Analysing Trends in Mainstream Media Bias: RTE’s October Coverage of the 2015 Quasi-Intifada – Part One

Introduction

Section 39/1, of Ireland’s 2009 Broadcasting Act, obliges broadcasters to ensure that news reports are “presented in an objective and impartial manner and without any expression of the broadcaster’s own views.” However, RTE (Ireland’s public service broadcaster) was criticised repeatedly by an Irish pro-Israel advocacy group in its online postings, for the quality of its reportage of the onset of intensive violence during the Autumn period, which commentators often described as a prospective ‘Third Intifada’ due to the sharp rise in Arab-Palestinian attacks (stabbings, shootings and car-rammings) against Israeli civilians and security personnel. The period was also noted for an increase in protracted clashes or riotous Arab-Palestinian protests, which typically confronted Israeli forces.

While advocacy groups might be expected to be critical of news coverage that is not compatible with their views of a given issue that they represent, RTE’s news reporting on contentious issues has long been criticised by a variety of independent sources, as inaccurate, misleading, and selective in terms of the stories the Broadcaster chooses to feature. Some commentators have noted an anti-US, anti-Israel, anti-conservative slant in RTE’s coverage, which supports liberal-left stances and political parties, although hard-left political activists have argued that RTE is conservative. A senior member of the Irish Palestinian Solidarity Campaign also criticised RTE’s coverage as being racially prejudiced against Arab-Palestinians. That complaint is addressed in Part Two, in the section “Pro-Israel bias?”

This article discusses a quite large, albeit select, number of problematic examples of RTE’s television news coverage during October 2015, when coverage of the conflict was most prevalent, to attempt to represent the overall tone of coverage. Some brief examples of coverage from the middle of September to the end of November are also included. July-August 2015 coverage is also referenced to note trends in news reporting. With respect to journalistic practice, broad ethical problems concerning the conflict are also addressed. A concluding part of this series focuses in detail on two specific RTE reports, which are not discussed in Part One. RTE Player links of the principle daily television news programmes (Lunchtime News, 6.1 (6 O’clock) News, and 9 O’clock News) are only made available by the broadcaster for a limited period of time.

Background on the quasi-Intifada

While the region continued to experience significant levels of Arab-Palestinian violence, the onset of the Autumn 2015 period of intensified conflict is usually dated to the 13th of September, when Israeli security forces intervened at the al-Aqsa Mosque, to prevent an attack upon nearby Jewish worshippers closely adjacent to the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif compound, at the Western/Wailing Wall. Tensions grew during 2014/15 after certain Jewish activists sought changes to improve Jewish access, but Israel’s government refused to change the status quo, due to the fear that it would cause an Intifada.

The planned Arab-Palestinian attack at the Temple Mount coincided with Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and was also a likely reaction to a policy move by former Defense Minister of Israel, Moshe Ya’alon, because he outlawed the Mourabitoun and Mourabitat Muslim groups, which were instituted to persistently harass Jewish people visiting the Temple Mount, as well as the Wailing Wall. Israel’s intervention was seen as validating Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ repeated claims that the Mosque was under threat. Alexander Levlovich, was perhaps the first fatality, killed in a stoning attack the following day by an Arab-Palestinian gang, when driving through East Jerusalem.

The quasi-Intifada resulted in approximately fourteen-hundred recorded attacks of Arab-Palestinian origin between the months of September and December 2015. Attacks decreased in January 2016, with 169 recorded attacks, largely matching the rate of August 2015, in which there were 171 recorded attacks. October 2015 saw the peak of this wave of terrorism, with 620 attacks.

Inconsistent news coverage

RTE’s early reportage of the renewed violence in the region was highly partial. When RTE news editors chose to report on the heightened violence, news coverage consistently highlighted Arab-Palestinian victims, albeit with the exception of one news bulletin. Four Israeli civilians were killed, and several others seriously injured, in numerous stabbing attacks, from Thursday the 1st to Friday the 2nd of October. These attacks were newsworthy because their frequency represented a stark indicator of renewed societal conflict. However, RTE’s TV news team only afforded one brief and rather belated mention, in a single Saturday the 3rd morning news bulletin, without an accompanying news report.

RTE’s 9th October Lunchtime television news report similarly failed to mention the high frequency of anti-Jewish violence occurring in Israel during the prior 24 hours. Instead RTE continued a trend of leading reports on Israeli/Jewish violence visited on Arab-Palestinians, with what was a probable revenge attack, which lightly-to-moderately injured four Arab men in Dimona, Southern Israel, although the Israel Security Agency (ISA) later noted that the injury to one victim was severe, with another moderately wounded, and two others injured slightly. The report included footage of grief stricken women, who were identifiably Arab-Palestinian due to their garb. The inclusion of such footage would have led viewers to the impression that the men were battling for their lives.

Whilst it was newsworthy to report on one of the rare instances of violence perpetuated by a Jewish civilian on several Arab men uninvolved in the conflict, the failure to report on anti-Jewish attacks was particularly notable since a numerically similar attack also occurred on October the 8th, which resulted in the injury of four Jewish people.

RTE’s reportage of the violent upsurge is consistent with coverage of the conflict in preceding months.

The last major international news event to come out of Israel, and the disputed territory of Judea and Samaria/West Bank, was perhaps the July 31st Duma arson attack on the Dawabshe family home. RTE’s TV coverage of the Duma attack was substantial and highly problematic. RTE reporter Carol Coleman misrepresented the reasons for Arab-Palestinian violence in the aftermath of the attack, which had a distinctly sectarian-religious (Islamist) dimension associated with the Temple Mount/Haram al Sharif. Coleman also failed to mention the associated incitement by the Palestinian Authority that often motivates such religious-sectarian violence, and presented reasonable security measures by the Israeli authorities as either a reprisal, or inciting a chain of escalating conflict.

