by Noam Chomsky
7. The Critique of the Media 7.1 The American Media
O
ne interesting feature of the ideological scene in the summer of 1982 was the attack on the media as pro-PLO and anti-Israel. The charge had often been made before (see chapter 1 first* and
section 4.6.1, for some examples on the part of current New Republic editors), but it was renewed with considerable vigor as the Lebanon war began to appear on television screens and front pages. Television was a particular target of attack, particularly, for its insistence on showing scenes of the siege and bombing of Beirut, not counterbalanced by equivalent scenes of the siege and bombing of Tel Aviv or of parts of Lebanon where peace reigned under military occupation (on the same grounds, one could criticize the British press after the bombing of Coventry for not featuring pictures of parts of the city that remained intact). In a rational world, one would simply dismiss the charge of proPLO and anti-Israel bias as absurd or paranoid, noting the overwhelming evidence of “support for Israel,” racist dismissal of the Palestinians, and suppression of unwanted history across most of the spectrum of opinion and analysis. But we live in this world, so let us consider the matter.
Criticism of the media is certainly a legitimate undertaking, rarely pursued in a serious and intellectually responsible way. But the criticism in this case had some unusual aspects. Critical discussion of the media generally centers on editorializing, in explicit opinion pieces (including editorials) and more important, internal to news reports, where it is often manifested in more subtle ways; or on the selection of items to appear, the emphasis given to various topics, the uncritical acceptance of material that serves ideological needs, the incredible standards of evidence that are erected in the case of material that runs counter to these needs, and so on. There is ample material of this sort, and its significance is vastly underrated, in my opinion. But the criticism in this case was of a novel type. I do not recall a previous charge that correspondents on the scene were systematically misrepresenting what was happening before their eyes. On the contrary, even the harshest critics of the press in the past have always emphasized the generally highly professional standards of foreign correspondents in presenting what they found—though what they were looking for, and how they interpreted it, are often another matter.
In the present case, however, we find such criticisms as this, emblazoned on the front cover of the New Republic: Much of what you have read in the newspapers and newsmagazines about the war in Lebanon—and even more of what you have seen and heard on television—is simply not true.243
So we are informed on the authority of Martin Peretz, who was there— on a guided tour with an Israeli military escort. It is, of course, possible that the news presented here was contrived so skillfully that much of what we had actually seen, and what we had read in the reports of usually reliable correspondents, did not happen, but was fabricated for the occasion. One would want some rather strong evidence before accepting this conclusion, something stronger than “I was there”—or the authority of Israeli soldiers (carefully selected, since as noted many such soldiers gave harrowing reports going well beyond what was published here), his reports of what he was told by Lebanese, “Arab friends” who “coyly” explained that “Arabs exaggerate,” noted doves such as Shlomo Avineri (see section 6.3), and his own observations, which are credible to the extent that he has demonstrated himself to be a credible commentator and observer.
On the latter issue, we have already seen some pertinent evidence.244 Recall, for example, his treatment of the very examples he selected to demonstrate the perfidy of the press, the “vacuum bomb” story (section 4.7) and the case of Professor Avineri. This article contains much more. Note simply the scrupulous avoidance, once again, of the Israeli press, with its reports—some quoted above—by journalist, military experts and soldiers. Or the integrity (or, to be more charitable, the gullibility) of someone who can report that “Whomever I talked to on the streets—and there are many eager to talk, Christian and Moslem, in French or English or Arabic—pointed out that what the Israelis had targeted were invariably military targets”; an incredible falsehood, from the first day of the bombings just prior to the actual invasion, and a claim startlingly at variance with the reports of Israeli observers. Recall the observation by the former chief education officer of the IDF, Mordechai Bar-On, that “anyone who visited Southern Lebanon during and even after the fighting” could see that the target was not merely “the PLO’s military infrastructure” but rather “the very existence of the Palestinians as a community.” At the very time that Peretz reported that the IDF was scrupulously limiting itself to only military targets, military historian Col. (Ret.) Meir Pail, former head of the IDF officers training school, was writing that the region that Peretz visited “looked as though it had suffered a major earthquake in the ‘best’ tradition of the destruction of the Vandal conquests in ancient times or of the Mongols in the Middle Ages,” a scene of “destruction and ruin” that “will be the haunting memorial which points to Israel and the IDF as the inheritors of the Mongols in the Middle East.”* There are numerous other examples, some cited earlier from Israeli soldiers, military analysts and journalists; not to speak of the bombardment of Beirut, the character of which was already evident when Peretz wrote.245 Peretz seems to have visited a different country from the one these Israeli “Lebanon eyewitnesses” were describing (unless they too were secretly “pro-PLO” or intent on defaming Israel). To believe on the basis of Peretz’s claims that large segments of the American and European media were systematically lying would require quite a leap of faith—one easily taken by some American doves (see section 6.3).
