In my last post, I called attention to a piece by the London Independent’s Robert Fisk profiling an Isreali journalist covering the Palestinian response to the ongoing conflict. Now Fisk is figuring in a debate over news language that raises larger questions about media fairness and accuracy. It has already led to one journalist resiging. Here are excerpts from his story about why he quit. It was in London’s Evening Standard on September 5th. You can click on the whole piece below. Incidentally, he faults all sides in the conflict for media manipulation.

The Middle East’s war of words

by Sam Kiley

It all seems a bit silly, at first - two foreign-reporting grandeeslocking horns over just one word.

Last week The Independent’s Robert Fisk accused the BBC of buckling toIsraeli pressure to drop the use of “assassination” when referring toIsrael’s policy of knocking off alleged “terrorists”. Not true, blusteredJohn Simpson, auntie’s world affairs editor in The Sunday Telegraph.

The corporation, he insisted, had simply reaffirmed its house rules thatonly prominent political figures could be assassinated - though he didn’toffer an alternative term for the killing of ordinary folk. He bitterlyresented Fisk’s allegation that the Beeb had been got at.

It is certainly true that the pro-Israel lobby has forced the BBC and CNNin particular to agonise over the use of loaded terms. In war, words are aweapon, we all know that. And few belligerents have been so good athijacking language to its own cause than Israel. The Jewish State hasdeliberately set out to bend English to serve its own ends. It is entirelynatural that it should.

………(read whole piece below)

…. But in the war of words, no newspaper has been so happy to hand the keysof the armoury over to one side than The Times, which is owned by RupertMurdoch’s News International. Murdoch is a close friend of Ariel Sharon,Israel’s prime minister.

Knowing these details, and that Murdoch has invested heavily in Israel,The Times’ foreign editor and other middle managers flew into hystericalterror every time a pro-Israel lobbying group wrote in with a quibble orcomplaint, and then usually took their side against their owncorrespondent - deleting words and phrases from the lexicon to rob itsreporters of the ability to make sense of what was going on.

So, I was told, I should not refer to “assassinations” of Israel’sopponents, nor to “extrajudicial killings or executions”. The professionalIsraeli hits in which at least four entirely innocent civilians have beenkilled were, if I had to write about them at all, just “killings”, or bestof all - “targeted killings”. The fact that the Jewish colonies on theWest Bank in Gaza were illegal under international law because theyviolated the Geneva Convention was not disputed by my editors - but anyreference to this fact was “gratuitous”.

… No pro-Israel lobbyist ever dreamed of having such power over a greatnational newspaper. They didn’t need to. Murdoch’s executives were soscared of irritating him that, when I pulled off a little scoop bytracking, interviewing and photographing the unit in the Israeli armywhich killed Mohammed al-Durrah, the 12-year-old boy whose death wascaptured on film and became the iconic image of the conflict, I was askedto file the piece “without mentioning the dead kid”.

After that conversation, I was left wordless, so I quit.