benjaminteicher.com – freelance writer

FleetStreetBlues is an irreplaceable resource for freelance/unemployed journalists and writers in the UK.

Which is why I found its defence of Jan Moir’s Stephen Gately column bizarre.

In her piece, Moir revels in her completely unconcealed disgust at sex between two or more men.

FSB suggests that, in fact, such an interpretation of the piece might be confined to ‘university-educated, liberal-leaning journalists’ and therefore implies that the UK public at large endorses Moir’s perspective.

This underwrites the basis of the post, as far I can understand it. FSB seems to be suggesting that because The Daily Mail – the newspaper which published the column – represents and indulges the views of a large numbers of people in the UK, we should think twice before criticising the hateful things that it says:

The Daily Mail is a great paper, because its every article is written single-mindedly for the benefit of its readers. Not its journalists.

A perverse, incomprehensible, and irrelevant argument.

BOYZONE 4EVA!

Sometimes distance sharpens the lens. But the extent to which the Australian media have been captured by the interests of Kraft, the american multinational, is astounding, and mirth-making.

http://www.smh.com.au/national/i-believed-in-isnack-20-creator-laments-vegemite-dumping-20091001-gdod.html

This was the lead story on all Fairfax news websites this morning, ahead of the Sumatran earthquake which killed thousands.

Applying tactics that they first polished with their ‘what kind of vegemite eater are you?’ campaign (or something equally inane), Kraft have now convinced the media that the naming competition for one of their products is worth reporting. The true genius lies, however, in the so-called ’scandal’ around the name that was chosen as a consequence of the competition. This clever manoeuvre allows those editors with some residual pride and professionalism to report on the promotion without being seen to rely on press releases and PR guff from Kraft.

With cajoling from Kraft marketing, the amount of chatter around the promotion has reached a critical mass, so that journalists can consult the public sphere in order to produce the reports, rather than rely on press releases from Kraft.

The cynical geniuses at Kraft have even gone so far as to affect shock at what has transpired, as though the ’scandal’ were somehow against their interests, as though this were a news event that transcends them.

These so-called professionals are (wilfully?) oblivious to the role they play in promoting Kraft’s products, regardless of whether we like the facile name for their facile product.

I was going to title this post with ‘…on the tragedy in Gaza’ or ‘…on the massacre in Gaza’, but I simply can’t decide on what it is. The first implies that the slaughter from the sky, and now from the ground, is fate, like thunderbolts fired by the gods.

The second demonises Israelis, and I cannot really claim to understand the motives and motivations of the Israeli government, military, although I think I have some insight into the fear and paranoia of the population. After all, I live in a land composed of anxious (post-)colonisers.

So, I have two observations from this vast, antipodean distance.

Framing matter: Humanitarian vs War Frame in the reporting of the Gaza war

The first relates to media frames. Much of the mainstream press have eschewed the ‘normal’ media frame that would apply in the context of a siege, bombardment and invasion of a city. We might expect that if this battle occurred in the context of a corner of Africa forgotten by the west, that the humanitarian frame would apply, where viewers are invited to understand the events in terms of human suffering and cruelty. We would be introduced to the Palestinians as ‘victims’ and the Israeli leadership as ‘aggressors’, along the lines of, say, the Sudanese government and its persecution of the Darfuris.

Instead we have something of a more conventional war reporting frame, where human suffering features, but it is understood much more in terms of its inevitability in the context of a dispute between two parties whose truth claims we are unable to substantially verify. There is a stated equality between the military might of the Israeli military and the admittedly lethal, but rarely so, rocket attacks by Hamas militants and those from associated groups.

This is achieved primarily through the way space is given to both Palestinians and Israelis. Their claims, that on the one hand the Israelis are propagating war crimes against a virtually defenceless population, and on the other hand, that Israeli has an essential need to defend its population from aggression, are treated as equally valid even as some editorialising by journalists challenges this.

Al Jazeera adheres to the first ‘humanitarian’ frame, and expresses a moral outrage against Israel that matches that which it, and many other news organisations vent against someone like Robert Mugabe, dictator of Zimbabwe. Switching between this and other networks sometimes feels like stepping between different realities, as different worlds crystallise from the same human matter, which turns inexorably red each day that passes , no matter how it is spun.

Asymetrical Bullshit

An underside to Israel’s military might is its discursive prowess. Israel’s main defence, whenever it is confronted by journalists with the consequences every time a bullet gores through flesh or a shell buries a child in the remains of her home, is that ‘Israel only targets Hamas operatives and facilities and, regrettably, sometimes, civilians die. Hamas, however, deliberately targets civilians in southern Israel’.

I could be wrong, but from what I understand about Hamas’ rockets, is that they are very basic and crude and lacking the precision to damage Israel’s military infrastructure in any case. So many of them fall in the middle of a street, a field, and terrify, but rarely result in death.

It is horrific that someone could fire a rocket with no knowledge of who might be annihilated as a consequence. But this fundamental truth should not confuse us, and obscure the asymmetry between the army of one nation, and the provisional fighting force of whatever we can call the non-state within which the Palestinians eek out their existence.

So, if the Israelis really want the Palestinians to stop targeting civilians with their rockets, then a provision of any ceasefire agreement must ensure the transfer of military hardware from the Israeli military to the authorities in Gaza and the West Bank. With these precision weapons in Palestinian hands all sides will have confidence that the Palestinians will be able to respond to ongoing Israeli aggression and cruelty in a way that does not harm civilian populations.