PMWATCH (PMW-AP group), 7 August — With over 1,700 newspaper
clients in the US alone, the Associated Press is responsible for
writing an enormous share of the news we read every day. What they
post as "news" generally appears, verbatim, in hundreds
of newspapers nationwide each day.
Last night the Associated Press posted on their national
newswire a list of 73 "suicide bombing attacks,"
carefully and pointedly noting for each attack the number of
Israelis, if any, that were killed. (See list below.)
The Associated Press releases regular summaries of Palestinian
attacks on Israelis; for a previous example, see last month's
"Chronology of suicide attacks against Israel" --
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002/06/19/bombings- glance.htm
However, we have yet to find a single AP summary detailing for
the same time period a history of Israeli attacks against
Palestinians, with accountings for each of the 1,768 Palestinian
deaths. For that matter, we have yet to see on the AP any of the
following (all stats below obtained from The Palestine Monitor):
* Overviews of the 148 Palestinians killed by Israel's illegal
policy of assassination of Palestinian political leaders;
* Checklists describing the circumstances of the wounding of
over 7,000 Palestinian children (this is UNICEF's estimate);
* Dated flowcharts accounting for the 2,500 Palestinians
permanently disabled by Israeli attacks, 500 of them children;
* Chronologies of Israeli attacks on Palestinian Emergency
Medical Personnel & Services, and Israeli Shelling of
Palestinian Hospitals;
* Timelines of the 15 on-duty Palestinian doctors and ambulance
drivers murdered by Israeli forces, and the 180 Red Cross
Emergency Medical Technicians attacked;
* Checklists on the 64 Palestinians who have died due to
Israeli prevention of access to medical treatment;
* Charts describing the 167 journalists attacked by the IDF;
* Overviews of the roughly 15,000 Palestinians arbitrarily
detained in mass detentions over the last 2 months alone;
* Timelines examining the Israeli shelling and demolition of
over 1,600 Palestinian homes.
Data for these categories is readily available from various
sources, such as:
The Palestine Center for Human Rights -
http://www.pchrgaza.org/files/Reports/English/full_index.htm
The Palestinian Crescent Society - http://www.passia.org/index_pfacts.htm
The
Palestine Monitor - http://www.palestinemonitor.org/
And yet, AP chooses to publish chronologies only of suicide
bombings, as if the actions of the Israelis were insignificant
details not worth keeping track of.
It is also important to note the following:
(1) In the chronology provided by AP, 47% of the attacks they
note caused no deaths at all. Should they not also be reporting in
a similarly comprehensive manner the daily Israeli attacks on
Palestinians, whether they cause deaths or not? Surely the far
more numerous attacks on Palestinians cause damage and fright
which is no less important than that of any Israeli.
(2) The AP chronology specifically notes that 10 of the 73
attacks occurred in the West Bank or in Gaza. However, about 30 of
them occurred in the Occupied Territories. The result of this
sloppy reporting is that while 40% of the attacks took place in
territories illegally occupied by the Israeli military, the AP
gives the erroneous impression that the overwhelming majority
occurred in Israel.
(3) The AP chronology does not distinguish between civilian and
military casualties, thus giving the impression that all victims
were civilians, when in fact a large number of those targeted were
armed settlers and members of the Israeli armed forces.
The Associated Press professes to abide by and respect the
Associated Press Managing Editors code of ethics -- http://www.apme.com/about/code_ethics.shtml
-- but such sub-par journalism is clearly not in keeping with that
code.
The Jerusalem Bureau of the Associated Press has a very large
staff and many of them are distinguished journalists who do honor
to their profession. Many go to enormous and often dangerous
lengths to provide coverage of this conflict. Please be sure to
address them with courtesy and respect while you share your
concerns.
Please consider giving them a call or sending them a fax at:
New York Headquarters: Tel 212-621-1500 -- Fax 212-621-7523
Washington Bureau: Tel 202-776-9400 -- Fax 202-776-9570
You can also send them an email via the interface at: http://www.pmwatch.org/pmw/cast/ap.asp
Your email will be sent to:
intdesk@ap.org
info@ap.org
For our latest report on AP, please visit:
http://www.pmwatch.org/pmw/reports/ap/ap061702.html