Yaakov Astor 

It is well documented that the mainstream Western press has a penchant for slanting the news about Israel in an unfair and decidedly negative light. When it comes to Israel, the public is not  so much getting the news as the “views.” In the trenches fighting the bias stand a handful of media watchdogs: organizations working to make sure the media reports on events accurately.

ZMAN

 interviewed the directors at some of the leading watchdogs to gain an inside look at how they work… at the Jews fighting the “news.” 

They’re in the trenches fighting the bias

 

Jews Fighting The “News”

sometimes not even that. Perhaps the only state in history to do so.(Note: McGraw-Hill included the false map in their 2013 textbook,

Global Politics: Engaging a Complex World.

 Thanks to a website posting by Elder of Ziyon in March 2016, people complained and shortly afterward the company said that they would stop selling the book and all existing inven-tory would be destroyed, noting that “the map did not meet our academic standards.” Kudos to McGraw-Hill for their honesty and professionalism, but the question is how such an egregious mistake could have made

it into one of their textbooks in the irst

place.)Although MSNBC aired a retraction and apology four days later, the damage was done. This serves as another example of how big-time Western media promotes its anti-Israel bias. They often present false information and/or outright lies

now 

, only to apologize

later 

. Ironically, in so doing, they are guilty of an accusation made by argu-ably Western civilization’s greatest leader (see

 Zman

 70), Winston Churchill: “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth gets a chance to put on its trousers.”

O

livia noticed something strange about the map accompanying an article on the

NPR

 

News

 site. In the place where Israel should have been listed, it said “Palestine.” Rather than just contacting

NPR

 to complain, she contacted HonestReporting, an organization which monitors anti-Israel bias in the news, and alerted them to the map. Shortly after Olivia submitted her alert, HonestReporting publicized the error on its web page, and media outlets such as

The Times of Israel, Jerusalem Post,

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Israel National News

 and

Breitbart News

 picked it up. Suddenly,

NPR

 found itself the object of unwanted publicity… and the recipient of multiple complaints.Not long after, they removed the offend-ing map and added an editor’s note saying that citing “Palestine” instead of Israel was a mistake. In the same note, they offered an explanation, made an apology—and cited HonestReporting’s role in bringing it to the editor’s attention. This highlights the need for organizations like HonestReporting, which is among a small handful of “media watchdogs” monitoring the news. One of the greatest challenges facing the Jewish world today is an ever-present anti-Israel bias in the “news”—in the information pumped out every day to millions and millions of people through the mainstream news outlets. Evidence for this bias is so overwhelming (see accompany-ing article) that it is no exaggeration to say that, when it comes to Israel, most people today are not reading the “news” so much as the “views”—of journalists and editors with a penchant for slanting the news about Israel in an unfair and decidedly negative light (whether by accident, by design or by default).No one should fool themselves that this bias stops at negativity about the State of Israel. The average reader equates Israel with Jews. If the news is demonizing Israel, it is demonizing Jews; it is increasing anti-Semitism. Furthermore, sometimes outright anti-Semitic propaganda (such as Holocaust denial, Temple denial, stereotyping, etc.) enters the public domain in the guise of “news.”All this highlights the need for organiza-tions monitoring the news. Of course, when

it comes to inding genuine favor in the eyes

of

Hashem

 and others, nothing compares to living lives of

kiddush Hashem

 and real-izing our full potential in Torah and

mitzvos

. Nevertheless, as a form of

hishtadlus

 (normal efforts), it is good to know that there are

groups like HonestReporting ighting bias. And it is a ight. The public consciousness

of the average person is assaulted daily with a stream of disinformation, whether due to ignorance, journalistic sloppiness or a barely concealed agenda to demonize Israel and Jews. Therefore, these media watchdogs perform a valuable service and have their work cut out for them. They are Jews liter-ally

 ighting

 the “news.”

Honest Reporting

HonestReporting (HR) was born from Jewish outrage at the beginning of the “Second Intifada” (around the year 2000).

