Dealing with false equivalencies in the coverage of a foreign war
As we began discussions Monday afternoon about how we would present the front-page description of the Israel-Gaza war, Daily Herald editors scrolled through picture after picture of utter devastation in Gaza City. Eventually, a particular question was inevitable.
“Isn't this going to look like we're trying to show what Israel has done to the Palestinians?” someone asked. “Where are the pictures of what happened in Israel?”
The problem, photo editors responded, was that those pictures had not been transmitted, perhaps not even taken, yet. Much of the tragedy in Israel had occurred in outlying villages, not locations where news photographers would be readily available to jump into action to cover a surprise military attack. We had published photos Sunday of Israelis firing missiles toward Gaza in response to the assaults, but as of the time of our Monday news meeting, we still had few other options.
Even under the best of circumstances, we would have had our work cut out for us in trying to offer an even-handed portrayal of the conflict. Do we run photos of Gaza destruction and of Israel destruction at the same size to fend off complaints that our coverage favored one side or the other? Do we show photos of grieving families in the streets of Gaza but of soldiers girding for battle in Israel? Vice versa? How do we shape our headlines? What articles do we choose to help readers in the Chicago suburbs understand the passions that lead to sudden war in the Middle East?
There are no indisputable answers to such questions. Eventually, the only thing we can do is to try to tell the story as thoroughly and dispassionately as our available resources and our news judgments allow. Fortunately on Monday, some photos eventually were transmitted that provided at least a small glimpse of the violence in Israel that we could show on Tuesday's front page. But, regarding decision making amid fast-paced and unpredictable breaking news, some relevant observations deserve consideration.
An overriding one is evident simply in the dilemma over photo selection. We had the materials that we had. Sometimes, that is all you have to work with, and you look for ways to offer a presentation that won't appear to take sides.
Sometimes, unequal sides will produce unequal options. In general, disparities in technology and other practical factors naturally result in comparative mismatches. The Palestinian capacity to wreak havoc on an Israeli city simply cannot produce the same emotional photos as those following an attack by the sophisticated Israeli armed forces. Attempting to create some impression of equal treatment between two vastly unequal sides can be both transparently insincere and simply inaccurate.
Moreover, in the specifics of this circumstance, certain value judgments are inescapable. Whatever the grievances of the Palestinian people, nothing in a civil society justifies the terrorism of descending on helpless villages and unsuspecting concert goers and massacring men, women and children who have no escape or defense. There will be opportunity aplenty to evaluate and judge the Israeli response with the passage of time, but there is no way to ignore the calculated, inhuman brutality that set it off.
Nor can we fail to acknowledge the deep personal impact these events have on our own friends and neighbors. When suburban residents, many of them Jews with ties to family and friends in Israel, gather to pray and try to make sense of a senseless tragedy, events 6,000 miles away suddenly take on distinctly local dimensions and demand to be covered with compassion and detail.
These have been factors governing our coverage of the Israel-Gaza war so far. No doubt we'll have many repeats in the days, perhaps even months, ahead, when our options, if taken without careful consideration, could suggest an appearance of favoritism that isn't intended or true.
We have had, for example, few opportunities so far to provide insights into the Palestinian thinking that led to such a horrific act. This sentence, at the end of our main news story on the attacks Wednesday, offers some insight in that regard: “Hamas officials have said they planned for all possibilities, including a punishing Israeli escalation. Desperation has grown among Palestinians, many of whom see nothing to lose under unending Israeli control and increased settlements in the West Bank, a 16-year-long blockade in Gaza and what they see as the world's apathy.”
I can say with some assurance that it will be more than a while before we accept the false equivalency of an unprovoked murderous slaughter to a provoked and “planned for” response any more than the false equivalency of a sophisticated war machine to a crude band of angry rebels, but I'm equally confident that should we find ourselves confronting, say, choices that suggest we are showing only the bad things that happened to Israel without regard to bad things that happen to Palestinians, or vice versa, more than one editor will ask difficult, pertinent questions that bring our coverage more appropriately back into balance.
• Jim Slusher, jslusher@dailyherald.com, is managing editor for opinion at the Daily Herald. Follow him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/jim.slusher1 and on Twitter lyat @JimSlusher. The ideas expressed in this column are his own and do not necessarily represent the views of the newspaper's editorial board.