Israeli blogger Lirun has posted the story. After some discussion at his place, I will write now a more detailed answer.
a perspective not often heard of recounted by Catrin and published by haaretz.. my conclusions are that (a) obviously the public does not uninimously support the conflict.. (b) the actions taken may well be a selection between various evils that have to be assessed..
This conlusion and the "perspective" are beyond doubt. Civillians of both sides, especially children have no intrest in the conflict, but they are the ones that suffer the most. From the humanitarian standpoint of this blog these victims will always find a honest "advocate" of their intrests and rigths here.
But this time, I do not talk about a killed civillian. I talk about the old conflict of analysts and journalists. One may say that its better to have a story full of errors, than no story. [Jpost reported about this case ... nothing and "a militant" was killed.] And for the consumers within Israel that read Haaretz it is very important to read about the "perspective" that is really "not often heard of". But from the analysts standpoint a "perspective" is not the core point of this particular stories. To see the difference: Journalists move in the same structure. [Here the simple structure of: Qassam-Attacks + Counter attacks + Missed and killed civillians. TWO stories.] But journalists create their own picture, or myth, or fairy tale around the "perspective" they think they can find in the structure. And to mix two stories often fails, if you make amateurish failures like to ckeck names before the publishing of your article. Other things, like the good old "collecting wood"-story are tools to create a empathic understanding of Israeli readers and if you only want to transport a "perspective" with that myth you can use such tools.
But analysts are different. They stick their nose into the structure to detect the core of the story, the major point of the story. The second story "Kassem" has no major point, except the fact that innocent civillians were killed and the families will try to sue the Israeli State for that. The first one has a major point. The major point of the first story is: What the hell were those "several" male, young guys doing in front of the house? From the analysts view any story that not gives you the answer on that question is "fabricated", no matter if the intention is good [to transport a "perspective"], or bad. And the analyst says: "If you work with fabricated stories, you will not reach people. You will reach a secondary effect." In this case the effect of mercy in the merciful. The analyst is different. He wants to find the key point of the story and then he destroys the structure to reconstruct it out of the key point. In this case, I can not detect the answer of the key point, cause nobody gives us the answer why those guys were hanging around the house that was attacked. The "fabricated" story even tries to impede the readers from asking the core question. The IDF? Did they really "miss" the rocket squad? They saw rockets from a place and "several" people in front of a house. As long we don't know about those guys we can not judge the IDF, even if they had to check for civillians in front of the attack. And if can not judge the killers of the woman the fairy tale of Catrin Ormestad is a ... fairy tail. Were does it start to be one? Where does it end? What is correct and what is not correct. Can we belive her?
Again: The start of it was, "Gideon Levy recommended".
Sonntag, 20. Januar 2008
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2 Kommentare:
i agree that the line between reality and journalism is not clear.. and i agree that even less clear are the moral duties of truth against the moral duty to raise questions and promote issues.. however - i think journalism owes us transparency and where they dont KNOW they should make it clear.. where they omit a perspective that should be clear as well..
nevertheless - as readers we owe it to ourselves to read discerningly..
i think all are failing :)
And we should not forget the surrounding violence, that influences and changes people. You can not transport what really happens on the ground into the nice and peaceful chambers of readers without any "friction loss". Some writer can enrich stories with pictures to compensate that and if they are good, you will not have the disturbing feeling that something is wrong.
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