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 07/03/2008

Texte repris du site Inside Today's Bulletin

This may be an account of the most disgraceful and disgusting journalistic malpractice in history. Consider the case:

A journalist does a story on the killing of a young Palestinian, blaming Israel for the death.

The image of the killing becomes an icon for the Palestinians and the inspiration for violence and murder of Jews throughout the world.

After using the symbol as an excuse for violence and murder and as a call for genocide, overwhelming evidence proves the whole report of the killing was a hoax, a phony staged event.

The reporter, who put the piece together, is demonstrated to be a liar and a fraud, just as his report on the killing is demonstrated to be a hoax and a fraud. He refused to let anyone see the whole tape, which - when viewed - made it obvious his report was hoax and he was a liar.

This is all documented by an overwhelming collection of evidence as well as by the decision of an appellate court, which decided a libel suit filed by the perpetrators of the hoax against those who exposed it.

In view of the fact that the reporter was exposed as a fraud and a liar, you would think he would pay some sort of price in his standing and perhaps even be fired.

What happened? In less than a week after the truth finally got out, a French newsweekly got together a petition defending the fraud and liar reporter and the hoax story. It was signed by over 300 journalists and hundreds of others including celebrity intellectuals.

So when the lie is finally exposed after about eight years, this group of journalists and celebrities continue to defend the lie and the liar.

This is incredible, and it is much worse than the brief summary above can possibly communicate.

This happened in France, and involved the al-Dura shooting. I have previously written about it, because after eight years of perpetuating a fraud and a hoax, when the truth finally came out, what did the mainstream media do? It ignored the story. (See my column, "Major Media Outlets Ignore Front-Page Hoax: Refuse to Print Any Correction.") Even knowing that the false report had led to violence and murder, most of the mainstream media issued no retractions, no corrections, and no clarifications. Knowing that they had blood on their hands already, mainstream outlets - such as the New York Times and Philadelphia Inquirer - ignored the al-Dura truth. That's why I say the mainstream media are actually willing to incite murder and violence with false reports, and even when called on to correct those false reports, they ignore the truth and are content to let the violence and killing continue. The omission was called to the attention of papers like the Philadelphia Inquirer. But they still did not correct their long history of lies and deceptions and their playing accessory to violence and murder. If I was an editor or owner of the Inquirer, I would not want to go through life knowing I had blood on my hands.

That treatment by the U.S. mainstream media is bad enough. But what is worse is the account I gave above of what happened in France. France 2, a state-run television network, was responsible for airing and defending the story of its reporter in the Middle East, one Charles Enderlin. Even after its story was exposed as a hoax and a fraud, it refused to retract it, continued to defend it, and then even sued a French blogger and media watchdog, Philippe Karsenty, who had exposed the hoax. It was that lawsuit that led to the decision of the appellate court exposing the report of the al-Dura shooting as a hoax.

When a few French reporters finally had access to the al-Dura tape, this is what they saw, as reported in a wonderful article by Anne-Elisabeth Moutet, "L'Affaire Enderlin: Being a French journalist means never having to say you're sorry," appearing in the Weekly Standard (July 7/July 14, 2008): "When Jeanbar and Leconte took their time to ponder what they'd seen, Rosenzweig had the nerve to file a piece for Mena describing the tape's scenes of staging just before the fatal shooting. You could see Palestinians being carried on stretchers into ambulances, then coming out again unharmed, all in a kind of carnival atmosphere, with kids throwing stones and making faces at the camera, despite what was supposed to be a tense situation. The tape showed occasional gunshots, not continuous firing. From the general horsing around captured on film by Abu Rahme, Mena concluded that the whole scene must have been staged."

But it gets better. Mr. Enderlin had refused to release the whole tape of the al-Dura shooting, as he claimed he did not want to show the "unbearable agony" of the dying child, al-Dura. But it turns out the tape he held back not only showed the whole "killing" being staged, but also showed that there was no "agony" to conceal. It wasn't on the tape. There was no dying child and no agony of such child. Mr. Enderlin was just lying to manufacture an excuse for not releasing the whole tape.

