sort of stories the media are so expert in delivering - will almost never see the light of day. The reason for this is that the vast majority of editors and journalists support what they consider a peace process, and believe that news that would reflect badly on Arafat will harm this process. Their motive may be noble, but it does not justify discarding the right of the public to know. Nor does it seem to occur to them that by concealing the truth they are helping perpetrate a cruel hoax on the Palestinians. ALL THIS is by way of introduction to two recent cases in which news value is discarded for the sake of political correctness. For more than three years, the PA has been sheltering terrorists responsible for killing American citizens. American law authorizes the administration to do everything in its power to bring such killers to trial. If the government in whose jurisdiction terrorists find shelter refuses to cooperate, American agents ignore local law, apprehend the terrorists and bring them to justice in the US. Ramzy Yousef, one of the two most wanted terrorists in the world (the other is Osama Bin Laden) was hiding in Pakistan when American agents caught him and brought him to New York for trial. Yet the administration, eager not to embarrass Arafat, has avoided asking for the extradition of these terrorists, some of whom are serving in the Palestinian Police. Nor has it acted to apprehend them. This in itself is a news story by any criteria. But the two leading American newspapers, The New York Times and The Washington Post, have totally ignored the issue. Even more astonishing, these papers have consistently ignored a three-year struggle by the American Jewish community, spearheaded by the Zionist Organization of America, to force the administration's hand. Last month, for the first time ever, Congress enacted legislation that addressed the issue of American victims of Palestinian terrorism. This, too, was blacked out by these newspapers. True, the legislation is practically toothless. It does not impose penalties on the PA if it refuses to cooperate. But it does put the State Department on notice. The administration is required to report twice a year on the status and whereabouts of Palestinian terrorists involved in killing Americans. Since some of these terrorists serve in the Palestinian Police and in other official positions, the publication of such reports may have some impact on American voters interested in the Middle East. Yet there was not a word in The New York Times and The Washington Post about the Senate hearings to which Israeli Justice Ministry experts were invited, the petitions jointly signed by such political adversaries as Americans for Peace Now founder Leonard Fein and ZOA president Morton Klein, or the public statements made jointly by Orthodox, Conservative and Reform rabbis. The papers found no interest in the outrageous evasions by administration officials (Secretary of State Madeleine Albright claimed she was "not familiar with the issue," Undersecretary Thomas Pickering was "unaware" of it). Nor did they consider it newsworthy that the US posted rewards for all terrorists wanted for killing Americans, except Palestinians. Even more newsworthy was that some of the administration's most ardent supporters in Congress joined the attack on its appeasement policy. The Congress's attitude could not have been made clearer than when it voted 406-0 for a resolution urging Clinton to press Arafat to hand over killers of Americans. Yet the two major American newspapers considered none of this newsworthy. It is as if there is an unspoken gentlemen's agreement not to rock the boat of the Oslo process. That their silence may cost more American lives does not seem worthy of consideration. AN EVEN more sensational story is being ignored almost as assiduously. It has nothing to do with Israel, but its virtual banishment from the media reflects the same kind of political correctness. In its magazine section last Friday, Yediot Aharonot published a scathing report by Shaul Tzadka about the deterioration of South Africa since the anti-apartheid revolution. Most of the world media, to their credit, enthusiastically and consistently supported this revolution. But now they seem deliberately blind to some of its uglier consequences. These may be embarrassing and sickening, but above all they are a tragedy which must be told. According to Tzadka, today's South Africa leads the world in murders, armed robberies and drug dealing. Sixty-five people are murdered every day. (That's almost 25,000 a year, 10 times higher per capita than in the US.) Six women are raped every hour. Downtown areas are no-man's lands, where whites neither tread nor drive, and where taking a taxi is a dangerous adventure. Gangs of vigilantes take the law into their own hands. They murder crime suspects after bailing them out of jail. Syndicates openly run drug, prostitution, money laundering, protection, diamond smuggling, vehicle hijacking and other rackets. The economy is in a shambles. Foreign investments have stopped. Sixty percent of the work force is jobless. Corruption is rampant, particularly in law-enforcement agencies. The courts are impotent. In the days of the Soviet empire there were sympathizers of the Communist revolution in the Western media who either kept silent about what they knew of the unspeakable Soviet regime, or wrote party-line fiction glorifying it. (Among the latter was the New York Times's first Pulitzer Prize winner, Walter Duranty.) They seemed to believe that the revolution was not only right, but a historic imperative whose injustices would be corrected in time. What they achieved was precisely the opposite. Stalinism triumphed because it felt it could commit its crimes with impunity. It is entirely possible that the world press is again unable to face the side effects of a revolution it supported. But somehow it is difficult to shake off the nagging suspicion that there is also a racist element at play; that had it been a white regime, such tolerance would not have been forthcoming. |
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