Framing an election: U.S. media avoids tough questions on interference in Palestine

Media analysis by Dane Baker
From NewStandard

Presenting a startling example of the Bush administration’s warm embrace of democracy, a February 14 New York Times article begins: “The United States and Israel are discussing ways to destabilize the Palestinian government so that newly elected Hamas officials will fail and elections will be called again, according to Israeli officials and Western diplomats” (Steven Erlanger, “U.S and Israelis Are Said to Talk of Hamas Ouster”).

To its credit, the Times presents important information up front, eschewing the tendency to bury crucial details deep within stories: a tactic common at the “Newspaper of Record” and elsewhere. The problem lies in the editors’ insistence that only “official” voices be heard: in this case, information attributed to unnamed “officials and diplomats,” including one who said: “The point is to put this choice on Hamas’s shoulders. If they make the wrong choice, all the options lead in a bad direction.”

The Times, for its part, makes sure to ignore dissent that may interfere with official proclamations while using careful language to describe efforts to strangle a Hamas-led Palestinian government before it has even been set up. So we read in Erlanger’s account that the current effort to undermine the elected Hamas government is a “strategy [that] has many risks, especially given that Hamas will try to secure needed support from the larger Islamic world, including its allies Syria and Iran, as well as from private donors.” These being the only “risks” that apply for the Times, the story quickly moves on. Reporter and editors taking it upon themselves to peer into their crystal ball, noting that “[Hamas] will blame Israel and the United States for its troubles.”

An Associated Press article that ran the same day (Amy Teibel, “Hamas Assails U.S., Israeli ‘interference’”) played a similar game, with all the correct characterizations included. The lead notes that “Hamas protested ‘interference’ by the United States and Israel,” putting the crucial word in quotes to further undermine its validity, even though there can be no doubt that both parties have admittedly interfered. The implications follow as the AP describes the alleged efforts as a “plot,” noting that “the State Department said it was reviewing US aid to the Palestinians and would make a decision within two weeks” – surely the only serious matter at hand.

The AP account also reports only “official” voices, since only those who -- to borrow Erlanger’s phrase from the Times account -- have the “levers on the Palestinian authority” are quotable. They quoted White House spokesman Scott McClellan as saying, “There’s no plot,” using the magic phrase echoed by State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, who insisted, “There is no plan, there is no plot.”

Official denouncements are, as usual, treated with the reverence and weight they supposedly deserve, as editors know their place and quickly move the narrative along. Interestingly enough, recent developments – whether they prove to be “plots” or not – suggest nothing to journalists about the legitimacy of Bush administration efforts to spread “democracy” to the Middle East… perhaps because current efforts to deny Palestinian self-determination are too obvious.

The Palestinians have made their choice at the ballot box, and now, to borrow a phrase from an unidentified Western diplomat quoted by the Times’ Erlanger, they must prepare to face a possibly grimmer future where “all the options lead in a bad direction,” assisted by a willing “free press” corps and their editors in the United States.

Dane Baker lives in Knoxville, Tenn.