Out
To Lunch
By Remi Kanazi
07 August, 2006
Countercurrents.org
The
US media’s biased coverage of the crisis in Lebanon should come
as no surprise. While the White House and Congress claim a “special
relationship” with Israel, our news outlets are not supposed to
have a “special relationship” with anyone. Their job is
to fairly reports on matters; anything less is a disservice to those
watching their news programs and reading their newspapers.
Shockingly, Larry King Live
has been “fair” in its coverage of the conflict consuming
Lebanon in contrast to Fox News’ O'Reilly Factor, MSNBC’s
Scarborough Country and yes, CNN’s darling Anderson Cooper 360.
There is, however, much criticism to be doled out to CNN’s “longest-running
interview program.” One need look no further than Larry King Live’s
first two guests, Republican Senator George Allen and Democratic Senator
Evan Bayh. It was nice to see—in this nine minute segment—two
senators putting their congressional partisan politics aside to stand
together in solidarity with the state of Israel. When Larry King asked
Senator Allen if the US should be a true broker in the region, Allen
replied, “We support Israel, you’re right Larry. Israel
is a wellspring in the wilderness in the Middle East and we do support
them and their right to protect themselves.”
The next guest on the show
was positioned as the “Lebanese side.” Larry King Live passed
off the nearly four minute interview with Chibli Mallat—one of
the leaders of the Cedar Revolution, deep critic of Hezbollah and candidate
for President—as the voice of the Lebanese people. When Larry
King asked Mallat about Nassrallah’s remark that the conflict
is an Israeli/American plot to control the Middle East, Mallat responded,
“I’m afraid that I do agree with the senators. He [Nassrallah]
initiated the conflict, and all this talk about a great plot between
Israel and America is out of place. The conflict was initiated…by
[Hezbollah’s] reckless action through the Blue Line that separates
Lebanon from Israel. That was a grave violation of international law
and I think also a grave violation of Lebanese law.” Like a true
patriot, Mallat later urged “restraint” from Israel, echoing
comments made by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice weeks earlier.
Now that the “Lebanese
people” were heard, it was necessary to bring on the Israeli side,
Israeli Consul General Ehud Danoch, to counter any “Lebanese”
propaganda. For nearly four minutes, Danoch defended Israel and extensively
illustrated its commitment to root out “terrorism.” As icing
on the cake, Danoch took softball emails from viewers and general questions
from Larry King such as, “Why do you oppose a cease-fire now?”
and “Are you optimistic?”
One would think that after
Larry King Live came back from break, the show would cut to the carnage
in Lebanon, the destruction of its infrastructure, or an analyst discussing
the humanitarian implications the siege on Lebanon presents. Not exactly.
When the program returned from the break, Larry King cut to Anderson
Cooper in Northern Israel, who—given the amount of reporting he’s
doing in the North—may as well be looking for a second home. Larry
King then cut to Dr. Sanjay Gupta in Haifa. While Gupta spoke of the
horror Katyusha rockets exact (thousands have been fired, inflicting
very little damage relative to Israel’s 500 pound bombs and artillery
shells), pictures crossed the screen of injured Israeli women and children.
The producers, however, were still unsatisfied. Before going to commercial,
Anderson Cooper needed another six minutes explaining that the “terrorist
group,” Hezbollah, is hiding within the civilian population. Cooper
makes no mention of the fact that Hezbollah formed as a resistance group
to fight off an Israeli military that slaughtered nearly twenty thousand
innocent Lebanese and Palestinian civilians in 1982. To justify the
mass murder of the Lebanese population today, Cooper makes clear to
the viewer that while Israel is trying to be as accurate as possible,
even “the most moral military in the world” can only be
so precise. It’s ironic that Cooper always has the exact number
of Katushya rockets fired on Israel, but the exact number of cluster
bombs, artillery shells, and missiles used against the civilian population
of Lebanon seems to evade his statistical charts.
A simple cut to commercial
would not suffice; the producers of program realized that any decent
show must have a good outro. Larry King Live eased into commercial with
a “balanced” set of pictures: first, a young Muslim girl
holding a picture of Hassan Nassrallah, followed by what is assumed
to be a group of Lebanese burning American and Israeli flags, followed
by a man carrying a blanket-covered lifeless body, succeeded by two
young covered Muslim girls (one of them is in tears), and the sequence
ended with three injured Lebanese boys (one of the boys is in tears).
Apparently, when showing pictures of injured Israelis (they’d
show dead ones, but it doesn’t happen often) and “heroic”
Israelis, the producers of Larry King Live misplaced the Associated
Press pictures of little Israeli girls writing messages on missiles
that were about to be fired on the civilian population of Lebanon. Ironically,
the only person killed the day of this particular episode was a Palestinian-Israeli
girl.
Estimates of dead Lebanese
civilians surpassed 900, while the Israeli civilian death toll is at
27. Although thirty three Lebanese civilians die for every one Israeli,
the US media deems it necessary to give the Israeli agenda ten minutes
of airtime for every minute allotted to the Lebanese voice. The war
crimes being carried out against the Lebanese and the Palestinian people
by Israel should be newsworthy enough to receive proper coverage. As
the conflict drags on, thanks to the US administration’s “green
light,” the coverage is becoming ever more skewed, compounded
with additional justifications for Israel’s actions, the further
villainizing of Hezbollah and now that the Lebanese-American community
has been evacuated, the silence of the Lebanese voice. One civilian
is one death too many; yet it looks as though thousands more will perish
at the hands of Israeli forces, and once again, the US media will be
out to lunch.
Remi Kanazi is the primary writer for the political
website www.PoeticInjustice.net
He lives in New York City as a Palestinian American freelance writer,
poet and performer and can reached via email at [email protected]