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Yes,
you will lose your country. — CNN reporter Andrea Koppel,
in private, to
Israel-supporter David
Blumberg.
April 23, 2002 5:00 p.m.
MEDIA
MATTERS
Pro-Palestinian bias among CNN ranks? Businessmen claim correspondent told them current crisis is
‘beginning of the end of
Israel’
By Diana Lynne
A CONVERSATION between
CNN State Department correspondent
Andrea Koppel and a group of businessmen attending a conference in Tel
Aviv, in which Koppel is accused of making anti-Israel statements, has sparked a firestorm of debate over media bias and its role in the Mideast crisis.
The conversation, paraphrased in an e-mail by San Francisco businessman
David Blumberg, is reverberating throughout cyberspace. Thousands of readers from all corners of the globe, from Israel to France, China to Brazil, have responded to Blumberg’s message, nearly all supportive of his efforts to uncover the perceived media bias.
“It’s not about Andrea Koppel. This is endemic of the shallowness of journalism in America today,” Blumberg tells
WorldNetDaily. In his e-mail,
Blumberg recounts the conversation that took place at the Intercontinental Hotel as beginning with an American-born Israeli businessman, Adam Ruskin, telling
Koppel about his perception of media distortion.
Blumberg paraphrases Ruskin as taking issue with
“the press that stresses moral
equivalence between Israeli civilian
deaths caused by Palestinian terror and
Palestinian civilian deaths caused by
Israeli military actions. He argued
that Israel has tried to engage in a
peace process since Camp David and has
been double-crossed over and over by
the Palestinian Authority.Further, he
argued the civilian deaths caused by
Palestinians are intentional, whereas
the deaths caused by Israel are mostly
the tragic, unintentional results
caused by Israel trying to defend
itself.”
Blumberg’s paraphrased version of the conversation continues as follows:
Andrea Koppel: “So when Israeli
soldiers slaughter civilians in Jenin,
that is not equivalent?”Adam Ruskin: “What are your
sources? Were you in Jenin? How exactly
do you know there was a
slaughter?”Andrea Koppel: “I just spoke with
my colleagues who were there, and they
told me of the slaughter.”Adam Ruskin: “Did they actually see
the shooting, the bodies?”Andrea Koppel: “Palestinians told
us about the slaughter.”Adam Ruskin: “And you believe them
without evidence.
Could they possibly
be lying and distorting facts?”Andrea Koppel: “Oh, so now they are
all just lying?”
As Blumberg describes, Ruskin became emotional in describing that “his children are afraid, his friends have been murdered, and if this goes on, ‘We could lose our lives or we could lose our country.'”
Blumberg writes that Koppel responded,
“Yes, you will lose your country.”
Blumberg’s paraphrased version of the conversation continues:
David Blumberg: “Did I just hear
you correctly — that you believe the
current crisis will lead to the
destruction of the State of
Israel?”Andrea Koppel: “Yes, I believe we
are now seeing the beginning of the end
of Israel.”
David Irving comments:
OF course, the only reason that the facts of Jenin are in dispute – whether there has been a deliberate slaughter or not, and on what scale, is because
Israeli officers on the spot threatened with lethal force any journalist who tried to get past the Israeli “Defense Force” (“Wehrmacht”) troop-cordons to find out what the facts were. The same intimidation was used against neutral forensic experts like
Professor Pounder; the same methods were used to squelch inquiries by the United Nations
and the International Red Cross.
That being so, the defence that the facts are “in dispute” is not open to Israel or her supporters.
“Careful independent verification of facts” — the Israelis ask for , with regard to Jenin. If historians demand this with regard to a certain other mass slaughter in history, they are liable to be called “Holocaust deniers”. But now the boot is on the other foot..In a written statement, Koppel disputes
Blumberg’s version of the conversation:
“The facts of the conversation were not at all as recounted in the e-mail now circulating. I spoke briefly to an Israeli who was understandably emotional about the situation facing his nation. I agreed with him that this is, indeed, a dangerous time for the State of Israel, something that
Sharon and almost all parties have said. I never referred to the deaths in Jenin as a
“slaughter” and would not have done so because the allegations about what happened there are in dispute.
It was a brief conversation in which I expressed my sympathy for Israelis as well as
Palestinians. I in no way feel that Israel cannot and will not survive, and I of course share the hope that it will be able to live in peace and security. I regret that my words were misunderstood and ask that people judge me by what I report.”
Responding to an e-mail from CNN
Newsgroup’s chairman and CEO Walter
Isaacson, Blumberg writes,
“The larger problem is with
journalism in general, TV journalism
more specifically and coverage of the
Middle East in particular. It is the
‘talking headization’ of journalism. I
am concerned about content and context.