As we have seen, even before the war Peretz felt that Israel had “lost” the press years earlier, because most correspondents were so afflicted by the Vietnam experience that they always sympathize with those who call themselves “guerrillas” or “freedom fighters.” A person who could read the American press in this way has some credibility problems to start with. These mount further when we proceed to his indictment of television, in the same interview, because it fails to give the relevant background when it shows an Israeli soldier “beating the head of a Palestinian boy with a club”—one aspect of the “strongarm methods” that Peretz recommended, as implemented by his friend
* Pail argues that “there was a reasonable military explanation” for all of this, given the goals of the invasion, as already described, and that the IDF observed “the principle of purity of arms on its low and minimal scale.” in the sense that “there was no deliberate killing of civilian population,” though there was “contempt of that same principle on the national scale,” for example, when the airforce was directed “to drop its bombs on unspecified targets, to devastate and raze the city and, apparently, to destroy the houses together with their terrorist residents,” etc. A number of soldiers quoted in the Hebrew press made the same point.
Menachem Milson, which he thinks should perhaps have been instituted from the start instead of the “liberal enlightened administration” of the preceding years. Peretz’s criticism is that TV reporting, so tainted by superficiality, fails to “explain that the Arab national character tends towards violence and incitement and that thousands would be massacred if the PLO ruled in the West Bank.” Without tarrying any longer over the reports of someone who is capable of speaking in this way about “the Arab national character,” and who hold2s that this belief of his about the PLO somehow justifies the scene portrayed, and who is responsible for material of a sort already described sufficiently, it should be noted that if Peretz is to be believed, the Israeli government regards him as too harsh a critic! Peretz asserts that the Israeli Embassy in Washington contacted him with a request to circulate his “Lebanon Eyewitness,” but requested first that he eliminate “critical passages.”246
Peretz did not restrict his criticism to the media. He also extended it to opponents of the invasion, in ways that also reflect on his credibility. Take just one exam
ple. He refers to the fact that he signed an ad for Oxfam with the honorable goal of helping to “alleviate the suffering of those Lebanese caught in the fighting” (recall that this ad by “unexceptionable humanitarians” contained the figures on casualties and refugees that he later claimed to have been fabricated by the anti-Israel media, a fact that raises some interesting questions that might have been addressed somewhere; see p. 364*, also section 5.1). But
* On my “pro-PLO hardline” position see pp. 164 and section 6.4 and references cited. For Peretz, the position that Palestinians have a right to select whom they wish as their representatives—that is, the position that they have the same human rights as Jews—is what is intolerable, and counts as a “pro-PLO hardline” position.
that is not the purpose of a new committee...[that] rounds up the usual suspects: pro-PLO hardline in America (Edward Said, former Senator James Abourezk, Noam Chomsky);* old-line Communist fellow-travellers (Pete Seeger, Paul Robeson Jr.); and the predictable goofies (Ramsey Clark, Dr. John Mack, Daniel Berrigan). The signatories seek relief money not for all the victims of the war in Lebanon, but only for those “trapped in West Beirut without water, essential services, and medical supplies.” What an odd humanitarian impulse to aid just West Beirut!
