CNN reporters risk hearing impairment covering Israel’s artillery bombardment of Lebanon but I’ve yet to see them report from Hezbollah positions. All I’ve seen is ad nauseum file footage of a goose-stepping army marching all over depictions of Israeli and US flags. Surely someone in the Hezbollah PR department could allow CNN access to their firing sites if only to disprove Israel’s assertion that they are conducting their firing from civilian populated areas.
What have they got to hide? Or is it, ‘where are they hiding out?’
Two points. First, Lebanon is a really dangerous place right now, with Israel raining fire and brimstone on it. Many nations are urging their citizens to flee with all due haste. The airport’s a wreck, and the borders are blocked to incoming traffic.
Second, Hesbol’lah is a very secretive bunch, and their launch sites in Lebanon are temporary. They fire a few rockets, then they run like Hell. They know that the place the rockets came from will soon be rubble.
Do you think that Hezbollah are unhappy that the only footage that CNN can get are endless shots of Israeli artillery, Israeli tanks, Israeli soldiers, etc, all pounding the living crap out of Lebanon? Their PR department knows exactly what it is doing. They keep their fighters in the shadows and push forward the civilian casualties into the spotlight. In the end, it’s difficult for the world to remember that it’s not Israel that’s the aggressor here.
How then are they supposed to report the story from both sides. Isn’t it their role to be impartial observers. Has Al Jazeera been reporting from Israel?
So very true, and very false, all at once. Hezbollah were the agressor, but the response has been astonishingly disproportionate. On the receiving end of that, no wonder the civilian casualties took the spotlight.
A quibble, if you will. A small enough matter, but that’s the trouble with quibbles.
The justification that flows from aggression is not an absolute. The restraints of civilization and humanity are not dissolved. Does it stink that a terrorist force will use innocent civilians as shield for their malign purpose. Sure! Does that absolve Israel of any responsibility for using force that simply cannot help but involve civilian casualties? I think not. If Steve Hawkings deliberately ran over your toe with his wheel chair, you are not permitted to disembowel him.
It is not necessary to literally report from both sides to present objective information. And, since you asked, no, being an impartial observer is not the media’s only role. It also must use news judgment in order to make use of its limited resources (limited on both ends of the process).
So does a Hezbollah rocket launcher get a “no bombing allowed” pass because they parked it next to a civilian building? What about the civilians at the downrange end of those rockets?