PMWATCH - April 15 2002 -- As the devastated town of Jenin is slowly opened up to the media, after the IDF's frantic efforts to destroy as much incriminating evidence as possible, the crucial question we should be challenging the media with now is whether or not the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, will be allowed to come out.

Will the atrocitices of Jenin get the same attention, the same banner headlines, the same front page gripping pictures of human suffering that we are served everytime a suicide bombing takes place?

Reporters on the ground, as experience has shown, will try to do their job as best they can. But how the story is rendered in the end, how it plays out, how much space and prominence it will be given in the final cut, is in the hands of editors, directors, and producers back in the home base of the various newspapers and studios.

A very brief example that perfectly illustrates this are the comments from Newsweek journalist Josh Hammer today, who was reporting in the ground from Jenin and speaking live with FoxNews. He reported, without mincing his words, that what he saw with his own eyes and what he heard from credible witnesses, "frankly simply did not square with what the IDF has been saying", and that a lot of the detruction was "needless" and "malicious". And yet, the anchors and commentators there continued to present what they had just heard from a credible reporter and what the attack dogs of Ariel Sharon -- e.g., Raanan Ghissin, Dore Gold, Alon Pinkus, and their chief, Benjamin Netanyahu -- keep on repeating as competing accounts that are equally credible.

Please impress the media to play this story as straight as possible and to render the horror of Jenin as faithfully as possible.

War crimes deserve the front page and the lead story, and this is what the US media should and must deliver.

Fill in the interface below and clock send.. Your letter will be sent to the emails below.

Please also consider calling your paper. To find phone numbers of your foreign desk editor or ombudsman, please go to: http://www.pmwatch.org/pmw/volunteer/calling.html

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Palestine Media Watch
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