The statement of the pro-PLO hardliners, fellow-travellers and predictable goofies in fact reads as follows: “Help the victims including hundreds of thousands trapped in West Beirut without water, essential services and medical supplies.”247
More interesting than this convenient bit of rewriting is what follows: Who exactly is holed up there? There are none “trapped” but the PLO. So this is what I.F. Stone, after all his agonizing about bloodshed, has finally come to: asking his admirers to put up money so that the PLO can continue to fight, not simply against Israel, but against the possibility of a peaceful Lebanon.
In fact, there were hundreds of thousands of people “holed up there,” either because they had nowhere to flee, or because the local forces under Israeli control would not let them leave (see section 8.2.3)—or because it was their city, or because they stayed to help the victims. But to provide food or medicine to those who are being deprived of it by an Israeli siege while the IDF is in the process of blasting them to bits is obviously an intolerable act, more evidence of a “double standard” and a “pro-PLO bias,” if not outright anti-Semitism, in the eyes of the editor of this leading journal of American liberalism—a fact that passes without comment here, again yielding some insight into the American cultural scene.
Another major critique of the media was produced by the AntiDefamation League of B’nai Brith (ADL) in October. This time TV was the villain. The report consists of a documentary record of TV broadcasts with critical observations, and an analysis by the ADL. Subsequently, this was referred to by supporters of Israel as an indictment of the media, but a review of the documentation presented leads to no such conclusion. In fact, the study has its comic aspects. The primary criticism of the early evening news programs to which the study is restricted is that they gave reports with sources the ADL regards as inadequate. Thus on June 14, ABC and NBC cited casualty figures, attributing them respectively to the “Lebanese police” and “the Lebanese government.” “Who are ‘Lebanese police’,” “Who is the ‘Lebanese government’,” the ADL analysts ask? Apparently, their concept is that in reporting the crimes of their Holy State in a TV clip one must provide an extensive scholarly apparatus. Similarly, CBS cited “international relief officials” in Beirut who reported casualty figures from Sidon. The ADL asks: “Who are these ‘international relief officials,’ and if they are in Beirut, how could they be reporting on casualties in Sidon?” (could they have received a message from Sidon?). If such standards were applied generally to TV reporting, the 6PM news would last until midnight if it could appear at all; someone who proposed that such standards should be met in any other connection would be regarded as quite mad. The ADL also criticizes the figures cited from Sidon because “this figure was later proven to be a gross exaggeration, yet no retraction was forthcoming.” They do not provide the “proof,” but it appears to be Israeli government claims to the contrary, cited above. The ADL does not explain why Israeli government announcements “prove” that the figures provided by the Lebanese police and government and by relief officials are false, a conclusion that is particularly curious when we recall that the Lebanese sources were celebrating their liberation by Israel, according to ADL doctrine.
The analysis continues at the same intellectual level. In fact, a review of their material shows, as would be expected, that American TV treated Israel with kid gloves. The ADL study contains one major specific charge of TV turpitude, namely, a June 13 report that there were 600,000 refugees in southern Lebanon, attributed to the Red Cross. The Red Cross later gave an estimate of 300,000 homeless but, the ADL study states: “No network reported this update.” Two sentences later we read: “…on June 16, John Chancellor of NBC reported a Red Cross estimate of 300,000 homeless.” The example reveals rather nicely the contempt of the ADL for its intended audience. The next sentence reads: “Yet on June 19, Jessica Savitch, also of NBC, reported a figure of 600,000 homeless,” showing that NBC was persisting in its evil ways. In this case, we do not have self-contradiction within three sentences; rather, gross misrepresentation. Turning to the documentary record supplied as an appendix, we find that in this report Jessica Savitch stated: “It is now estimated that 600,000 refugees in south Lebanon are without sufficient food and medical supplies.” (my emphasis). Recall that these are the only specific and marginally serious criticisms that appear in the report.