 Zman

 interviewed HR’s managing editor, Simon Plosker, to get an inside look at their operation. We began by asking how they started.“A couple of students in northwest London got fed up about the media-bashing of Israel in the UK press and elsewhere,” Plosker relates. “They started enlisting their friends and family, and basically sent out alerts asking people to send letters to the editor to complain about what was going on at the

BBC 

, the

Guardian

 and other media outlets. Eventually, the list grew so large that HR became an independent organization.”Plosker made

aliyah

 from London shortly

after Muslim terrorists lew planes into

the Twin Towers in 2001. He had previ-

ously worked as a public affairs oficer for

an organization that represented the Jewish community in the UK. When he came to

Eretz Yisrael 

, he worked for other nonproits, and

spent some time as the IDF’s spokesperson. Then he was offered a job at HonestReport-ing, where he has worked for the past 10 years.With its 140,000 email subscribers from diverse backgrounds and with articles that

inluence reporting by the world’s major

news organizations, it is surprising to discover that HR operates primarily out of

a small Jerusalem ofice. “In terms of size,

we’re pretty small,” Plosker tells us. “We

have about ifteen full-time and ive part-time staff. There’s about ive or six people on

the editorial staff, including a senior editor, associate editor, senior researcher, a graphic artist….”Plosker tells us what a typical morning at HonestReporting looks like:

 At the beginning of the day, we get together and trawl the news for content. We go through all the major titles in the English-speaking world. That requires reading everything in the American, Canadian, British, Australian presses, just to name a few. And we also read the wire  feeds as well:

AP, AFP

 and various others. That will give us a snapshot of what’s  going on.

If the HR staff inds an article that

displays real bias or factual errors—“which happens on many occasions, unfortunately,” Plosker interjects—they write an analysis, distribute it to their mailing list and publish it on their website. In addition to proactively scanning the news, HR also gets “alerts” from readers such as Olivia who discovered the distorted map at

NPR

. A similar alert was sent to HonestReporting in November 2015, when

CNN 

 published an article that included a map excluding Israel and labeling the region “Palestina.” Plosker explains that since the article was on

CNN Money 

, not their news page, “HR staff would not normally have looked there. But one of our subscribers actually saw it and alerted us to it.” (The mainstream media has a penchant for publishing maps that wipe Israel out of existence – implementing in paper and electronic form the dreams of the Iranian leadership and Islamists in general. Besides

NPR

 and

CNN 

, in March 2015, the Discovery network’s Science Channel displayed a map that expanded the borders of Jordan to encompass the entire area of Israel, with no mention of Israel. At the beginning of 2015, publishing giant HarperCollins

deliberately 

 wiped Israel off the map to appease Arab-Muslim customers [see

 Zman

 69 about “Map Propaganda”]. And there have been other examples.)When we asked Plosker to share what he considers HR’s greatest successes, he paused.

Wow… I have to admit that, after 10  years, a lot of it becomes one large blur

and it’s very dificult to think of speciic

things. We’ve had all sorts of major successes that stand out. One that comes to mind… a couple of years ago, CNN’s senior Middle East editor, Octavia Nasr, tweeted how upset she was about the death of one of Hezbol-lah’s founders, a sheik in Lebanon. We were appalled that someone at CNN could be openly sympathizing with a terrorist organization. We exposed it, and 48 hours later she was no longer employed by CNN…. Another interesting one from a couple of years ago was when the UK’s

Guardian

 

This

NPR 

 

News

 map replaces Israel with “Palestine.” When HonestReporting alerted the public to the map,

NPR 

 withdrew it and offered a public apology. Jim Clancy resigned after 34 years at

CNN 

 as correspondent and anchorman when he went on what has been described as “a drunken rant against Zionists…” Moshe: Please call me avout this captionAn example of the outstanding contribution HonestReporting’s graphic department makes to the cause.

