Sherine Tadros: Covering This Gaza War
►http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sherine-tadros/gaza-war-coverage_b_2167036.html
This week I heard a TV correspondent, who I very much respect and admire, throw back to the studio with the words “as Palestinians call it, the Israeli siege on Gaza.” She was standing in Gaza City where Israeli ground forces were surrounding the perimeter of the Strip. Warships surrounded the sea and drones and F16s patrolled the skies above. If there was ever a time to call Gaza under siege with certainty, it was then. Yet as she stood talking about the strikes and the people killed, her need to be balanced at the end made her unable to tell the cold bold truth.
There is a general problem with media when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict. The need to sanitize events so as not to be controversial and upset the wrong people, the lack of humanizing the conflict for fear that it will make you look sympathetic or worse empathetic to the Palestinians, which could be career suicide. But not being bold and telling it how it is ultimately is a disservice to the truth and to journalism.