The Broadcaster followed up on the Duma attack with reports on the death of the Dawabshe family’s father (8th August), and the death of the mother (7th September), both from burn injuries in the aftermath of the tragic arson attack. However, RTE’s television news department did not report on any of the attacks by Arab-Palestinians upon Israelis during the same period. Besides a failure to report on post-Duma Arab-Palestinian reprisals against Israelis, there was just one report on growing violence at the Temple Mount (13th September), which led with the Israeli intervention at the al-Aqsa Mosque.

RTE-Player screen-grab of revolving news text,
RTE News Now channel, Oct 15, 2015

Conflating aggressors with victims

News-presenter introductory comments for reports, typically described the growing death tolls, with numerical comparison between Arab-Palestinian deaths and Jewish-Israeli fatalities. However, such comparisons usually failed to note the widely divergent circumstances in which these deaths took place, with Arab-Palestinian deaths typically occurring in violent confrontations with army and security personnel, or during terrorist incidents. Sometimes the follow-on reports would clarify the preliminary remarks by the news-presenters but more often they did not. Such conflation is misleading at a most fundamental level because the resurgent violence relates to the matter of who is doing what to whom, e.g. an October 20th 6.1 News report mingled aggressors with victims:

Presenter Sharon Ní Bheoláin: “The UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon has said his trip to the Middle-East today reflects the global alarm over the escalation of violence between Israelis and Palestinians.”

Carole Coleman [voice-over of video featuring rioting youths]: “As the frustration felt by Palestinians continues to spill over into the streets, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had this message for the young people…”

RTE-Player screen-grab, RTE 6.1 News, 20-October-2015, Carol Coleman report,
with captioning: "As the frustration felt by Palestinians..."

RTE would continue to lead news stories with the death and injury of Arab-Palestinians individuals, through the latter part of the period of violent escalation in November, and the nature of the fatalities would still be conflated. For example, news-presenter Eileen Dunne stated that “a surge in violence has resulted in the deaths of Israelis and Palestinians”, in the 23rd November 9 O’clock news programme.

RTE described violent riots, which have the explicit intent of clashing with police and soldiers, as “protests”. Protests are commonly understood to be largely peaceful events, which are usually borne of moral concern. The use, by the media, of such a term was especially unjust when there was a growing awareness that this episode could have represented the onset of a new Intifada, which was driven across Arab-Palestinian society by a wave of religious intolerance, with substantively anti-Semitic overtones.

RTE’s 10th October morning news text reported that the “IDF shot dead six Palestinians at the border of the Gaza Strip”. That morning’s news bulletins stated that “Protests have spread across the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Northern Israel after a day where six Palestinians were killed at the border of the Gaza strip…” The segment was short, at no more than 30 seconds, so it is unfair to expect it to be comprehensive, but it nonetheless misled with profound omissions in the description of the violence.

The segment failed to mention that the violence was initiated by Arab-Palestinians, and that further stabbing attacks in Jerusalem were committed against Jewish civilians. RTE also failed to mention that the Arab-Palestinians at the Gaza border were engaged in violence directed at a heavily armed military zone, that they were affiliated with both Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and that this riotous event was linked with Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ Gazan leader, who declared a new ‘Intifada’ shortly before the clash.

On the 11th October, the text-based news highlights on RTE’s ‘News Now’ channel, featured an image of grief-stricken Arab-Palestinian women, also found on the RTE website, with the accompanying words: “France has said the escalation of violence in the Palestinian territories and Jerusalem was ‘extremely worrying and dangerous’”. The use of such an emotive image, with the accompanying text, places indirect blame on the Israeli authorities for the rise in Arab-Palestinian fatalities. The image inevitably carries with it an inference that those killed were substantively innocent, when many of the fatalities targeted, and sometimes murdered, Jewish civilians.

RTE did not qualify which grouping was initiating violence against the other, even of the past events that led to the 2014 Gaza war, Operation Pillar of Cloud. The November 30th morning ‘News Now’ bulletins reported that Mohammad Abu Khdeir’s “killing was part of a cycle of violence that led to war between Israel and militants in Gaza.” RTE failed to address which group initiated the sequence of events, despite 16 months passing, and misrepresented the character of those events. The brutal murder of Abu Khadir on July 2nd 2014 was likely a reaction to Hamas’ kidnapping and murder of three Jewish teenagers in Judea and Samaria (West Bank), but war in Gaza developed as a consequence of increased rocket attacks. Some believe the attacks from Gaza increased as a result of the mass arrest of Hamas’ operatives in Judea and Samaria, but a programme of mass arrest to save three teenagers does not correspond with a “cycle of violence”. Neither can Abu Khdeir’s death be thought of as a major event leading to eventual war since the particular warring groups were not involved, and the Hamas-sanctioned rocket escalation had already begun before the 2nd July date of murder.

A notable departure

RTE’s television news department first acknowledged that Arab-Palestinians were targeting Jews in a spate of stabbing and other attacks, two weeks after the dramatic intensification, in a brief October 12th Lunchtime News report (“Palestinian man shot dead by security forces in Israel”), which stated:

“A Palestinian man suspected of attempting to stab a police officer in Jerusalem has been shot dead by security forces. It was the latest in a series of knife attacks in the past fortnight, mainly by Palestinians targeting Jews. Police said the officer was unhurt as he had been wearing a protective vest. On Friday, four people – two Israeli-Arabs and two Palestinians were injured in an apparent revenge attack.”

Oddly, the RTE report again referenced the several days-old stabbing of four Arabs, which, according to reports, largely resulted in moderate injuries. By contrast, RTE never displayed an impetus to balance reports of Jewish violence with reference to the Arab-Palestinian equivalent. Instead, it downplayed the latter.

For example, RTE’s Lunchtime, 6.1 and 9 o’clock news broadcasts (11th Oct, 10 mins) solely reported on the deaths of Arab-Palestinians:

“An Israeli airstrike on a Hamas target in the Gaza Strip hit a nearby house, killing a Palestinian woman and her daughter. This marks an escalation in recent violence, which has seen several Israelis killed and a growing number of Palestinian deaths. The increase in violence has increased fears of a new Palestinian uprising.”

