Israeli and Palestinian loyalists agreed last week that the Star Tribune’s coverage is biased. For different reasons, of course.
The pro-Israelis were vexed by a Nov. 11 photo caption on Page A2 headlined, “At gunpoint in the West Bank.” Those words were taken from the Agence France-Presse transmittal.
The Star Tribune caption said, “Israeli soldiers searched a shop in Hebron but didn’t make any arrests. They spent about 30 minutes searching the premises and questioning the two Palestinian boys above.”
The caption ended with the words used in a Page A1 box: “A Palestinian man went on a shooting rampage in northern Israel, killing five people, including two children, Israeli officials said. Turn to A4.”
Julie Swiler, Jewish Community Relations Council spokesperson, wrote: “The photo and the cutline were offensive and inappropriate. The cutline describing the boys is inaccurate and inflammatory. Consider the angle the photo is taken at and you realize that the soldiers are in front of the boys and their weapons are not pointed at them. The cutline draws the conclusion that the boys are a target of the investigation and furthers a belief that the Israelis are the aggressors and therefore wrong.”
Comment: That the weapons seem to be pointed a degree away from the youths is moot. Are the Israelis aggressors because they sought to find the killers? Nonsense.
But the caption failed to explicitly connect the search to the killings.
Swiler continued: “The cutline describes the murderer as a Palestinian man on a rampage. Ridiculous. To reference that massacre and not mention that it is the work of a terrorist organization is shoddy and misleading.”
Comment: It would have been shoddy and misleading, to mention just a few journalistic maladies, to report that the killer represented a terrorist organization without, at a minimum, attributing such a statement to an Israeli or Palestinian official.
Swiler added: “We question why the photo was chosen for page A2. The news out of Israel was the shooting on the kibbutz. Why were there no photos of the real story of the day?”
Picture editor Glen Stubbe said he selected the picture because “it illustrated the news story of the day, Israeli soldiers were searching Palestinian neighborhoods after the kibbutz killings. I also was drawn to the photo because of the expressions in the youth’s faces when armed soldiers came to their shop.”
Comment: I reviewed a cross-section of the 61 pictures transmitted that day from the danger zone. They ranged from terror registered in the expressions of Israelis and Palestinians to Israeli corpses and Gaza Strip destruction from Israeli bombs. Selecting only one picture was a task I would not have relished.
Palestinian complainants were upset with a two-deck headline on the Saturday, Nov. 16, front page. The top line said, “12 die in ‘Sabbath massacre.’ ” The second deck said, “Palestinians ambush settlers and soldiers in Hebron.”
The story from the New York Times Saturday national edition said that “Palestinian snipers ambushed Jewish settlers,” and a paragraph later added, “15 people were wounded, hospital officials said.” They were not identified.
The Sunday Times reported: “None of the worshipers were among the dead.”
The Sunday Star Tribune story from the Boston Globe said: “Israeli forces backed by tanks rolled into Hebron and imposed a tight security Saturday, responding to a deadly ambush Friday night on security forces protecting Jews returning from the Tomb of the Patriarchs.”
The 10th paragraph said: “No civilians were among the casualties.”
Monday’s Star Tribune story from the Washington Post specifically addressed the issue of bad information:
“The government initially said the attack was a massacre of worshipers . . . [but] that account has been discredited by local Israeli commanders and settlement leaders.”
Roger Buoen, deputy managing editor, said the quotation marks in Saturday’s headline setting off ‘Sabbath massacre’ “clearly indicated to readers that it was a source’s description of the event — in this case, the Israeli government — not the newspaper’s.”
Comment: I wish the Star Tribune’s Sunday story had emphasized the Israeli government’s correction.
