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| Matti Friedman at the 2018 Jewish Media Summit (photo credit: Chaviva Gordon-Bennett) |
You have to admire Matti Friedman. He bucked the entrenched wisdom to expose the unfairness (here and here) of the media’s excessive focus on Israel by, for instance, the Associated Press. And he did so as a liberal when being liberal, for the most part, means being down on Israel. In other words, Friedman doesn’t allow his political beliefs to color the truth—something that’s not as easy as it sounds, especially when one has a journalist’s platform to use or abuse.
Today I discovered that
Friedman’s not only a great writer whose morals remain intact, he’s also a
rousing speaker, personable, witty, and fun. You can listen to him rapt, for as
long as he’s willing to give of his time, and still be left wishing for more.
The former AP columnist held forth on the subject of How to Report the Middle East from the Middle East at the Jewish
Media Summit in Jerusalem, and even gave the audience a chance to ask
questions, which he answered with long, thoughtful responses.
Friedman, an Israeli Canadian
journalist, began by describing how small Israel is within the world at
large, the infinitesimal space taken up by its land mass. Even within the
Middle East, Israel takes up just one small sliver of land and has a population
of fewer than 8 million people, out of the 411 million people--overwhelmingly
Arab--who populate the Middle East as a whole. Despite this, when Friedman
worked there, the AP had more correspondents covering Israel than it had
covering the very large country known as China. There were, in fact, more correspondents
in the AP’s Israel bureau than in all the combined countries of
Sub-Saharan Africa.
Israel, moreover, is being
covered as a “conflict story,” says Friedman. This despite the violence and
recent horrific death toll a short distance away in Syria, or the bloodshed in
Iraq. Compared to what is happening in other Middle Eastern countries, Israel
is a very safe place, indeed. And when Friedman goes on to compare the number
of Jerusalem fatalities (27) to that of other cities in the year 2017, the
contrast is even starker. During the same time period the number of fatalities
in Indianapolis, for example, was 175. In Jacksonville, Florida, 133.
Friedman says that there is a
lot of framing going on when it comes to reporting the news. He gave an example
of how this works: your editor sends you to cover a pro-Trump protest. You get
there and while there’s a lot of police, there are actually only two
protesters.
As a journalist, you’re faced
with two choices. You can call your editor and say, “There’s no story.”
But, as Friedman says, editors
hate that, and if a writer does this too often, he puts his job on the line.
The other alternative is to frame the story: "A small, but vocal protest . . ."
In framing the story, the
journalist isn’t lying. He hasn’t said anything untrue, but he’s giving the
readers what they want, rather than the real story. So it is with framing the
Israel story as a conflict story or a moral story in which Israel is always in
the wrong. This, although Israel is much safer than many other Middle Eastern
countries, its major cities safer than many major American cities. This,
although the IDF goes to extreme lengths to avoid loss of life of civilians in,
for instance, Gaza.
Friedman also talked about how
journalists can zoom in or out of a story to give a certain impression or
picture. The example he gave was the highlighting of the suppression of the English
language in Montreal, where English speakers are a minority, in favor of the
French-speaking majority. English lettering on signs, for instance, is
regulated for size. Seen from this perspective, this is oppression of a
minority, something that is accepted as immoral by the world as a whole.
But if you zoom out of the
picture, you see that actually, this regulation of the English language is a
response to the fact that North America, for instance, the United States, is
overwhelmingly English-speaking. Montreal’s French-speaking community is the
real minority, which hopes to protect its language and culture by regulating
the use of the English language in that city.
Zooming in gives you one narrow
picture. Zooming out then, gives you the bigger picture. Journalists covering
Israel, says Friedman, are unfortunately “zooming in really tight” to highlight
Arab oppression.
Friedman spoke of the
“brilliant branding’ in creating the concept of the Two-State Solution. (Don’t
like the Two-State Solution? You’re against a solution.) He also spoke about
the accepted notion that the root of the conflict is the occupation of Israel
in 1967 and that only with the end of the occupation will there be peace. But
clearly, said Friedman, this is incorrect. Friedman reminds us that the PLO,
the Palestinian Liberation Organization, was formed in 1964, before Israel took
over Judea and Samaria in 1967. What
then, were they planning to “liberate?”
Friedman also spoke of the
shortsightedness of journalists in expecting that Israel could just vacate the
territories. “The vacuum Israel is being asked to create is not Nevada. The
vacuum created in the West Bank would more likely be filled with guys in black
masks.”
During the question and answer
period, I asked Friedman for his thoughts on how words and terms are used and
abused by journalists to paint a certain picture, how the evolution of
inaccurate terms takes place so that they become part of our accepted lexicon
for Israel. I gave the example of Professor Ruth Wisse of Harvard who says that
the word “conflict” in regard to Israel, is a misnomer, that in reality, it’s “the
Arab war against the Jews.”
(At this, Friedman gave a
start, shocked.)
I gave a second example. The
term “West Bank,” describes the territory in question as if one were standing
in Jordan. As if it were the actual bank of a river, which it is not. This
territory is not, in fact, within sight of any body of water. I mentioned that
the correct, most accurate geographical description of the territory is “Judea
and Samaria.”
“West Bank” has, nonetheless,
become the accepted nomenclature for the territory. I wanted to know Friedman’s
thoughts about journalists (like me) insisting on using the correct terms: if
doing so is effective and if it can be done without making the writer look
slightly insane or rabidly political. I want to be taken seriously. But I also
don’t like to use what I see as propagandist words and terms in my writing.
It gets my back up.
While Friedman obviously didn’t
agree with Prof. Wisse about the word “conflict,” he thought of another
excellent example of the issue I raised. The word “refugee” means something
different when applied to Arab refugees. The standard is different.
But in terms of language use,
Friedman said we should ask ourselves, “Does this piece explain what’s going on
to the people of Poughkeepsie?”
That sounded to me like a
pretty good litmus test.
Friedman was thoughtful as he
wound up his response to my question. “Maybe someone should take a closer look
at this question of words and terms,” he said.
I didn’t tell him that someone
already had. That someone would be me. I wrote a piece called Israel is Engaged in a War of Words
in 2014, the very same year Friedman exposed the double journalism standards
applied to Israel.
It was my first piece for the Algemeiner and I had been pleased with
how it turned out. But I didn’t want to toot my own horn on Friedman’s turf, so
I kept quiet.
I still wrestle with the
awkwardness of not using words like “Palestinian” or “West Bank.” And of
course, I refuse to call it a “conflict.” It’s caused me a lot of trouble
during my blogging career. Some find my insistent use of these terms insulting
and iconoclastic, while the worst of my detractors think my refusal to use
accepted terms and words an actual symptom of mental illness.
It takes a thick skin to be in
the blogging world. Refusing to use terms one sees as sly propaganda for the
other side takes not a little courage because of the inevitable abuse it
brings. It is my dearest hope that other bloggers who take the side of Israel,
will join me in using only accurate language to describe Israel and its
challenges.
Matti Friedman is a reasonable
and honest journalist. I hope he will think over the issue I raised and maybe
even write about it someday. I’d like to think that we might even find a place
of agreement and comfort.