Hold the news media accountable, too!

Submitted by Dr RJP (United States), Aug 1, 2006 at 20:56

Oh, how low has the news media sunk since Gulf War II. They;ve gone from having reporters embedded within every military operation to the current Middle Eastern conflict where they have been relying solely on secondhand reports from Lebanese "officials" and bystanders who are hardly unbiased. You can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times that US reporters have interviewed members of the IDF instead of Hezbollah sympathizers.

The media continues to blame Israel for the deaths at Qana, calling it a result of their deliberate bombing -- where are the investigative journalists? You might think that a seven hour descrepancy between the time when Israeli jets finished their attacks and when the building collapsed would be worth investigating further. At the very least the time discrepancy begs the question, "Why did it take so long to evacuate the building, if, in fact, there were casualties inside?"

We know that reporters still refer to Jenin as an Israeli massacre where hundreds of innocent people were killed when, in fact, less than two dozen people died and all were terrorists . Why should reporters accept, prima facie, that there were ANY civilians in the building in the first place? Palestinians made the world think that a massacre occurred at Jenin so why should this be any different?

No matter how you slice it, Hezbollah and the government of Lebanon have the blood of all civilians on their hands, and esepcially those at Qana, no matter how many.

A Hezbollah rocket landed on top of a children's hospital in Israel, but fortunately, everyone had been evaquated beforehand. Where was the news reporters on that event? Does Israel also have to kill 60 of its own citizens to get some media attention? Is that the world's idea of "proportionality?"

At least Al Jazeera makes no pretense at being fair and balanced.

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