There was no mention of the other attacks during the 11th of October, where, for example, an Arab-Israeli man injured four Israelis in a combined car and stabbing assault. RTE also failed to report the attempted suicide bombing by an Arab-Palestinian woman, which was disrupted by Israeli security personnel, despite the fact that the story garnered significant attention due to its circumstance.

Passive voice

RTE reports typically led with descriptions of Israeli security forces shooting dead Arab-Palestinian aggressors, or of Israeli security measures in reaction to the intensification of violence.

At times, a variant of grammatical passive voice was used in the construction of sentences for RTE’s descriptions. Such sentence structure often occurs in mainstream media reportage of the Israeli conflict. Passive voice allows authors more control over narratives, whereby the responsibility of any agent for instigating events can be obfuscated. With passive voice, the instigating group of a conflict situation can be presented as having been subjected to the actions of other parties to that conflict. It is objectionable, for confusing which side is responsible for the broad-spectrum violence, and for directing blame at those attempting to reduce the effects of the destructive acts. For example, news-presenter Brian Finnerty, Lunchtime News, 16th October reported:

“In the past month, the violence has claimed the lives of eight Israelis and more than thirty Palestinians, some of them suspected of carrying out attacks, have been killed by Israeli security forces.”

Undue skepticism

Statements, such as the above, present a double-standard, where murders, or attempted murders, were treated with scepticism, but not the reactions by the authorities. An element of scepticism is appropriate when dealing with claims made by different groupings in a state of conflict, and media reports correctly use the terms ‘alleged’ or ‘suspected’ when addressing criminal acts by individuals/groups that are not yet affirmed through legal process. Nonetheless, journalists commonly make legitimate determinations of fact, based on the security of accessible evidentiary material, and on very high probabilities, where, for example, clear intent can be ascribed to violent/criminal events. It had been firmly ascertained that a significant number of Arab-Palestinians were killed by Israel’s security forces, but it has also been ascertained that a substantive proportion of those killings were in immediate reaction to terror attacks, as the toll of Jewish casualties, and available video material to a number of the attacks, demonstrates.

With further scepticism, Carole Coleman’s October 20th Lunchtime News report describes a house demolition as “Israeli soldiers dismantling a Palestinian home in the West Bank. The army claims it’s the home of a militant who carried out a stabbing a year ago killing a woman.”

The report refers to the demolition of Maher al-Hashlamoun’s house. Al-Hashlamoun is in actual fact is a member of Islamic Jihad who was found guilty of committing several terrorist attacks, one of which led to the murder of a twenty-six year old Israeli woman. By convention, RTE attribute crimes to individuals who have been found guilty of such acts by courts of law. However, Coleman’s report would lead the viewer to suspect that the demolition is undeserved in some way, because al-Hashlamoun is supposedly innocent, or that his crimes have been insufficiently ascertained.

Notable omissions

The attacks during this period were never described as having a terrorist intent. Yet RTE is not adverse to using the term in relation to similar attacks in the West, most recently with the Belgium attacks.

RTE’s 16th November morning and Noon ‘News Now’ bulletins reported on a gun attack against Israeli troops, when the home of terrorist Mohammad abu Shahin (alternatively spelt ‘Shaheen’) was demolished in response to the murder of Danny Gonen, a Jewish hiker, during the month of June. The news-presenter stated:

“Palestinian medical sources have said Israeli troops shot dead at least two Palestinians during a gun battle in the Occupied West Bank. The Israeli military said in a statement that troops had come under attack during the operation to destroy the home of Mohammad abu Shahin… Some twenty other Palestinians were wounded in the incident as troops demolished the home of a militant whom Israel had said had killed an Israeli man in June.”

The report did not note that Shahin (Shaheen) had previously been found guilty of conspiring to commit a terror attack for which he was imprisoned between 2006 and 2008, and had more recently confessed to committing numerous other attacks. He is a member of the Fatah/Tanzim Force 17 elite terror unit. Israel’s Supreme Court issued a stay of demolition in October to evaluate the case, which was subsequently passed, while another demolition application was rejected.

Abbas’ incitement misrepresented

A 14th October 9 O’clock news report by Carole Coleman (“Two Palestinians shot dead in latest spate of attacks in Israel”) led with the deaths of Arab-Palestinians involved in a terror attack, and used material from her earlier reports that day, analysed in part two of this article. Coleman added:

“This evening Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas held firm, saying that Palestinians would continue to struggle for the project of nation or state-hood. He spoke of the right to self defence but called for non-violent resistance.”

This is an inaccurate representation of Abbas’ speech, which did not in fact call for a de-escalation of violence. The speech endorsed the ongoing Arab-Palestinian violence, which he characterised as a defensive measure, and presented solely as a reaction to supposed Israeli aggression, particularly against the al-Aqsa Mosque. Abbas attempted to present an Arab-Palestinian teen, who engaged in a stabbing attack, as a martyr akin to Mohammad al-Dura, a story that has been utilised as a widespread source of incitement in the Arab world. Coleman’s description may have been based on the inaccurate accounts provided by a number of news-wire services. The article ‘He Said/They Said: Mahmoud Abbas October 14th speech, and the Mainstream Media’ provides a detailed account of the speech.

The speech was in keeping with the Fatah Party’s production of a substantive amount of material encouraging violence, while demonising Israeli soldiers. Coverage of trenchant PA/Fatah incitement, and associated conspiracism involving the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif, was entirely absent however.