How can someone with her lack of
understanding accurately report on the
issues involved in this ancient and
multifaceted, nuanced part of the
world?Today, the power of such voices
as Andrea Koppel magnifies the
potential for misleading conclusions
born not necessarily from malice, but
from broad conclusions based on shallow
knowledge edited for a short TV
time-slot.”
Blumberg reaffirmed for Isaacson and
WorldNetDaily Koppel’s use of the word
“slaughter,” stating he regrets her denial. He adds that while he paraphrased most of the five to ten-minute conversation, he quoted her verbatim when she made the statement, “Yes, you will lose your country.”
“I stand by David Blumberg’s version of events, and am astounded by Andrea
Koppel’s denials,” Ruskin, the Israeli businessman, told WorldNetDaily. “David and I are both highly educated individuals with good memories.”
Ruskin also pointed out he does not have cable television, did not know who
Andrea Koppel was, and did not previously know Blumberg. “Andrea Koppel should bear in mind that as a broadcast journalist she has tremendous power, and therefore must exercise extreme caution in her work,”
Ruskin continues.
“With regard to Jenin, her
cavalier attitude towards the rudiments
of her profession (careful, independent
verification of
facts, keeping an open mind, not
rushing to judgment, etc.) was sloppy,
unprofessional and irresponsible. She
used the word ‘slaughter’ with regard
to Jenin, before the facts are known.
David and I clearly heard her do so. I
feel as if she has, perhaps
unknowingly, succumbed to the ‘Big Lie’
syndrome: If people repeat a lie enough
times, it becomes the truth.A lie,
unless proven otherwise, is currently
being repeated with regard to Jenin.”
Blumberg says the third businessman who participated in the conversation has confirmed the “key points” of his version and will “go public” at the right time. As for the feedback generated by his e-mail,
Blumberg told WND that 95 percent of the approximately 2,500 messages he had received were “extremely supportive” while a few said they believed Koppel was right in her assessment of the situation.
“A few from press people wrote to encourage me to go easy on Andrea,” says
Blumberg.
“I am extremely concerned about world media threatening Israel’s existence,” Ruskin laments to WND. “I feel that the media holds Israel to standards that are higher than those that they hold even the United
States, while at the same time holding the
Palestinian Authority to the standards of the banana-republic dictatorship that they are. Media-bashing of Israel, particularly by the Europeans, is the greatest threat to Israel’s existence today.”
Ruskin is apparently not alone in his concern. Another circulating e-mail boasts
1,000 cancellations of subscriptions to the Los Angeles Times over a perceived pro-Palestinian bias. Mike
Lange, communications director for the
Times, tells WND, “It appears to have been a one-day grassroots protest of our paper.”
Lange confirms a rough estimate of the cancelled subscriptions logged on April 17
was 1,000, “which represents less than one-tenth of one percent of our average daily subscriptions.” Lange also confirms that the cancellations, in part, represent dissatisfaction with the paper’s Mideast coverage, but said he wasn’t sure how much of it was due to that because they hadn’t
“compiled all the reasons.”
When asked whether the boycott would impact the paper’s Mideast coverage in the future, Lange replied, “We don’t base editorial decisions on this sort of action.” In a written statement,
Times editor John Carroll
maintains, “The Times currently has a large staff of reporters and photographers chronicling the conflict in the Middle East. Our goal is to provide coverage that is both fair and complete.
We feel that we serve our readership best by covering all aspects and points of view. Some readers may take objection to specific articles, but I am confident that, over time, careful readers of this newspaper will get a full, balanced account of these unsettling events.”
Sharon Tzur, director of
Media
Watch International, a non-profit organization launched at the start of the intifada to combat “Palestinian intimidation of the press,” sees a great imbalance in media coverage of the Mideast crisis in favor of the Palestinians. “I would not label a certain network or newspaper as biased,” Tzur says, “but there are elements of agencies …
that are biased and therefore contribute to the public perception of media distortion.”
Tzur named another CNN correspondent as being pro-Palestinian and reports that her group has received complaints about Andrea
Koppel’s coverage. While Tzur says she’s seen an improvement over the past 18
months in CNN’s coverage, she adds, “They have a lot more soul searching and monitoring of their material to do to improve the public’s perception of their balance, objectivity and pursuit of truth.”
Taki:
Under Fire
Jenin:
Access denied to Amnesty International
Forensic Expert – legal action considered
David
Irving: a Radical’s
Diary
“Why
Jenin? Since it housed the suicide-bombers, it had to be deleted from the map of Palestine.
If they had had barns in Jenin, the villagers would have been herded into them and set on fire.”
Grim photos of Ariel Sharon’s new war crime in Jenin
Norman G Finkelstein: First the Carrot, Then the Stick: Behind the
Carnage in Palestine
Islam
Online: Israeli War Crimes In Nablus;
Nine Family Members Buried Under The
Rubble
| West
Bank’s agony reaches into Pittsburgh family:unbiased eye-witness account