Manipulating the media
A look at how Israel managed the story of its war on Gaza in the media.
In the aftermath of the Gaza conflict, The Listening Post asks whether the media were manipulated and speaks to Avital Leibovich, a prominent Israeli spokesperson during the latest attacks.
For this week’s News Divide we focus on the news coverage of the latest conflict in Gaza, and how it has been affected by the media blockade imposed by Israel.
For 23 days of conflict most of the world’s media were kept outside Gaza, trying to report a huge story from a distance. Only those journalists already working in what turned into a war zone – like those from Al Jazeera – were able to report from inside.
With access limited by the Israelis, many Western news channels depended on local Palestinians to get news out to them.
We look at how Israel managed the Gaza story, how it affected coverage at the time of the war, and the implications this has for both Israel’s reputation and its conduct in the future.
In part two, we interview Major Avital Leibovich, the most prominent Israeli spokesperson during the recent conflict in Gaza.
We put questions to her about Israel’s strategy employed during the latest attacks, and how this related to action taken during the 2006 war in Lebanon. We ask her about Israel’s policy of keeping international journalists out of Gaza, and the significance of allowing the media back in on the eve of Barack Obama’s inauguration as US president – when nobody was watching.
In this week’s Newsbytes, we report on how the BBC has come under fire for refusing to broadcast an aid appeal for Gaza; Barack Obama’s interview with Saudi channel al-Arabiya; Nicolas Sarkozy spending almost $800 million on an initiative to get more young people to read newspapers in France; a Dutch appeal court ruling that Geert Wilders, a member of the Dutch parliament, will face trial for his anti-Islamic statements; and the Vatican launching its own channel on the video-sharing site, YouTube.
Finally, for our Internet Video of the Week, we bring you a final farewell to George Bush. The American comedian Sarah Silverman went on the news channel MSNBC, to make a few sarcastic points about Bush – and also to take a stab at some liberal voices in the US media who are gleeful at the end of this chapter of American political history.