By contrast, RTE’s coverage of a speech by Israeli prime-minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on October 21st, was very negative. The speech garnered international attention because Netanyahu asserted Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini had a principle role in encouraging Hitler to wholly adopt a programme of extermination against Europe’s Jewish people but soon clarified that he had no intention of exonerating Hitler. Some of RTE’s reports did include that clarification, whilst other reports did not. The revolving text on the ‘News Now’ channel stated: “Netanyahu provokes holocaust row” — a title also applied to RTE’s syndicated website coverage of the controversy. The article ‘Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini’s Initiatory Role in the Extermination of European Jewry’ provides a detailed account of the way in which the international media misrepresented history to criticise the PM.

Obfuscation of identity

The 13th of October may be remembered as a peak in the anti-Jewish violence of the period, due to the high number of civilian casualties. The varying identities of attackers, and their victims, is of crucial importance in reports of sectarian strife, but the atypical wording of RTE coverage suggests there may have been attempts to confuse the issue. Morning and Noon news-bulletin reports, on the 13th, stated:

“In Israel at least two passengers have been killed in separate attacks on buses in Jerusalem. The first person died in a gun and knife attack on a bus in the East of the City. Police later shot him [indistinct word]. In the second, a man drove a car into a bus and then started stabbing passengers.”

These reports were peculiar for avoiding the use of identifying words like ‘Jew’. ‘Israeli’, ‘Arab’, and ‘Palestinian’, etc., even though early reports from Israel clearly delineated the identities of the attackers and their victims.

Michelle McCaughren’s October 13th Lunchtime News report differed by expressing notable sympathy for the victims. The victims of the bus attack are described as “terrified passengers who had no means of escape”. However, she continued to use impersonal descriptions like “attackers”, “men”/“man”, and “pedestrians”. She suggested one attack, involving the car-ramming of pedestrians, was indiscriminate, where the assailant got out and supposedly stabbed “anyone” who was nearby. Although McCaughren did mention that the attack took place in an Ultra-Orthodox neighbourhood, she did not clearly address the fact that Jews were targeted, including a Jewish Rabbi, who would be visibly Jewish, and that the assailants were Arab-Palestinians. Attempts to obfuscate certain identities is common in the mainstream media. The appendix has a full transcript of the report.

McCaughren’s report spent almost as much time on one of the Arab-Palestinian attackers as that of the many victims, by featuring police video of a crowd apparently kicking a would-be attacker at a Tel Aviv bus stop. The report included an extract of a speech by the Mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, telling Israeli citizens to calm down. The selection of such content suggested that the fears of the Jewish citizenry was unjustified, and/or that they were over-reacting. The report did not mention that the mayor explicitly blamed Arab-Palestinian incitement for the murders, earlier that day.

Carole Coleman’s October 19th Lunchtime News report (“Israeli forces impose tighter restrictions in Jerusalem and West Bank”) also focused to a lengthy extent on the fact that some Israelis, who had just witnessed a terrorist incident at a bus station, then attacked another suspected attacker who would later be found to have been uninvolved. While the reprisal is worthy of comment, far greater attention was paid to this incident than the terrorist attack that initiated the subsequent event.

“Palestinian territories”?

RTE (and other media outlets) typically use the terms “occupied Palestinian territories” or “Palestinian territories” for Judea and Samaria/West Bank, and “Palestinian areas of Jerusalem” for East Jerusalem, etc. For example, the RTE ‘News Now’ screen-text (‘News’ section, October 19th), stated “The Israeli government has announced tougher security measures to tackle unrest in Israel and the Palestinian territories”, while Coleman’s October 14th Lunchtime News report referred to “Palestinian areas of East Jerusalem”. It is markedly different to the term “Arab East Jerusalem”, which does not infer an expected or legally/morally justified national identity. The term is prejudicial however much it may be used by the United Nations.

The areas of East Jerusalem, and Judea and Samaria/West Bank, are politically contested territories, which have largely been ruled by empires for millennia. There has been no legitimate prior sovereign in these regions since the defeat of the Jewish Bar Kokhba Revolt against the Roman Empire, in 135 AD. Many do consider the territories to be occupied. However, the British Mandatory text defines all territory West of the Jordan river as necessarily being designated for “the Jewish National Home”, with only territory East of the Jordan river having the option of alternate applications (Article 25), with good reason since the contested territories represent the cultural and religious core of the Jewish homeland, constituting the first and second cities of Judaism (Old (East) Jerusalem and Hebron), along with its holiest of shrines and places of worship.

Some experts effectively treat Jordan as having held legitimate title but the State waged an unprovoked war of aggression against Israel, when the Jewish State first declared independence in 1948. Thus, it is clear that Jordan illegitimately occupied these territories, and so such an act cannot be a basis for valid territorial claims against another so aggressed. Moreover, the entire thrust for peace, with UN Security Council Resolution 242, the final status talks of the Oslo Accords, etc., make it clear that negotiations with the interested parties are to be the basis for a peace settlement. To describe these territories as entirely “Palestinian”, and as “occupied”, without qualification, pre-empts such a process.

Appendix

An example of language usage — transcript of the 13th of October 2015 RTE Lunchtime News report:

John Finnerty: “In Israel at least three people have been killed and thirty others wounded in a series of knife and gun attacks. It comes on a day of rage declared by Palestinian groups. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, will convene an emergency session of the security cabinet later today to discuss the recent surge in violence.”

Michelle McCaughren [reporting]: “The attacks took place as early morning commuters made their way to work. The assailants used guns and knives, and in one instance drove a car into a group of pedestrians in an ultra orthodox neighbourhood of East Jerusalem. The driver then got out, and wielding a knife, attempted to stab anyone standing nearby. The most serious incident took place earlier in the capital when two men stormed a bus. One opened fire and the other used a knife on terrified passengers who had no means of escape. It resulted in multiple casualties. One of the attackers was shot dead by police. The other was seriously injured.

In a suburb of Tel Aviv an angry crowd gather around a man suspected of trying to stab another man at a bus stop. A video distributed by the police shows him being kicked and beaten as he lies on the ground. Calling for greater security measures, the mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, appealed for calm. He said all citizens must know that they cannot take the law into their own hands. The public must calm down and let the security forces do their job.

