We were able to cover the Iraq war with journalists embedded with US troops and almost nobody on the other side. Frankly if we put a guy with a camera that streamed to the internet (with a 1 day lag) with every IDF platoon, I don’t think we would need the other side’s perspective.
IIRC, Israel has been able to maintain a relatively good civilian casualty ratio for this type of fighting. You might be able to criticize them for responding like this but their civilian casualty ratio isn’t really that bad. War is horrible and it is the price that Gazans seem willing to pay to stand up to their oppressors.
There was a debate on NPR a few days ago and I think it was a professor and an author. It went along smoothly for about 20 minutes until they got their first caller and then all hell broke loose. Each guy was basically ended up saying the other guys was either lying or stupid. These guys were basically reduced to hurling bumper sticker sound bites at each other. All the while trying to maintain an air of calm reasoned objectivity. I have no doubt that after the segment was over a cage descended from the ceiling and Tina Turner yells “Two men enter, One man leaves”
And here is the BBC statistician report supporting all I posted about the Gaza casualty figures.
Yet still, even today, the media keeps reporting “X Palestinians killed, most of them civilians”.
… basically confirms what I have been talking about in this thread, but to take it further than the Gaza context:
A Palestinian reporter duly relayed an official Palestinian story from an Israeli army roadblock near Ramallah in the West Bank, where a pregnant woman had died after heartless Israeli soldiers refused to let her go through to the hospital. The reporter went to the hospital, where a doctor confirmed the report. Uneasy, the reporter climbed on foot to the primitive encampment where the woman lived, and there, her husband refuted the whole story. The delay, he said, was getting her to the main road and finding a taxi. Once they got to the roadblock, he said, the soldiers cleared everyone else out of the way and sped them through to the hospital—but it was too late. The reporter then confronted the doctor, who admitted that he lied “for the cause.”
Which of your claims does this confirm? That the Hamas controls what reporters say? Apparently not. That reporters are afraid to report what they think Hamas won’t like? No, not that either. This was a Palestinian reporter who dug out the truth.
What does it prove other than, “Sometimes people lie to reporters?”
Hamas is using threats and pressure to prevent journalists from providing objective reports, the Foreign Press Association in Israel and Palestine said in a statement Monday.
The organization said it “protests in the strongest the blatant, incessant, forceful and unorthodox methods employed by the Hamas authorities and their representatives against visiting international journalists in Gaza over the past month.”
“The international media are not advocacy organizations and cannot be prevented from reporting by means of threats or pressure, thereby denying their readers and viewers an objective picture from the ground,” the FPA added. According to the FPA, several members of the foreign media in Gaza were harassed, threatened or questioned about stories they reported.
…
On Sunday, Paul T. Jørgensen of Norway’s TV2 reported that "several foreign journalists have been kicked out of Gaza because Hamas does not like what they wrote or said.
“We have received strict orders that if we record that Hamas fires rockets or that they shoot, we will face serious problems and be expelled from Gaza,” Jørgensen added.
A long, meticulously researched, very in-depth article documenting amazing media pro-Hamas bias:
Fox News tries to maintain balance?
That explains the wild flailing.
He defined a three-prong strategy used by Hamas to control public discourse: “Arouse protest in the West to stop Israel; feed Lawfare (law warfare) attacks that severely restrict Israel’s use of weapons; demonize and delegitimize Israel in the world community [with events such as] Israel Apartheid Week and BDS.”
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Landes stressed that “intimidation [of journalists] is the huge story” coming out of Operation Protective Edge.
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Landes sees a brand of advocacy journalism unfolding in the Israel- Palestinian conflict. He cited a BBC reporter who announced in 2001 at a Hamas rally, “We journalists stand shoulder to shoulder with you in your struggle against Israel.”
For Landes, the unintended consequences of Hamas’s war strategy and its connection to global jihad is “lethal journalism“ and the blood libel that Israel targets Palestinian children.