The ADL study proceeds to criticize the networks for giving inadequate coverage to “Israeli relief efforts (an extraordinary departure from the usual behavior of combatants and certainly newsworthy).” It is quite true that the “Israeli relief efforts” described by Col. Yirmiah were “inadequately covered” and “newsworthy,” but this fact merely reveals the normal pro-Israeli bias of the media, as the evidence cited earlier from Israeli sources shows clearly enough (see section 5.3). This conclusion will simply be fortified when we return, directly, to further reports from the Israeli press about these “extraordinary” efforts. The study also criticizes the networks because “not enough attention was devoted to the fact that the overwhelming majority of Israelis solidly supported the Begin government.” This criticism is interesting, given that the media were also regularly accused of failing to report Israeli dissent against the war, which revealed that Israel had not lost its high moral values. How these requirements are to be jointly met has not yet been adequately explained. The ADL study concludes finally that TV coverage was unfair because “the main sentiment which emerged from the coverage was one of revulsion at the violence which was implicitly and explicitly associated with Israel”; “Scenes of violence were inevitably and reflexively linked to Israel, however inadvertently and however understandably in a situation where the media competes for ‘scoops’ and graphic depiction of violent events”; “a majority of human interest stories shown were those which depicted scenes of great devastation and human suffering.”248 Comment seems unnecessary, except, perhaps, to recall once again Meir Pail’s observation on the Stalinist character assumed by the Zionist organizations under the influence of Golda Meir and the Labor Party in the post-1967 period; see chapter 2, section 2.1.
While the ADL study itself is merely embarrassing, it is of some interest, perhaps, that this document was taken quite seriously by the media. I saw no critical analysis of it, though its absurdity is obvious on even superficial reading, even putting aside the assumptions that underlie it. The Times had a fairly lengthy news report on its release, simply summarizing its allegations without analysis and quoting some responses by TV executives, e.g., Reuven Frank, president of NBC news, who characterized the study as “careful and quietly stated.”249
Earlier, Frank had commented, more accurately, that “What Israel sees today is not an anti-Israel bias
in the news coverage,” but “a reduction in the pro-Israel bias.” He referred to the attack on the U.S. media by “the pro-Israeli PR establishment, partly the [Israeli] government, partly Martin Peretz,” and said he is willing to bet that “somebody in New York” instructed David Shipler of the New York Times to write a critical piece “on the PLO occupation of Lebanon” (cited above, note 10).250
It is interesting to ask why the media did not expose the selfcontradictions, falsehoods and intellectual vacuity of the ADL critique and the astonishing moral values implicit in it. Perhaps they simply did not want to be charged with anti-Semitism or to be subjected to the kind of defamation and slander in which the ADL specializes. But there may be something else involved. It almost appears that the media relish this kind of criticism. There is evidence that that is so, in fact. The incident recalls an earlier one, a massive two-volume critique of the media by Peter Braestrup produced under the auspices of Freedom House, demonstrating (by the standards of its sponsor) that the media were unfairly critical of the American war in Vietnam, contributing to the failure of the U.S. to achieve its (by definition, noble) aims. The study impressed commentators in the press as “conscientious” and “painstakingly accurate” (New York Times); “with its endless attention to accuracy,” Dean John Roche of the Fletcher School commented in the Washington Post, it constitutes “one of the major pieces of investigative reporting and first-rate scholarship of the past quarter century” and should lead to a congressional investigation of the press (see note 251). Harvard political scientist Michael Mandelbaum wrote (Daedalus, Fall 1982) that “Peter Braestrup’s exhaustive study of the American media’s coverage of the Tet offensive does show that the public received a distorted picture of the event.” Others reacted similarly,* In fact, the first volume, containing the analysis, grossly falsifies the evidence presented in the second volume, containing the supporting documentation, so even on internal grounds the study would at once be dismissed by any rational commentator. Furthermore, crucial documentary evidence is omitted and the study fails to raise even the most obvious questions (e.g., how did news reporting compare with intelligence analyses, available from the Pentagon Papers and elsewhere?). When these elementary inadequacies are overcome, we see from Braestrup’s own evidence—and what he omits—that the media accepted the framework of state propaganda and were more optimistic about the prospects for American arms than internal intelligence documents, not too surprising since the media tended to rely on public government statements, not knowing then what was being transmitted internally. The Freedom House case is narrow to begin with—that the press was too “pessimistic.” By Freedom House standards, one must conclude, the press must not only accept the assumptions of the state -propaganda system but must do so in an upbeat and enthusiastic spirit in its news