Transcript
Middle East Press Restrictions
April 13, 2002
BROOKE GLADSTONE: From WNYC in New York this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
BOB GARFIELD: I'm Bob Garfield. And this week we're starting a little differently, with a couple of letters from last week. The issue was: Israel's recent unprecedented crackdown on the press. Robert Smith of Dallas thought our treatment "insightful" and added, "For many historical and sometimes legitimate reasons the Israeli government gets a pass on a lot of things,...On restricting press coverage, selectively granting press credentials based on religion, nationality or affiliation -- no 'passes' should be given to their government or any other."
BROOKE GLADSTONE:But listener George Bulow [sp?] criticized journalists for applying a double standard when issuing complaints. "Within the last two weeks," he writes, "we have seen Reuters correspondents who witnessed and videotaped the summary execution of 'collaborators' by Palestinian authorities, having their tapes confiscated and their lives threatened. Little if anything was reported by NPR or by any other Western media outlets. Yet everyone, On the Media included, jumped on the bandwagon to bash the Israelis for closing certain areas of military activity to a prying press." So do the media hold Israel to a different standard, condemning it for actions we tolerate from the Palestinian Authority? Joel Simon of the Committee to Protect Journalists joins us now. So Joel I assume you'll say no, there is no double standard.
JOEL SIMON: Well, it's, it's a little more complicated. I mean from our vantage point. We simply document the cases as they come our way. Since the incursion began we've documented two serious press freedom violations by the Palestinian Authority. One, the one you just mentioned; another one in which Palestinian militia shot a car that was clearly identified as a car full of journalists. Apparently that was a mistake, but that - we did nevertheless document that. On the other hand, in - just in the last few weeks we've documented probably about 8 or 10 shooting incidents carried out by Israeli defense forces against journalists and many, many other cases of harassment, restricting access, threats -- so we're just looking at the cases themselves, and that's what we've documented.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Do you think that Palestinian censorship is reported with equal intensity?
JOEL SIMON:I think that in some ways because Palestinian censorship tends to affect local Palestinian journalists, it's a more subtle kind of event whereas the shootings of journalists by Israeli forces have affected foreign correspondents and are inherently newsworthy.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:But a lot of these incidents regarding the Palestinian Authority are by no means subtle and are by no means limited to Palestinian journalists.
JOEL SIMON: And we've certainly documented-- it-- after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in September there were celebrations - especially in Nablus, street demonstrations, and the Palestinian Authority tried to restrict coverage of those demonstrations and in some cases threatened journalists and confiscated film. We protested that vigorously and I know that that was widely covered.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Is there a difference between the way the Palestinian Authority and the Israel Defense Force deal with the press?
JOEL SIMON:Well, yes there's a difference. You have to start with the understanding that Palestinian journalists and journalists in the areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority work in an environment in which censorship, self-censorship, intimidation is the norm. And Israeli journalists work in a much freer environment. And part of the process through which Palestinian journalists are censored or engage in self-censorship is very informal. It involves relationships, it involves phone calls that seem friendly, it involves meetings -- and precisely for that reason, it's much more difficult to document and we don't always hear the complaints. Israeli journalists are much more likely to speak up.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:So even though, say, Saudi Arabia or North Korea are far more closed societies and far more susceptible to charges of censorship, you're not as likely to go after them because you don't have the complaints.
JOEL SIMON: Well that's right. We don't take up a lot of press freedom cases in Iraq. We acknowledge that there's almost complete censorship in Iraq, but we don't have individual cases. The question also is one of sensitivity. I mean shouldn't a country that's democratic expect and respond to these kinds of complaints? I mean does Israel really only want to be compared to Saudi Arabia? Now you can describe that as a double standard, but it's also a situation in which governments create their own standard. A democratic government - a government that permits its citizens to speak up and protest and demonstrate - will obviously create a situation in which citizens are vocal in expressing their displeasure.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Okay. Thanks very much.
JOEL SIMON: Thank you.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Joel Simon is the deputy director of the Committee to Protect Journalists.