These types of incidents have increased in frequency in recent weeks and appear to be random and sporadic. The security forces say they are difficult to predict and even more difficult to bring under control.”

Published at Crethi Plethi.

A review of June to December 2014 coverage of the Israeli-Arab conflict on Irish television – Part Two: RTE’s coverage

This article is the second part of an extended study of Irish television coverage of the Israeli-Arab conflict, during the latter part of 2014. Part One introduces and summarises the study, whilst Part Three provides specific examples of bias on TV3.

This extended article features a selection of instances of substantive bias in reports and discussions on RTE’s television channels, through the latter half of 2014. It begins with the kidnapping and murder of three Jewish-Israeli teenagers, which led to a dramatic escalation in the Israeli/Jewish-Arab/Palestinian conflict, resulting in war. The examples represent just a fraction of RTE’s reportage on the conflict. Israel was also discussed in other RTE news reports, which are not as relevant because they focused on the evolving political situation in Israel’s internal politics, in a brief matter-of-fact manner, without significant opinion and analysis, elements which would be indicative of RTE’s broad political outlook.

While RTE’s lunchtime and six o’clock (called ‘6.1 News’, the broadcaster’s principle hour-long news show) news reports are mainly referenced, these reports were uniformly featured in rotation cycles on RTE’s ‘News Now’ channel, and usually featured in identical or near-identical form on other RTE news programmes. Please note that programme content contained in the links to RTE’s Internet Player is only available for limited periods of time. Some quotations are included.

Pat Rabbitte, former Minister for Communications, recently echoed a commonly held belief that RTE is a powerful force of support for political parties to the left. A related belief also exists that RTE has long been unduly supportive of pan-Arab/Arab-Palestinian positions relating to the Israel-Arab conflict. Whilst this issue is somewhat peripheral in the Irish political landscape, prejudicial coverage of the conflict may still have an impact on the parties involved, both at an international and local level. The welfare of the related Jewish minority living in Ireland may also become an issue, if trends in Western Europe are at all indicative.

Hamas’ 2014 Kidnap-Murder

Events in the region took a turn for the worse with the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens on June 12th 2014. Hamas would subsequently take credit for these murders. However, the terrorist group initially refused to confirm or deny their involvement. RTE falsely stated that Hamas denied any involvement in the kidnapping, and they continued to so in a consistent manner.

It seems to have taken RTE several weeks to revise its stance about Hamas’ claims, since it appears that a 6th of July lunchtime news report was the first to present an accurate account of Hamas’ response to the kidnapping. The amendment was first made in a two minute report, on the subject of the apparent beating of an Arab-Palestinian teenager with US nationality.

However, this particular lunchtime news report was problematic for other reasons. RTE featured an interview with the son’s mother but did not present a response from an Israeli perspective. RTE showed video purportedly of the beating, but failed to give anything but passing reference to the violence perpetuated by masked “protesters”, of which this US national was likely one, given that the confrontation took place during a serious riot.

RTE’s sequencing of the story was quite peculiar. The report of the beating came after the news bulletin’s 45 second headline story, concerning an interview with Irish government minister Richard Bruton. The report was followed by a 15 to 20 second segment on the death of 29 Kenyans in a serious terrorist incident, and a shorter mention of a major parachuting accident in Poland that led to 11 deaths.

RTE’s presentation of events in the conflict during this period are analysed in more depth in an article entitled “Obsession, Exclusion and Double Standards”.

The Gaza War

With the onset of Operation Protective Edge, at an early phase prior to the ground offensive, RTE featured a lunchtime news report, by journalist Nieve Nolan, detailing Israel’s increased air-strikes on targets in Gaza. There was no mention of rocket strikes until a brief statement by Israeli spokesman Mark Regev, even though Hamas’ increased rocket attacks the previous night were clearly the precursor for Israel’s intensified response.

Nolan justified the rocket attacks on Israeli towns as a response to the Jewish State’s killing of Hamas terrorists, who may have in fact died from handling explosives. Her claim is difficult to justify as the broad swathe of rocket strikes was initiated with the kidnap-murder of Jewish teenagers the previous month. Nolan’s view might be excused as an insufficient explanation of events but, at the end of the report, she states that Israel is set on a course of “escalation rather than de-escalation”, despite Netanyahu having acted with relative restraint, and voiced a reluctance to engage, until the dramatic increase of rocket attacks.

A detailed analysis and transcript of the report can be found in an article entitled “Problematic Media Coverage of Operation Protective Edge”. The article also discusses an RTE ‘News for the Deaf’ bulletin, which described Israeli’s as “militants”, perhaps to associate the IDF with terrorism.

An email of complaint was sent to RTE about the report on the 8th July. Fiona Mitchell, Deputy Foreign Editor, replied, via complaints@rte.ie, on the 14th of July. She stated:

“You mention use of the sentence "escalation rather than de-escalation'.  This was the same day that the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Israel had "significantly expanded our operations against Hamas and other terrorist organisations" making it clear that this was escalation rather than de-escalation, and making it a noteworthy news line.”

However, it appears that Netanyahu’s statement, which Fiona Mitchell quotes, appears to have been made after the Nolan's report was broadcast. Netanyahu’s statement was issued in the evening of the 8th July. Even allowing for a two hour time difference with Israel, the statement was issued hours after the news segment was broadcast. Thus, it remains unclear what information RTE News was reacting to, which resulted in the ‘lead’ with this stance in the report.

Furthermore, Mitchell stripped the Netanyahu quotion of its context, in which he still indicated a reluctance to intensify action, noting that: “Israel is not eager for war, but the security of our citizens is our primary consideration.” This is notable because Nolan's report fails to address the fact that Hamas made several blood-curdling announcements of its desire to intensify the war. The day before Nolan's report, Hamas rejected Netayahu's request for cessation, going as far as to claim that the group would engage in criminal behaviour by targeting Israeli civilians indiscriminately. Nolan’s report was thus highly selective, by ignoring the dark threats made by Hamas, whilst choosing to cast Israel as the aggressor.

