Palestine Media Watch
     
 
Petition to the media
Petitioning the media to cover the Palestinian-Israeli conflict fairly

Below is a petition Palestine Media Watch will be faxing to all the major US media outlets in North America, every single Thursday starting on Thursday, January 3, 2002. The petition details the major journalistic breaches US editors and journalists have been guilty of and calls on them to addresses thoses breaches.

We hope that the list of signatories will grow every week.

If you have not already signed, please do now by entering your data below.
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LETTER TO THE MEDIA
Dear Editor,

We, the undersigned, wish to communicate our dissatisfaction with your coverage of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. We believe that both your editorial and your news coverage of the conflict fail to respect and meet some very basic journalistic standards and practices.

Below is a detailed list of what we believe are flaws in your coverage.

Yours,

Ahmed Bouzid
Palestine Media Watch
pmwatch@zworg.com

[LIST OF SIGNATORIES FOLLOWS]

List of journalistic shortcomings in your coverage of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict

In your EDITORIALS we noticed the following:

  • Rare mention of the fact that the Palestinians are under Israeli occupation
  • NO mention of human rights findings
  • NO mention of UN findings
  • NO mention of the disproportionality in victims of the violence between Palestinians and Israelis
  • NO mention of suffering of Palestinian people while often mentioning suffering of Israelis
  • NO mention of the fact that the United States provides significant military and economic aid to Israel
  • Insisting that Israeli offers in Camp David were "generous" even though the great majority of Palestinians and their supporters do not think so

In your publication of COLUMNS on the conflict, we noticed the following:

  • The great discrepancy between the amount of space give to pro-Israeli columns vs pro-Palestinian rights columns

  • Allowing shockingly violent language against Palestinians to be printed but holding pro-Palestinian writers to a much higher standard of restraint

In your NEWS COVERAGE, we noticed the following:

  • Never showing maps depicting the so-called "generous" Israeli offers
  • Lack of adequate quote space in stories from the Palestinian Authority
  • Lack of adequate quote space in stories from Palestinian civilians
  • Use of “retaliation”/“response” when describing Israeli actions but never using “retaliation”/“response” when describing Palestinian actions
  • Rarely using the word “occupied” when describing WB/Gaza/Jerusalem
  • Rarely describing Gilo as an illegal settlement; instead, it is described as a suburb/neighborhood of Jerusalem
  • Using "areas" or "territory" when refering to land where Palestinian dwell, but the more human "neighborhood" when referring to land where Israelis dwell
  • Using the word “terrorist” for Palestinians but not for Israelis -- preferring instead to use terms such as "vigilante"
  • Humanizing Israeli deaths but not Palestinian deaths
  • More photographs of Israeli civilian suffering and not as many for Palestinians
  • Using the word “crossfire” to explain cause of death of Palestinians --- but rarely using it to describe Israeli deaths
  • Minimizing mention of Palestinian cooperation, and maximizing mention of Israeli cooperation
  • Rarely mentioning expressions of regret from Palestinians, but always from Israelis
  • Rarely, if ever, mentioning Ariel Sharon’s war crimes and the legal proceedings against him in Belgium