For Targeting Hamas Israel is Punished in Survey of Press Freedom

Muhammed Shamalah, senior Islamic Jihad
operative was targeted while driving a press vehicle. 

Seth Mandel..
Commentary/Contentions..
30 January '13..

In November, New York Times media reporter David Carr wrote about the deaths of three alleged “journalists” in Gaza during Israel’s counteroffensive there. Alana Goodman pointed out here that two of the three were “cameramen” working for a television station owned by Hamas. Both Hamas and the television station itself are designated terrorist organizations. Alana then pointed to stories identifying one of the men as a Hamas military commander and another as an officer in Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Blogger Elder of Ziyon wrote that the whole episode was “not just an indictment of Carr. This is a systemic problem in the entire profession. The smugness that they are infallible, and the group-think that they can rely on others’ work without double-checking it, all indicate that there is some significant daylight between how many journalists do their work and what the truth really is.” Carr had defended himself by saying other organizations referred to those killed as journalists. One of the organizations Carr mentioned was Reporters Without Borders, which, having duped Carr into treating terrorists as journalists has just released its rankings of press freedom worldwide–and it has dropped Israel 20 places for killing those terrorists that the organization convinced news outlets to treat as innocent journalists:

Journalists in Israel (112th, -20) enjoy real freedom of expression despite the existence of military censorship but the country fell in the index because of the Israeli military’s targeting of journalists in the Palestinian Territories.

Israel was of course not targeting journalists; Israel was targeting terrorists aided by gullible and biased journalists. But since Hamas started the fighting with rocket attacks, fired at Israeli residential areas, and dressed up terrorists as journalists to attract Israeli fire, surely the Palestinian territories were punished by Reporters Without Borders as well? Nope: the Palestinians’ ranking  jumps ahead seven spots.

Hani Abbas - Why Should Reporters Without Borders Care If There is No Free Media ...

...In The West Bank Or Gaza So Long As They Can Find An Anti-Israeli Angle To Their Work?

Hani Abbas..
Stonegate Institute..
05 March '12..

The Paris-based group Reporters Without Borders says it is "deeply shocked" by the Israeli army's recent closure of two Palestinian TV stations in Ramallah.

Israeli soldiers and inspectors from the Israeli Ministry of Communications raided the two TV stations, Watan and Al-Quds Educational, and confiscated their transmitters because their broadcasts had been disrupting communications at Ben Gurion Airport.

Israel did not conduct the raid on the TV stations because it wants to silence the Palestinian media, as some Palestinians have claimed.

The raid was aimed at preventing a disaster as a result of the disruption of communications between aircraft and Ben Gurion Airport.

But that has not stopped groups such as Reporters Without Borders from calling on the Israeli government to "return the confiscated equipment and allow the two stations to resume broadcasting."

The group has, in fact, blindly endorsed the Palestinian version -- basically that the raid was part of an Israeli crackdown on freedom of media and expression in the Palestinian territories.

So what if a civilian aircraft crashes over Tel Aviv because of the unlicensed stations broadcasting from Ramallah? Does France allow unlicensed TV or radio stations to endanger the lives of thousands of passengers at one of its airports? Does France even have TV or radio stations that are not government-controlled?

Why Has Israel's Press Freedom Ranking Taken a Crash Dive?

Benjamin Joffe-Walt
The Media Line
18 January '10

(Not a surprise but still bizzare. Y.)

Israel has lost its top spot in the Middle East for first time in decades. Analysts discuss why.

For decades it has been a source of honor and dignity for Israel's defenders: the nascent democracy has consistently been ranked well above all other Middle Eastern nations in its level of press freedom.

Israel's free press status, confirmed each year by a number of international organizations from the US-based Freedom House to Reporters Without Borders, has withstood a number of wars, political revolts and Palestinian Intifadas.

The Gaza War changed all that, as Israel received extensive criticism for severely limiting journalists' access to the Gaza Strip during the heightened military conflict in the coastal strip in December 2008 and January 2009.

In a dramatic realignment in the annual rankings, Reporters Without Borders not only demoted Israel from its long-held spot as the top dog of Middle Eastern media freedom, but relegated the Jewish state to the 93rd most free media environment on earth, 47 spots below its 2008 ranking and well behind Kuwait, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates. The Reporters Without Borders annual index is based on questionnaires sent to hundreds of journalists around the world.

The US-based Freedom House, however, retained Israel's rank as the kingpin of MidEast press freedom in its annual report, well over 20 spots above all other Middle Eastern and North African nations.

(Read full article)
.

That Old Double Standard

Jew With A View
Tabatha
19 August 09

Remember back when the world media was howling in rage over Israel’s refusal to take reporters into Gaza?

For those of us who were frantically trying to counter the anti Israel hysteria, it was rather like Groundhog Day, with our repeatedly explaining that any reporters who went into Gaza were at real risk of being snatched by Hamas. It was frustrating beyond belief at times.

Yet now, when Hamas denies journalists access to parts of Gaza indefinitely, where are all those folk who were sooooo concerned with freedom of the press…?

This statement from Reporters Without Borders (hat tip Elder Of Ziyon) is being ignored by the mainstream media:

Reporters Without Borders condemns the Hamas interior ministry’s decision to deny Palestinian and foreign journalists access to the southern city of Rafah and to all hospitals in the Gaza Strip until further notice. The ban was issued on 14 August, after fighting broke out in Rafah between the Hamas government and a radical Islamist group.

“The Hamas-led government’s interior ministry has again demonstrated a desire to control news and information in the Gaza Strip,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Only the presence of journalists would ensure independent information about what took place in Rafah on 14 and 15 August.”
.