London, May 20: Arab Media Watch expressed its concern last week at the failure of the British press to report that the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) said it has found no evidence to support Israeli accusations that Syria has given Scud missiles to Hezbollah.
“We have no evidence of any Scud missiles in UNIFIL’s area of operations” in southern Lebanon, the daily An-Nahar newspaper quoted Major General Alberto Asarta Cuevas as saying. “These missiles are large and difficult to hide.”
UNIFIL’s statement was reported by Al Jazeera English on 6 May, a day after An-Nahar did so.
The British press, as well as the BBC’s website, has not reported this important statement despite it being in the public domain, and in English, for almost a week.
This failure is of particular concern given the release on 30 April of an AMW study largely critical of British press coverage of the Israeli accusations (nine articles were published, by 10 authors in three newspapers: the Daily Telegraph, Guardian and Independent).
The failure to report UNIFIL’s statement follows a trend of patchy, incomplete coverage of the whole issue, a selectivity in Israel’s favour.
To give Israeli claims greater coverage and prominence than the denials of the accused, and now overlook a crucial statement by a neutral international body that it has found no evidence to support the claims, is not only a disservice to the British public, but also towards ethical journalistic standards of balance, investigation, and providing the complete picture.
The study’s main findings were:
– Overall, the Israeli claims, and US statements supporting them, were given more prominence than Syrian and Lebanese government denials, as well as doubts expressed by analysts.
– Overall, the claims and supporting statements were given more word space than the denials and doubts.
– In some articles, Syrian and Lebanese denials were absent.
– US official doubts over Israel’s claims were completely unreported.
– Hezbollah was portrayed as a threat to Israel more often than Israel was portrayed as a threat to Lebanon / Hezbollah.
—Agencies