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Clancy resigned after 34 years at

CNN 

. Even though the news giant made no mention of the scandal when it responded to the sudden resignation of its long-time correspondent and anchor, clearly

CNN 

 was no longer comfortable being associated with someone who expressed views that came awfully close to outright anti-Semitism. On one hand, that’s a good sign. One the other hand, the fact that a person with such a hidden bias could play an integral part of the organization for so long is not. It makes one wonder how many people with similar views are constructing the news that the public gets.

Even though I can’t prove necessarily that that journalist is an anti-Semite, I can prove that he or she is not a very  professional journalist. One thing we make clear is that we hold the journalists up to journalistic standards. … There are certain categories [of actions that consti-tute a violation of journalistic standards]. It can be things like distorted facts, lack of context or a biased headline. One of the major things that has come out of the last couple of months of terror attacks against Israelis, has been the headlines. There’s a trend whereby the Palestinian terrorists are portrayed as the victims. So the headline will always start with, for example, “Palestinian shot dead by Israeli forces”—and as an after-thought, “Well, yes, he happened to be carrying out a stabbing at the time.” There’s very little emphasis on the Israeli victims themselves. Invariably, Israel is portrayed as the aggressor in all this—even though he [the Israeli] is actu-ally trying to defend himself. This is actually a very common thing that goes back over the years. We’ve seen it in numerous operations in Gaza, where Hamas launches rockets against Israel, and the headlines are all about the Israeli response….

One very recent example: On May 5, 2016, HR reported on a classic headline

newspaper incorrectly referred to Tel Aviv as Israel’s capital [because they did not want to recognize Israeli sovereignty over  Jerusalem –ed]. We contacted the

Guard-ian

 , but they refused to change it. Then we took it to the UK’s Press Complaints Commission. They also ruled in favor of the

Guardian

 , which we thought was incredible! We then launched legal  proceedings. Eventually, the Press Complaints Commission was forced to change its ruling, and that in turn forced the

Guard-ian

 to change its entire style guide. Now if we catch any newspaper referring to Tel Aviv as the capital of Israel, we don’t merely have to appeal to common sense to get it corrected, but cite an actual legal  precedent as well.

 We asked Plosker who some of the worst offenders of an anti-Israel bias in the Brit-ish press were. “Editorially, the

Guardian

 is certainly antagonistic toward Israel.

The Independent 

 is also problematic,” he replied.When we asked him about the

BBC 

, he

clariied that their bias “is much subtler.

Rather than being openly antagonistic, they tend to leave out pieces of context. They also portray Israel as the aggressor through [distorted] headlines. It’s a ‘drip-drip’ effect. People still trust the

BBC

and believe its information is accurate because it claims to be impartial, whereas the

Guardian

 and

Independent 

 don’t. Unfortunately, since the

BBC 

 has a worldwide reputation and reach, they make a very big impact.”Plosker doesn’t believe in blaming all of the anti-Israel bias on anti-Semitism:

 A lot of times it’s ignorance. Journal-ists come here without any understanding of the history of the region, or anything else for that matter, and they are taken in by the prevailing narrative, which, for a few decades now, has been one of Israeli occupation and Palestinian victimhood…. That is ignorance. On the other hand, we see that certain newspapers allow articles to be published

which are incredibly anti-Israel and illed

with libels against the country. Then you start to wonder what’s going on behind the scenes….

As an illustration, he cited the case of a now-former

CNN 

 anchorman:

We’ve seen people like Jim Clancy  from CNN, for example. A year ago February [2015], he went on what looked like a drunken rant against Zionists…. Sometimes you can tell more about what’s going on in a journalist’s mind  from 140 characters [the text limit on a Twitter post, where Clancy expressed his thoughts] than you can from an article he wrote….

 

 Journalists [on Twitter] really have no one editing what they are doing. It’s literally coming straight from their keyboard…. It’s what people are really  feeling and… we get a pretty good insight sometimes.

Following a very public shaming, Clancy’s “tweets” were systematically removed, culminating with the eventual closure of his entire Twitter account. A few days later,

In November 2015,

CNN 

 published an article that included a map excluding Israel and labeling the region “Palestina.” Discovery network’s Science Channel erased Israel from its map on a program originally broadcast in March 2015.

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