naraburns nihil supernum
6mo ago
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #3
This is a refreshed megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
International news organisation Reuters denied on Thursday any suggestion it had prior knowledge of the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israeli civilians and soldiers, in a statement responding to a report by media advocacy group HonestReporting.
"We are aware of a report by HonestReporting and accusations made against two freelance photographers who contributed to Reuters coverage of the Oct. 7 attack," Reuters said. "Reuters categorically denies that it had prior knowledge of the attack or that we embedded journalists with Hamas on Oct 7.
"Reuters acquired photographs from two Gaza-based freelance photographers who were at the border on the morning of Oct. 7, with whom it did not have a prior relationship. The photographs published by Reuters were taken two hours after Hamas fired rockets across southern Israel and more than 45 minutes after Israel said gunmen had crossed the border. "Reuters staff journalists were not on the ground at the locations referred to in the HonestReporting article."
In case you're thinking that 'My staff reporters were not involved in planning or executing a mass murder of civilians' T-shirt has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my shirt", you're not alone. The HonestReporting summary if anything manages to undersell it, which is quite an accomplishment for a news story that involves the phrase 'lynch mob': people have since found on a photographer's facebook page a video of the man on a motorbike where the camera-holder or one of the other riders waves a grenade in-hand.
Journalistic ethics are a hard problem, and a harder one during wartime. It's typical for wartime embeds with conventional military forces to submit to often-onerous restrictions, sometimes to the point of requiring all releases to undergo pre-publication review (which should raise a number of Constitutional questions in the United States but mostly doesn't). There was a pretty major controversy in the mid-2000s after a Paris Match reporting team was on-scene at a missile strike targeting a mail carrier aircraft (Vernier-Palliez claimed that the militants had "set them up" and had no idea that they were going to commit a violent attack... though I think her claimed surprise is more than a little self-serving). And 'journalism' that's really just repackaged press releases from active members of a particular side are common enough outside of combat; the rewards are, if anything, simply greater for politics-by-other-means.
On the other hand, if your war reporting is little more than repackaged press releases from a group that slaughtered and raped civilians, while the reporting papers over all of that, this raises more than a few questions for that reporting's accuracy, as critics of journalists embedded with the IDF have long held. And that doesn't seem to be sinking in, here:
That'd be the guy with the grenade and cheerful embrace from Hamas leadership; CNN remains certain, among other things, that this summary is tots accurate and that the photographer's ties to Hamas' military arm tots don't leave any room for suspicion. Mahmud's main remaining photos on the AP database have at least been corrected to note that the dead 'Israeli soldier' was in fact a pacifist Israeli-German dual-citizen.
Okay, but these people weren't exactly weekly bylines. Indeed, they're just one of countless on-the-ground randos that various press agencies sent money and lent legitimacy. They're also just the ones dumb enough and unlucky enough to get caught, but let's leave that aside for now. One bit of that legitimacy is people believing the repackaged press releases, but a deeper one is the ability to wear and mark press credentials, a matter that has historically been considered worth protecting. There's even been clear cases where the IDF has wrongly killed journalists, and been criticized at length for it.
That just became far more difficult to maintain as a norm.
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Notes -
Reuters Reports:
The AP has a similar statement.
In case you're thinking that 'My staff reporters were not involved in planning or executing a mass murder of civilians' T-shirt has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my shirt", you're not alone. The HonestReporting summary if anything manages to undersell it, which is quite an accomplishment for a news story that involves the phrase 'lynch mob': people have since found on a photographer's facebook page a video of the man on a motorbike where the camera-holder or one of the other riders waves a grenade in-hand.
Journalistic ethics are a hard problem, and a harder one during wartime. It's typical for wartime embeds with conventional military forces to submit to often-onerous restrictions, sometimes to the point of requiring all releases to undergo pre-publication review (which should raise a number of Constitutional questions in the United States but mostly doesn't). There was a pretty major controversy in the mid-2000s after a Paris Match reporting team was on-scene at a missile strike targeting a mail carrier aircraft (Vernier-Palliez claimed that the militants had "set them up" and had no idea that they were going to commit a violent attack... though I think her claimed surprise is more than a little self-serving). And 'journalism' that's really just repackaged press releases from active members of a particular side are common enough outside of combat; the rewards are, if anything, simply greater for politics-by-other-means.
On the other hand, if your war reporting is little more than repackaged press releases from a group that slaughtered and raped civilians, while the reporting papers over all of that, this raises more than a few questions for that reporting's accuracy, as critics of journalists embedded with the IDF have long held. And that doesn't seem to be sinking in, here:
That'd be the guy with the grenade and cheerful embrace from Hamas leadership; CNN remains certain, among other things, that this summary is tots accurate and that the photographer's ties to Hamas' military arm tots don't leave any room for suspicion. Mahmud's main remaining photos on the AP database have at least been corrected to note that the dead 'Israeli soldier' was in fact a pacifist Israeli-German dual-citizen.
Okay, but these people weren't exactly weekly bylines. Indeed, they're just one of countless on-the-ground randos that various press agencies sent money and lent legitimacy. They're also just the ones dumb enough and unlucky enough to get caught, but let's leave that aside for now. One bit of that legitimacy is people believing the repackaged press releases, but a deeper one is the ability to wear and mark press credentials, a matter that has historically been considered worth protecting. There's even been clear cases where the IDF has wrongly killed journalists, and been criticized at length for it.
That just became far more difficult to maintain as a norm.
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