And it gets better still. Consider the petition signed by those French journalists and celebrities. It called Mr. Karsenty's work, who carried on a lengthy effort to get the truth out, a "seven-year hate-filled smear campaign" aimed at destroying Enderlin's "professional dignity." It again claimed that al-Dura had been killed by the Israelis. It condemned the appellate court that had determined, after hearing evidence in excruciating detail, that the whole thing was a hoax. It expressed shock that the courts would allow "anyone, in the name of good faith and a supposed right to criticize and so-called freedom of speech, to smear with impunity the honor and reputation of news professionals."

The petition ignored all the evidence gathered in eight years by varied journalists, government bodies, and experts. The French journalists were content to let a hoax and a fraud live for eight years, and when it was conclusively proven to be a hoax, they were content to claim the fraud and hoax, despite the evidence, were true.

If all that's not bad enough, it gets worse for French journalism. The author of the Weekly Standard article called some of the signers of the petition, and their response was just as shocking and depressing as the rest of this story.

One signer, a 75-year-old journalist who was a Middle East expert, said he saw a dangerous American trend of "vindictive pressure groups interfering with news organizations ... Americans have been under the gun of such people for some time, but France used to be free of this kind of thing. [These groups] are paranoid, they're persistent, they never give up, they sap the energy of good reporters. I can't imagine how much money France 2 has spent defending this case. Charles Enderlin is an excellent journalist! I don't care if it's the Virgin Birth affair, I would tend to believe him. Someone like Charles simply doesn't make a story up."

Then when the author of the piece called to the signing journalist's attention to the fact that there was no "agony" of a dying al-Dura on the tape, the journalist responded, "Nonsense! Televisions don't show extreme violence. You know that."

This response was typical. The signing journalist was willing to ignore the facts, and defend his brother journalist whatever the truth indicated.

When a reporter from Le Figaro was asked why he signed the petition, he said, "These people, the ones attacking him, they're extreme rightists, yes? You can't take anything they say seriously." In other words, you can't believe anything the critics say, even if true.

There was one signer who didn't want to be identified, but at least had some semblance of honesty in describing what happened, "In all honesty, I think he edited his film on deadline and was careless, and afterwards he didn't want to admit he'd screwed up." So this journalist admitted the report was based on a "mistake," but still signed the petition in defense of the report. And the petition said what the signer knew to be false.

A star lawyer, who signed the petition when asked why the record should not be corrected, responded, "Surely not after so much time?" In other words, if the lie is accepted long enough, it should permanently be enshrined as truth. This same star lawyer, whose name was on the petition, then admitted he never read the petition. He said, "I'm not a journalist. I haven't even read this petition. I have macular retina degeneration I can no longer read."

Maybe that sums up French journalism. It is not visually blind, like that star lawyer who signed the petition, but it is certainly morally blind. And I regret to report that the mainstream media here in America has about the same moral vision as the French lawyer who signed the petition.

What shocked me most about this example of French journalism is that I never thought I'd see more dishonest, biased, and fraudulent journalism than I read every day in the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the rest of our mainstream media.

But reading the French al-Dura scenario, I became more convinced than ever that the great British historian, Paul Johnson, was right when he said that anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism are mental disorders. That explains what happened in France, and it explains what happens every day at 400 North Broad St. in Philadelphia and in the headquarters of mainstream media outlets across the U.S.

Herb Denenberg *

* Herb Denenberg is a former Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner, Pennsylvania Public Utility Commissioner, and professor at the Wharton School. He is a longtime Philadelphia journalist and consumer advocate. He is also a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of the Sciences. His column appears daily in The Bulletin. You can reach him at advocate@thebulletin.us.

©The Evening Bulletin 2008

Mis en ligne le 4 juillet 2008, par M. Macina, sur le site upjf.org