Monday, Jul. 12, 1982
A Double Standard for Israel?
By WILLIAM A. HENRY III
Censorship policies bruise relations with U.S. networks
Suddenly, during a TV news report on the Israeli conflict in Lebanon, the screen goes blank. White lettering appears on a stark black background: "22 seconds deleted by Israeli censors." Or footage is left intact, but a legend is superimposed: "Cleared by Israeli censors." Night after night during the past couple of weeks, such unfamiliar signs of censors' intrusions have punctuated newscasts on ABC, NBC and CBS, usually in stories about suffering by Lebanese civilians in bombed-out Beirut.
Almost all nations censor reports during war, and many do so in peacetime, either overtly or through surveillance and obstruction of journalistic enterprise. Israel, in fact, has claimed the right to censor stories on security grounds, whether for domestic or foreign audiences, ever since the nation was founded in 1948. But the sudden visibility of Israeli censorship has spurred concern that a generally free nation for the foreign press is becoming a more restrictive one.
Some change in policy does appear to have taken place. In the past, censors customarily limited their cuts to demonstrably military and strategic--not political--matters. Now some American journalists are beginning to complain that Israeli censorship is sometimes broadened to include politically sensitive reportage, particularly on subjects that might affect support for Israel among U.S. audiences.
This new phase of high-profile censorship began because of a technical problem. Soon after Israel launched its invasion of Lebanon last month, Syrian troops barricaded the road leading to Beirut's satellite transmission station. For network news teams beaming footage to New York City, the nearest reliable "uplink" was in Israel, at the satellite station in Herzliya. Israel agreed to open those facilities--with strings. Censors in Tel Aviv claimed the right to review shots of shattered residential areas and of wounded and dead civilians, on the ground that such scenes constituted "propaganda" for Israel's "primary adversary," the Palestine Liberation Organization.
When one network circumvented the censors, Israel cracked down more sternly. Israeli officials refused transmission to an ABC interview with P.L.O. Leader Yasser Arafat, in which he claimed that the U.S. would "pay" for the conflict by seeing its relations with Arabs "destroyed." Hours later, ABC beamed out the Arafat footage from Herzliya anyway, purportedly as the result of a misunderstanding, and broadcast it on June 21. In response, the Begin government angrily denied ABC the use of its satellite facility and only lifted the ban two days later after ABC filed a letter of "regret" over the incident. Despite that apology, the network was unhappy. Laments ABC News President Roone Arledge: "This is a massive change from what Israel has always stood for."
On the same day that ABC'S interview was aired, NBC showed a censored report on civilian casualties in Lebanon, including an innocuous one-sentence comment from Arafat that had won the censor's approval. A few days later, however, the Israelis scissored a report by NBC Correspondent Steve Mallory on civilian casualties in Beirut, taking out shots of an old woman and three girls but leaving in a wounded Palestinian guerrilla. Complains Mallory: "The Israelis have tried to dismiss the existence of a civilian population. Every time we tried to show it, they tried to hide it." Says Paul Miller, NBC Bureau Chief in Tel Aviv: "Their censorship was outrageous. They cut out anything that might look bad for them." After CBS footage of P.L.O. Leader George Habash was chopped, CBS Tel Aviv Bureau Chief Charles Wolfson protested to the city's chief censor. Recalls Wolfson: "He told me: 'You have two choices. You either understand, or, if you don't understand, your second choice is to obey.' "
By contrast, American newspapers report few problems with the censors.
CBS News President Van Gordon Sauter believes that the apparent disparity in treatment between print and TV is deliberate. Says he: "There have been some compelling word pieces about the devastation in Beirut, but the Israelis know that words, however eloquent, lack the emo tional impact of pictures of people grabbing at stones and clearing rubble to find a human leg." Another explanation: most print reporters in Beirut can file directly to their newspapers in the U.S., over standard international telex lines, without going through Israeli authorities.
Even the networks have been able to counter Israel's censors, albeit with delay and at considerable expense. Duplicate copies of tapes routinely have been sent overland to Syria or by boat to Cyprus for satellite transmission. Indeed, the only evident loser in the controversy has been Israel, whose image in the U.S. has surely not been enhanced by censorship labels on prime-time TV newscasts. Israeli officials argue that they are being subjected s to an unfair and inconsistent standard. Says Government Press Office Director Ze'ev Chafets: "We let the networks use our facilities for sending material from an entity in a state of war with Israel.
We did them a favor.
And they attacked us."
The Israelis urge a comparison with British information practices in the Falklands war, in which foreign journalists were barred from the task force and even now are normally excluded from the recaptured islands.
Senior executives at all three networks concede that Israel has a point. Says NBC News President Reuven Frank: "I think we are picking on them. Not that anything we have said is factually wrong, but we have left the impression that these are bad people doing bad things to journalists when, in fact, they are pretty good." Acknowledges ABC's Arledge, "It is true, there is a double standard. We criticize the Israelis for not allowing us to get some footage of Beirut, whereas we do not criticize people who do not allow us to get stuff out at all. That is because Israel has always proclaimed itself a model of democracy and has been one."
CBS Anchorman Dan Rather notes that, ironically, Israel would probably have suffered less criticism if it had simply refused to open its transmission facilities from the start. (Indeed, last week Israel realized it had stumbled into a no-win situation and withdrew its transmission services for all foreign bureaus in Beirut.) Sums up CBS's Sauter: "We are subject to far more serious censorship in many places around the world, but it is often subtle and hard to demonstrate. The Israelis are direct. When we have to submit to the process that Israel imposes, we owe it to our viewers to say so on air, even though for Israel that has a notable negative impact." --By William A. Henry III. Reported by LeroyAarons/Jerusalem
With reporting by Leroy Aarons/Jerusalem
This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.