Yet, an anti-Israel tone was occasionally absent at RTE News. Senior newscaster Brian Dobson interviewed the Palestinian ambassadorial representative to Ireland, Doctor Ahmad Abdelrazek, on 6.1 News, July 9th. Dobson was critical of Abdelrazek’s explanations for Hamas having initiated the war. Abdelrazek erroneously claimed the Iron Dome completely shields Israeli’s from Hamas rocket fire.

On the 22nd of July, RTE’s 6.1 featured a substantive amount of problematic coverage on the conflict. The 48 minute programme (excluding advertising) included over twelve minutes on the issue. Chris Gunness, of the UNRWA, gave a misleading account of events. Gunness’ selection as a guest, without an Israeli response, was problematic. Gunness has earned some notoriety for being deeply prejudicial. He supports incitement and sources that are supportive of terrorism.

RTE news presenter, Sharon Ní Bheoláin, pointedly interrupted Charlie Flanagan, Minister for Foreign Affairs, to state that Hamas claims not to have been party to Egypt’s cease-fire initiative. However, the claim was not credible, since Hamas had already rejected two prior cease-fire proposals by that stage:

“Now it should be said of course that Hamas say they were not party to those talks, and that was part of the reason they rejected the Egyptian solution as it were. Can I ask you, because time is against us Minister, what is the Irish position on aspects of this, and I am thinking the Blockade, for example, which very many people would say has contributed enormously to the suffering of the humanitarian [sic] people, and also what the Irish position is with regard to the settlements, and the expansion of those settlements?”

Notably, Ní Bheoláin presents an excuse for Hamas’ failure to agree a ceasefire, while pointedly inferring blame on Israeli policy for the war. She also prompted the minister to state that Israeli air strikes are human rights violations, citing a report by Human Rights Watch, an NGO with a noted hostility toward Israel. However, it was to be an assertion he would not make, since he did not wish to pre-empt investigations.

Beit Hanoun

A missile strike at a school in an area of Gaza called Beit Hanoun, led to the deaths of 15 to 17 Arab-Palestinians, believed to be civilian. At the time, international media coverage was particularly intensive. The rush to blame Israel was exceptional, in view of the fact that there was a significant amount of uncertainty over what transpired. Subsequently, little or no coverage was given to emerging reports and video footage that suggested Israel was not to blame. RTE’s coverage fitted this template.

On the 24th of July, RTE’s coverage of the conflict was as obsessive as it was of poor quality. Almost 16 minutes was devoted to the conflict on 6.1 News, with a mere 15 seconds of coverage provided for the 82+ civilians killed in a terrorist attack in Nigeria. Such selective coverage was part of a persistent pattern, where reports of terrorist attacks in similar regions was rarely more than minimal.

Paul Hirschson, a member of the Israeli foreign ministry, claimed in an interview for the programme, that Hamas more than likely were responsible for the strike that led to the deaths. Chris Gunness also admitted, on the same 6.1 show, that the UNRWA didn’t know the source of the attack. Gunness is a partisan anti-Israel guest, who also claimed that the IDF did not allow UNRWA to evacuate civilians from the school. In an uncommonly strong reaction, an IDF spokesperson said Gunness’ claim is a “flat-out complete and total lie.” Therefore, Gunness was unlikely to be forwarding an apologia when he claimed not to know the source of the attack on the school. Nonetheless, screen-text on RTE’s News channel appeared soon after the interviews, which recurrently stated (in two separate locations) that Israel was responsible for the strike on the school: “15 killed as Israel bombs UN school in Gaza”.

RTE included a lengthy interview with Doctor Mads Gilbert at the end of their 9 PM news programme. He was interviewed by news-presenter Kate Egan. Doctor Gilbert earned notoriety for being one of the first Westerners to justify the 9/11 terrorist attacks, despite the substantive targeting of civilian infrastructure. He has also acted as an apologist for Hamas. He co-authored a book of his time in Gaza, which was economical with the truth. As a far-left terrorism advocate, his selection for interview, to describe events during an ongoing conflict, was inappropriate, in view of the friendly unchallenging interview, with smiling news presenter who did not discuss his controversial activism, however briefly.

On Prime Time, RTE’s principle journalistic show, Claire Byrne, a presenter and interviewer, stated in the introduction that Israel admitted targeting the school. She presented a narrative, of Israel admitting it targeted the school but attempting to justify the strike.

However, a few minutes later, Byrne would deny having made the assertion, when an Israeli guest, Professor Dan Shiftan, subsequently challenged her about the accuracy of the claim. He rightly pointed out that Israel had admitted firing in the area as hostilities with Hamas took place, but noted that Israel also denied being responsible for the attack which caused the civilian deaths. Byrne strongly disagreed with what he said. However, her rebuttal was unconvincing. Her explanation appears to suggest that the RTE news editors thought Israel’s admission that it had fired in the area to combat Hamas, was the same as an admission that they intentionally fired on the school, resulting in fatalities. A transcript of the introduction, and their subsequent argument, is featured in the Appendix to this article. More favourably, Byrne did appear to genuinely entertain Shiftan’s comments concerning Hamas’ conduct.

Prime Time’s accompanying news report, by journalist Kevin Burns, blamed Israel for the continued violence. Burns stated at the start of the report that “Israel said it was trying to stop rockets”, to suggest another intent. He also spoke in a noticeably higher-pitched tone of voice, when stating that Netanyahu said he regretted the loss of civilian life, to possibly give Netanyahu’s claim an incredulous quality.

RTE did not issue clarification, after blaming Israel for the Beit Hanoun school strike, when the source was unknown. They would in fact intensify the claim latterly — see Paul O’Flynn’s October 12th report.

