I seem to recall, in the past few months, a fairly major piece by someone, Talking about how the only journalists who get to report from within Gaza are Palestinians who are, obviously, under the watchful eye and control of Hamas.
I need to find that piece for another piece I’m doing. And I can’t. At least I can’t on a superficial look. Anyone remember it? It’s all about selfcensorship really, how the importance of being able to be there to report gets subsumed under the necessity of moderating (Hah!) reporting so as to be able to stay there.
For some reason I want to associate it with Megan McArdle but I know she didn’t write it. She may have pointed to it perhaps.
Anyone recall the piece?
This one?
https://www.newarab.com/analysis/telling-wrong-story-palestine-western-media
Although thinking about it you probably didn’t mean that one. The only other one I can think of is this one
https://www.thetower.org/1602-survey-80-of-journalists-in-west-bank-gaza-self-censor-due-to-intimidation-by-pa-hamas/
Dunno about recent, or “fairly major piece”, but last year;
https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-israel-tel-aviv-96c529f3a7313974808e1ed56251f0eb
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/hamas-tells-media-lie-what-should-media-tell-its-readers-204599
2014 (linked to by the above)
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/11/how-the-media-makes-the-israel-story/383262/
It seems to crop up every couple of years or so.
Hamo
Hamas
Humza
Means they hate you.
Apart rrom that ass Bowen, of course, someone who was terrible for this was Robert Fisk.
He had, apparently, no Arabic and would take as gospel the official line of whichever regime was running Shitholistan and then rewrote their copy to look as if he was an eyewiteness to non existent events.
Otto – I remember reading Mr Fisk’s long, womanish diatribes about how innocent the Muslims are.
Let’s take a quick trip back to 2001 to Fisk this twat:
They started by shaking hands. We said “Salaam alaikum” – peace be upon you – then the first pebbles flew past my face.
Luton airport can be a dangerous place.
A small boy tried to grab my bag. Then another. Then someone punched me in the back. Then young men broke my glasses, began smashing stones into my face and head. I couldn’t see for the blood pouring down my forehead and swamping my eyes. And even then, I understood.
I couldn’t blame them for what they were doing. In fact, if I were the Afghan refugees of Kila Abdullah, close to the Afghan-Pakistan border, I would have done just the same to Robert Fisk. Or any other westerner I could find.
Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Mo.
So why record my few minutes of terror and self-disgust under assault near the Afghan border, bleeding and crying like an animal, when hundreds – let us be frank and say thousands – of innocent civilians are dying under American airstrikes in Afghanistan, when the “War of Civilisation” is burning and maiming the Pashtuns of Kandahar and destroying their homes because “good” must triumph over “evil”?
Because you’re a piss-streaked pussy-man who’s demonstrably too stupid to live, Robert?
check your mail
PJ O’Rourke wrote about it nearly 40 years ago. Lebanon at that time, not Gaza, but the principle’s the same: they’d let foreign reporters in, but only if they reported the faction’s line.
So the Moslems run journalists on the same lines as the White House Press Pool? You astonish me.