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Thursday, May 29, 2014

My challenge to the media reporting on Beitunia

Ok, I've stared at the videos and photos taken during "Nakba Day" for hours. I've read all the articles I can find. I've come up with my conclusions that there is no possible way that Nadeem Nawara was shot and killed by Israeli forces.

But CNN and the New York Times, showing far less diligence, have concluded that he was killed by Israeli live fire.

OK. I'm just an anonymous blogger, with a weird and ironic name. Why should my arguments - no matter how reproducible they are and taken from open sources - hold any weight with journalists who will only quote experts? It is not like CNN or the NYT will quote "Elder of Ziyon" as an expert. And - I'm not an expert. I just lay out my arguments and let people try to disprove them, and modify accordingly.

However, the mainstream media can do something I cannot: they can ask the real experts.

CNN, laughably, showed Nawara's father and the supposed "bullet" that killed Madeem, something which Israeli experts showed was completely impossible.  But neither CNN nor Robert Mackey bothered to contact any objective Western experts to easily identify the types of weapons used or the supposed bullet or to verify the story of the bullet hole in the backpack next to the bloodless exit wound.

So my challenge to the media is to find the experts and show them the videos and photos. Get hold of the head of New York's and Los Angeles' police forensics departments. Find military ballistics experts. And report what they say, even if they contradict what you have already reported. (Please don't go shopping for only the "experts" who verify your narrative. We know that trick.)

I'll be happy to bow to the experts showing me reasonable proof for how the youths are likely to have been killed by live fire. Do you, as real journalists, have the same intellectual integrity?

Or is your narrative more important than the truth?

Unfortunately, we know the answer. CNN has lots of footage of the day's events, but they only decided to release what they felt contradicted Israeli claims. They blew it. Yet their conscious decision was to only release what they thought supports the anti-Israel narrative, and nothing that shows how many holes it has.

Imagine the goldmine of information sitting in AFP's and AP's and CNN's archives, hours of video that could shed light on the truth rather than be cherry-picked to support a predetermined outcome!

There are a few real journalists out there, who have integrity. Let's hope that some of them start doing real research, dig up the full footage,  and talk to experts who have no reason to lie.