A question of figures

The 26th of July Lunchtime News report, authored by Michelle McCaughren, claimed the Palestinians used rocks and firecrackers during riots in Judea and Samaria/West Bank, while Israel responded with tear gas and live fire, after stating that an Arab-Palestinian teenager was shot dead. The veracity of this claim is doubtful because there would have been a considerable death toll if Israel substantively used live ammunition to suppress a riot, unless the live bullets were used in a highly selective fashion, but this is not how McCaughren’s David and Goliath narrative is presented.

The 28th of July Lunchtime News report, by Joan O’Sullivan, claimed that Israel didn’t dispute the death toll of over a thousand Arab-Palestinians killed in the then-present war, before focusing on the apparent scale of Arab-Palestinian civilian deaths. Her assertion appeared to suggest that Israel had endorsed or not contested the Hamas health ministry/UNRWA/PCHR (Palestinian Center for Human Rights) NGO claims, which assert that three quarters of those killed are civilian. Such a claim is misleading because Israel asserted that it believed that half or more of those killed were engaged in belligerency, which was borne out by detailed analysis of the affiliations of the individuals killed. It is often difficult to distinguish between militant and civilian fatalities, and Israel tends not to issue or endorse death tolls until studies are carried out.

In the past, Hamas-based studies were the basis for statistics from the UN and a variety of anti-Israel NGOs. In the last major Gaza war of 2009, Hamas was forced to correct its statistics due to political expediency. Death tolls derived from Hamas’ health ministry are thus unreliable.

RTE Player Screen-grab of RTE’s Lunchtime News ,1st September 2014

War’s Aftermath

Christopher McKevitt’s 1st of September Lunchtime news report, focused on the transfer of land in Judea and Samaria/West Bank into state ownership. It failed to note that the site was the location of the kidnapping of the three Israeli teens, and while his report mentions that the murders were a stated reason for the State action, he casts doubt upon the claim because that purpose wasn’t mentioned in a sign at the site! McKevitt presents the transfer as a theft of Arab land. The report header states “US urges Israel to reverse a decision to take Palestinian land in West Bank”. It would emerge however that the site went through a lengthy legal process to determine its ownership. It was declared to be state land when none was found.

Paul O’Flynn’s October 12th Lunchtime News report discussed financial assistance for Gaza’s repair. O’Flynn also describes the war that Hamas initiated, as a “bombardment”. The news presenter, when introducing the report, also spoke of an “Israeli military bombardment”. Israel is presented as the only group reluctant to assist Gaza. However, various donors are worried about such funds going to Hamas, which would facilitate the financing of a new war, as on prior occasions. Oddly however, the word “Hamas” is not found anywhere in the two-minute report.

The journalist claimed that 30 Arab-Palestinians were killed by an Israeli rocket at the Beit Hanoun school during the recent conflict:

“This school in Beit Hanoun was hit by an Israeli rocket during the summer, and 30 people died.”

There is in fact robust evidence to suggest that Israel was not responsible for the strike that killed the civilians at the UN school in Beit Hanoun. As previously mentioned, this evidence was not widely discussed in the aftermath of the intense mainstream media condemnation. There was also little mention of reports that the UNRWA acknowledged that a Hamas rocket hit the school. However, with the benefit of hindsight, after the initial and misguided rush to judgement, O’Flynn’s blame, focusing on an “Israeli rocket” to the exclusion of all other opinion and compelling evidence, is a rather serious ethical breach. The death-toll also appears to be inflated, from approximately 15 to 30, seemingly without justification.

Incitement and Intifada

Christopher McKevitt’s 6.1 news report, on the 18th of November, addressed the terrorist attack on a synagogue in Jerusalem, resulting in the murder of five.

Mckevitt stated that Palestinian Authority president…

“Mahmoud Abbas did condemn the killings but in the same breath criticised the recent Israeli assault on the al Asqa Mosque on the Temple Mount, a site venerated in both Judaism and Islam.”

Mahmoud Abbas, like Arab-Palestinian leaders before him, has repeatedly claimed that Israel is taking possession of the al Asqa mosque, to stoke intensive violence. However McKevitt failed to provide any clarification or qualification that “Israel’s assault on the al Asqa Mosque” was a particular truth claim that Abbas was advancing. McKevitt’s assertion tacitly justified the attack, by pointing to supposedly provocative actions on the part of the side so attacked. The PA president condemning a terrorist attack, whilst echoing the very sentiments that gave rise to such violence at the time, was indeed a terrible irony, and surely merited some comment concerning his role of inciting violence.

An RTE article ‘Fifth person dies after Jerusalem synagogue attack’, published the same day, undermined Netanyahu’s claims regarding Abbas’ incitement. It failed to mention Abbas echoed the very inciteable claims in his “condemnation”.

McKevitt’s report noted that the dispute was over access rights to the Temple Mount. However, he fails to mention that the issue is in fact over the access rights of one group — Jews, who at the time were campaigning for the right to worship on the Mount, which is their holiest religious site.

McKevitt asserted that twelve Arab-Palestinians had died versus seven Israeli’s. To his credit, he said that some of those Arab-Palestinians were the instigators of homicidal acts. However, he failed to mention that the others were involved in violent Intifada-like protests at the time (except for a man who committed suicide) so it is rather misleading to draw equivalences to innocents murdered by terrorists, whilst praying in a synagogue or waiting at a bus or train stop.

Simplified narratives

Paul O’Flynn’s 6.1 News report, of the 10th of December, on the death of PA minister Ziad Abu Ein, appears latterly in the news programme, despite being announced as an upcoming story in the first part of the show. Presenter Sharon ní Bheoláin misleadingly suggested that he died when he was hand-grabbed by an Israeli soldier, when in fact he died subsequently, for reasons that are disputed. Secondly, O’Flynn’s report features a lengthy comment by PA minister Hanan Ashwari, in which she not only calls it an act of murder, but claims Israel killed thousands of other Arab-Palestinians “in cold blood”. There was no corresponding response from any Israeli official, other than O’Flynn noting that both sides disputed the events.

