[Announce-DAN] FW: [FAIR-L] ACTION ALERT: Occupied territories no longer "occupied" on TV new s

["Darrell Gorsuch" <dgorsuch@earthlink.net>]

----------
From: FAIR-L <FAIR-L@FAIR.ORG>
To: FAIR-L@LISTSERV.AMERICAN.EDU
Subject: [FAIR-L] ACTION ALERT: Occupied territories no longer "occupied" on
TV new s
Date: Fri, Nov 3, 2000, 12:27 PM


                                 FAIR-L
                    Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting
               Media analysis, critiques and news reports





ACTION ALERT:
Missing from Mideast Coverage:
Occupied territories no longer "occupied" on TV news

November 3, 2000

The turmoil in the Middle East has been a top international story on
television news since fighting broke out between Palestinians and Israeli
troops and settlers in the West Bank and Gaza in late September. But amid
the constant flow of footage showing violent confrontations between
Palestinians and Israeli soldiers, a central fact of the conflict has been
missing from almost all network TV coverage: The West Bank and Gaza are
occupied territory.

The three major networks' evening news broadcasts-- ABC's World News
Tonight, NBC Nightly News and the CBS Evening News-- aired 99 stories
mentioning the West Bank or the Gaza Strip from the outbreak of fighting on
September 28 through November 2. But only four of these stories informed
viewers that Israel occupies those lands.

Virtually the entire world, including the United States and the UN Security
Council, regards Israel's continued occupation of Palestinian land seized in
the 1967 war as a violation of international law. Even Israel does not
contend that the West Bank and Gaza are part of its national territory,
instead referring to them euphemistically as "administered territories."

Yet in a typical 90-second news story reporting on "Palestinian violence"
(as it is routinely called) against Israeli occupation soldiers, viewers are
not told that Palestinians are fighting against a military occupation. The
right to use force to resist foreign occupation is universally recognized
and enshrined in international law.

During Iraq's seven-month occupation of Kuwait in 1990-91, TV journalists
had little difficulty recognizing this principle. On ABC, Peter Jennings
forthrightly referred to the country as "Iraqi-occupied Kuwait." "Tell us
about the resistance to the Iraqi occupation," Jennings asked in an
interview with a Kuwaiti living under Iraqi rule (World News Tonight,
9/6/90).

On CBS, Dan Rather reported that Westerners who had left the emirate "are
bringing back stories of an occupied but still unconquered nation" (CBS
Evening News, 9/11/90), while his correspondent in the Persian Gulf reported
on Kuwaitis who "have vowed to return to resist the Iraqi occupation" and
reports of "attacks and ambushes on Iraqi soldiers by a fledgling Kuwaiti
resistance" (CBS This Morning, 8/23/90).

Yet in the Israeli-occupied territories, CBS correspondents today talk of
"Israeli soldiers under daily attack"; "Israel...again feeling isolated and
under siege"; and, in one case where Israeli occupation troops abandoned a
fortified position in the West Bank, "Israelis have surrendered territory to
Palestinian violence" (CBS Evening News, 10/4/00, 10/8/00, 10/7/00).

About 164 people have died in the conflict so far, at least 152 of them
Palestinians killed by Israeli settlers or occupation troops.

Some outlets have even taken the step of referring to occupied Palestinian
land as part of Israel. Tom Brokaw (NBC Nightly News, 10/2/00) introduced a
report about "the ever-widening eruptions of violence in Israel." He then
went to NBC correspondent Martin Fletcher, who explained that Palestinians
were "storming an Israeli army outpost in Gaza" and "setting siege to
another army post in the West Bank."

When Israel's internationally uncontested status as an occupying power on
Palestinian lands is omitted from the media's coverage, Palestinian
rock-throwing is made to look like random aggression, and Israel's use of
lethal weaponry can be portrayed as a legitimate response to provocation.
The real status of Israel's presence was explained by the United Nations
Security Council last month, when it unanimously called upon "Israel, the
occupying power, to abide scrupulously by its legal obligations" under the
Geneva Conventions to protect human rights in the occupied territories.

ACTION: Please contact the three networks and ask them to clearly identify
the status of the West Bank and Gaza as occupied territories under
international law when they report on the conflict in the Middle East.

CONTACT:
NBC Nightly News
Phone: 212-664-4971 or 202-885-4259
Fax: 202-362-2009
mailto:Nightly@nbc.com

ABC World News Tonight
Phone: 212-456-4040
Fax: 212-456-2795
mailto:netaudr@abc.com

CBS Evening News
Phone: 212-975-3691, 202 457-4385
Fax: 212-975-1893
mailto:audsvcs@cbs.com

As always, please remember that your comments are taken more seriously if
you maintain a polite tone. Please cc fair@fair.org with your
correspondence.

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