Bias Toward the Murderer

When Arab journalists, as well as politicians, unionists, party members and activists, were talking about the Western media’s favoritism of Israel — of course, we are not referring to every single channel, outlet and journalist — at the expense of the Palestinian people and Arab nation, some sprung up to defend Western media in its entirety. They accused the critics of failing to distinguish between journalistic professionalism, on the one hand, and bias and impartiality, on the other. Those defending Western media cited numerous examples of impartiality and urged the Arab media to benefit from the West’s experience in journalistic professionalism.

We must stress that many Western media outlets do have a high level of professionalism, especially when they deal with issues not related to Israel and the continuous murder, aggression and destruction it practices against the Palestinian people. We also stress that there are outstanding Western media outlets and outstanding Western journalists who are biased only toward the truth. However, a large percentage of the Western media, in all its forms, is biased toward Israel and always works to whitewash it, exonerate it and blame the victim.

What happened to American journalist Diana Magnay, CNN’s correspondent covering the Israeli attack on Gaza, is evidence of the Western media’s bias and the refusal of those in charge to deal with the Palestinian issue with impartiality and objectivity.

This American correspondent, who is among the few Western journalists sticking to professionalism and factuality, had shown no favoritism toward the Palestinian victims, yet her station punished her by taking her away from covering the Israeli attack on Gaza and moving her to Moscow. The reason was that the she wrote a message on her Twitter account describing the Israelis who clapped when Israeli rockets fell on Gaza, killing Palestinians and destroying their houses and utilities, as “scum.” That she removed the tweet due to a fierce attack on her did not matter. Her station, which describes itself as being “impartial,” relocated her as a punishment for the tweet.

Israel and its supporters in the Western world and elsewhere know that the facts condemn them. Therefore, they do everything they can, using immoral and barbaric methods, to confront whoever tries to expose the truth. The Israeli and Western media, as well as politicians in Israel and the West, charge the victims and those killed with responsibility for the killing and the destruction occurring. They think what Israel is doing is “self-defense,” and they are unshaken by scenes of children’s corpses and women and men killed in their houses, streets, health centers and elsewhere. Nothing shakes them. They consider what they are doing as a battle in support of Israeli’s own murderous battle. They are not held accountable for professionalism and impartiality, but they demand that of the victim. Such is the audacity of the murderer.