In an article published on the 31st of December, RTE claims Israel committed war crimes in the “occupied territories” without qualifying that the claim is the position of one side, or with the citing of any source, however prejudicial:

“Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas is to apply immediately to join the International Criminal Court, senior officials said, after the UN Security Council rejected a resolution on ending the Israeli occupation.

Mr Abbas will sign the Rome Statute, adhering to the founding treaty of the ICC, where the Palestinians could sue Israeli officials for war crimes in the occupied territories.”

Reports by United Nations bodies have levelled the war crimes charge at Israel’s door but all have been contested. For example, the Goldstone Report was demonstrated by numerous sources to possess strong evidential problems responses, and convincing charges of bias in its analysis.

Irish pro-Israel advocacy group, Irish4Israel, noted RTE’s continuing fascination with the story into the New Year, whilst failing to give the Israeli perspective much voice, nor address the fact that the PA may be vulnerable to charges as well.

End of year news roundups

News channels, the world over, like to fill their end of year schedules with news coverage of the year then coming to an end. This programming can at times be edifying, but for the most part comes across as the rehashing of old news stories. Occasionally it can also provide an indicator of certain biases because the partial selection and coverage of stories can constitute a glimpse of what the news-editors value.

RTE’s run-down of what it feels were the most newsworthy stories of the year, entitled “2014 Year In Review” published on the 30th of December 2014, used some problematic language in the two featured stores on Israel, the first of which addressed the death of former Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon.

The piece features an inaccuracy with respect to Sharon’s military record. It states: “He left major historical footprints on the Middle East through military invasion, Jewish settlement-building on occupied land the Palestinians seek for a state”.

Casting his role as one of acting in military invasions, ignores some of the most notable events of his military career as being in the defence of Israel, with particular respect to his defining role in the 1973 Yom Kippur war. Even the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, for which Sharon’s reputation was tarnished, can be deemed a defensive act, after persistent PLO incursions.

‘RTÉ’s Error-Laden Coverage of Ariel Sharon’s Death’ offers a detailed analysis of their prior coverage.

With respect to the 2014 Gaza war, ‘Operation Protective Edge’, the broadcaster states:

“By the end of the 50-day conflict, more than 2,100 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed. Sixty-seven Israeli soldiers and six civilians in Israel were killed by Hamas rockets and attacks.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon later said the destruction in Gaza was “beyond description”.”

RTE accepted the UN’s death toll figures, without mention that Israel disputes these figures for good reason, since they are derived from Hamas’ health ministry, which has a record of forwarding tolls that grossly distort civilian death rates. The Meir Amit Terrorism and Information Center has been investigating the identities of casualties since the early stages of the war. In a succession of seven reports, it has so far examined 1,165 individual Gazan fatalities. It found 52% of deaths are linked with terrorist groups.

By contrast, the RTE review featured nothing about the Syrian civil war, other than with respect to the emergent terrorist group ‘Islamic State’. The death toll of the civil war had by then exceeded 200,000 in just over three and a half years, in what began as an Arab Spring protest, transitioning into an organised anti-Assad insurgency by Summer 2011. Yet all the reader gets is a sub-section entitled “The rise of the Islamic State group”, which does not directly reference the civil war.

RTE’s one-hour special on 2014 in review (first broadcast on RTE One, 31st December 2014), reflected similar biases with respect to the Gaza war, whilst failing to discuss the Syrian civil war.

Presenting a pro-Palestinian alternative

When accused of bias, many media outlets claim to have received accusations of bias from both sides in a given issue. Therefore, they argue that they cannot be biased. Such a stance may be deemed to be a fallacy because the argument does not measure the broad veracity of the complaints from each side.

Accusations of bias can of course be motivated by a dislike for the expression of stories that do not suit a person’s own narrative on an issue, so the veracity of these criticisms has be measured, in terms of accuracy and balance. This point is exemplified by the biggest controversy over RTÉ’s coverage of the Gaza war, where Irish anti-Israel groups organised an online petition, to object to a supposed misinterpretation of what an Arab-Palestinian woman stated. The charge was difficult to justify because the broadcaster did not present her comments as being a direct translation.

Appendix

On 24th July 2014, RTE television programme ‘Prime Time’, featured a segment where Claire Byrne, the presenter and interviewer, suggested that Israel admitted targeting a school in a northern district of Gaza, called Beit Hanoun. However, she would deny making the assertion to an Israeli guest, Professor Dan Shiftan.

Claire Byrne’s introduction to the segment conflated the targeting of the area with targeting the school:

“Israel has admitted tonight that it targeted an area in Gaza where 15 people were killed, when a UN school was hit earlier today. Hundreds more were injured in the attack on the school, which was being used as a shelter for civilians during fighting in the Middle East. But Israel says that Hamas is to blame, claiming that it prevented civilians from leaving the school, which was being used as a cover to launch rocket attacks.”

Later in the segment, Shiftan disputed Byrne’s claim that Israel admitted “targeting” the school.

Byrne replied: “I want to be very clear what we did say, and what the Israeli Defence Forces said on their official blog. They say that Hamas continued firing from Beit Hanoun. This is the IDF, which is where the shelter is located. The IDF, the Israel Defence Forces, they say, responded by targeting the source of the fire. So they are saying that they did target that area.”

Shiftan: “No, no. The source of the fire. Not the school. The source of the fire. Not the school. You said Israel targeted the school.”

Byrne interjecting: “No we didn’t, no we didn’t. We very very clearly and very deliberately said that they targeted the source of the fire. We did not suggest that they targeted the school because we’ve said exactly what the IDF said.”

Shiftan: “Ok, no you didn’t but we can come to that later. The important thing is that we don’t know yet if these casualties came from Hamas rockets that fell. About 20%, somewhat less than 20% of the rockets Hamas is launching, vis-à-vis Israel, are falling inside the Gaza Strip.”





Published at Crethi Plethi.