Mediawatch

Chazan row not about JPost

The ousting of Naomi Chazan, the president of the New Israel Fund, as a columnist for the Jerusalem Post is no normal storm in a media teacup. The row is much more a symptom of the bitterness which has erupted over the role of Israeli NGOs in framing some of the content of the Goldstone Report than the politics of the Jerusalem Post and its British-born editor-in-chief David Horovitz.

In praise of nuanced debate

Last month, I received a puzzled text message from an intelligent friend who is a leading political commentator on a national newspaper. He had just read an article in the FT by Tony Judt of New York University (NYU), who seemed to be expressing some sympathy with the controversial views of Professor Sholmo Sand who, in turn, has challenged the Zionist narrative of Jewish history.

The Telegraph beats them all

When the UK Press Awards come around next year, there can be only one serious candidate for Newspaper of the Year: the Daily Telegraph. It may have paid for its scoop on MPs’ expenses, but the way it executed the story was much admired. Under the guidance of Tony Gallagher, the deputy editor just elevated to editor, it showed remarkable technical skills and proved that even in the digital age newspapers are still capable setting an agenda.

The Levene coverage stinks

In some respects it has not been a bad financial crisis for Jews. After all, several of the heroes who rebuilt the system post the great panic — including the Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke and International Monetary Fund boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn — have been drawn from our community. But if you followed the media, this would have barely registered.

Painting a distorted picture of the IDF

One of the most enduring and inspiring images in the history of modern Israel is that of Rabbi Shlomo Goren, dressed in IDF military uniform, sounding the shofar at the Kotel in Jerusalem on its liberation in 1967. Goren was IDF chief rabbi from 1948 to 1972, giving lie to the idea that religion in Israel’s army is something which began with Operation Cast Lead in Gaza in January.

This headline might be all you read

The importance of headlines in framing the narrative of an event is critical. The only reason, for instance, that some people still believe that Israel was involved in a “massacre” at the Jenin refugee camp on the West Bank in April 2002 is because the word appeared in a front-page Guardian headline.

Pressure group must keep up pressure

The need for scrupulous monitoring of coverage of the core Middle East conflict in the British media has been evident since the outbreak of the second Intifada in autumn 2000. But it was not until the second Israel-Lebanon war in the summer of 2006 that a group of philanthropists and like-minded young professionals decided to move into the vacuum.

Israel map row marks height of hypocrisy

When it comes to the Middle East, nothing is more important than maps. When you visit the Israeli Foreign Ministry for a briefing on peace initiatives, officials unfurl large maps showing every possible outcome, including charts with neatly drawn corridors linking the West Bank to Gaza. At the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Jerusalem, a presentation shows the proliferation of security barriers across the region, which it regards as an affront to peace. As much of an affront is the fact that many of them are unmanned but still counted.

Trusting the BBC just a little bit more

There has been a great deal of triumphalism on the web and in print at the criticism levelled at BBC Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen by the guardians of impartiality on the BBC Trust. Certainly, it is encouraging that the BBC Trust is taking its regulatory role more seriously. In the pre-Hutton era, BBC governors saw their role as defending management and editorial from outside interference. Now it has shown it deals with complaints carefully and is determined to maintain journalistic standards.