Quality over quantity: Reliable media sources on the Israel-Gaza war

How far can you trust the media when it comes to the current conflict in the Middle East? Dr Lee Duffield, a one-time correspondent, considers the options.

IT IS POSSIBLE to find out what is happening and why, in Gaza, to a certain extent, despite the din of arguments and raving bilge on social media.

As usual in a historical crisis, “quality” mainstream news media offer the safest way to be informed, especially because they are well-resourced for these situations and will publish almost all that they know.

Finding out through BBC

Making a review of the information available, falling back on experience in mass media, I would suggest the British BBC radio is once again the best to use. It is easily accessible in Australia through ABC radio and ABC iview. They are giving facts-based coverage and comprehensive attention to informed opinion from protagonists in the conflict and many observers.

Here are two instances of the approach that make their coverage dependable.

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ABC boss David Anderson announced that it was not the broadcaster’s job to use terms such as “genocide” and “apartheid” in coverage of attacks by Israel.

Finding out what has been happening at the hospitals. They succeeded in getting reporters on the scene to see what was happening, talking to many and later doing follow-ups by phone. It is a reminder of the stubborn bravery of the BBC reporters who insisted on staying in the city of Sarajevo right through the siege, in the break-up of Yugoslavia.

There have been television cameras in the Gaza hospitals throughout the war, maybe getting the images out through the intermittent internet, satellite uplinks, even a ground shuttle. As to be expected, outraged medical staff have been setting some of this up, exhibiting the bundles of distressed premature babies, or hurrying past the camera in procession carrying injured children; valid, not propaganda, as the injuries and suffering are so real. “Witness this,” they are saying.

But there will be errors and lies. A spokesperson for a Scandinavian humanitarian agency told news media the Israeli army had attacked a hospital, which had to be checked. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have passed on videos said to show hostages taken into a Gaza hospital, plus some tunnelling and discarded weapons. The Palestinian organisation Hamas denied having tunnels under the hospitals, contending claims to be checked on over time.

Outlets like the BBC which can put in substantial staff and equipment, can be used in your own checking, as to a good extent they can be taken on trust.

The trust aspect is the second aspect of the BBC approach. They are doing conventional, professional journalism, focused on facts and providing reasoned explanations. They follow the dictum of “keeping yourself out of the story”, which means being there but not in an activist role. They strive to be accountable and transparent, at times putting up executive editors to field questions about the coverage and giving air-time to reporters to deliver personalised accounts.

The news service draws on a cohort of experienced correspondents, following a policy of keeping several overseas correspondents in their jobs over decades. It shows in a crisis. The measured introspection this month was represented in an interview with one such veteran, Fergal Keane, on his recent book about how war reporting affects both reporters and over-stressed people they interview.

Piers Morgan turns Israel conflict into infotainment ratings grab

Tabloid interviewer Piers Morgan has reduced the complexities of the Hamas/Israel conflict to a made-for-TV moral drama, seeking ratings and celebrity status.

A blow-up like the tragedy of Israel and the Gaza Strip has presented dilemmas for editors everywhere. The conflict has seen 48 media workers killed and conflicted emotions about the forced moral choices — a minefield of “deadly double standards”.

Following other sources of information

Instead of news media, you can directly follow original sources, like governments or non-governmental agencies, with mixed results. International agencies in Gaza for many years, like the Red Cross (ICRC), caught up in the maelstrom, hundreds of staff being killed, back up their humanitarian appeals with much hard information.

Government sources are limited. They often don’t know themselves what is happening on the ground, or, because they have oppositions prepared to distort and misrepresent what they say, they pull back on telling. Being in power, whether feeble or strong, what they say does have to be scrutinised. So, on 21 November, a raising of expectations about a hostage deal had to be read against a statement by the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, that any general ceasefire would depend on both the release of hostages and progress in defeating Hamas.

An investigation by the writer, on media roles in the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in Europe in 1989, produced a finding that fact-based media reporting had actually got ahead of what governments understood in the heat of that major crisis. It was “journalism as a first draft of history”, though correspondents involved attested that they also had nothing like a complete picture.

There are two main blind spots in information from official sources on the Gaza conflict.

Effectively nothing on the battle. Israeli troops go into Gaza and there are only intermittent communiqués, such as that in one defensive ring around Gaza City, the IDF had over-run 11 Hamas positions. Casualty figures from both the IDF and Hamas aggregate civilians killed with soldiers; the IDF says it has killed 388 Hamas fighters but has not come up with day-by-day casualty reports from the combat in the ruins of Gaza.

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It is a case of secrecy based on operational security as seen during the First World War, where the deaths of hundreds and thousands would never be disclosed in real time.

The second blind spot is the absence of a media service for Hamas. The organisation, both a proscribed terrorist movement and government of the territory under actual demolition, has had to go literally underground under heavy attack. Its operatives are heard from, to decry the humanitarian crisis inflicted on the public and make denials over the “human shield” accusations — military installations in hospitals or schools.

Some of the leadership are approachable on the fringes of discussions in Qatar about the hostages, but hardly available for media questioning, not functional as a source on the military conflict.

Australian coverage

Australian media, as usual, have provided plenty of coverage, especially the ABC which invests in overseas correspondents. It does not detract from the work of any journalists to say the ABC coverage has benefitted from the practice of keeping resident correspondents in certain news theatres — certainly with Allyson Horn, the current Middle East correspondent.

The coverage by this journalist reflects a good ability to use the opportunity of a relatively free hand to build up good knowledge of the field. As Ms Horn attests on air, she has lived in Jerusalem for the last two years and travelled extensively, therefore knowing places now in the headline news, and so can inject an element of additional credibility, analysis and background which helps to explain what is happening.

The coverage is comprehensive, certainly for a single correspondent, handling both major breaking stories and other perspectives “on the ground” — what is happening to the people. As an individual journalist under scrutiny, she obtains additional credit here, for suppressing an earlier, syntax-defying delivery style that sounded like old-time “commercial” news; now using more conversational emphases, tracking the subject matter.

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Decades of conflict and struggle in the Middle East are being downplayed by the media's eagerness to seek condemnation of Hamas by political leaders.

Social media

This appraisal has left out social media as it is generally not good for news as a source of actual knowledge. The unregulated crowd-sourcing means that contributors are overwhelmingly amateurs who can’t help putting their own slant on it, not to mention legions of trolls wanting to make up things for spite and entertainment.

Social media outlets are really good for those with strong opinions who want to exchange what they wish to hear. As for information, there is not much chance to share nuggets of crucial information via social media, as it will be washed out and wasted by the deluge of wrong information it has to compete with for attention.

However, for belief and values, social media has many valid possibilities. In the present Gaza war, it is fully understandable for people anywhere to be anguished by the agony of the civilian population under terrible bombardment; also to be anguished by the odious 7 October pogrom in Israel. It is a reform of the century, a great cultural change, that all sides can publicise their demonstrations and views through their own media channels, and marshal strong support among those who agree.

In that way, it is much easier for campaigners, better than depending on journalists as intermediaries. So much of the content is heart-felt and truthful — the cries of the families of the hostages; horror over the misery and terror in the bombed-out city. It can cut through the vibrating tones of hatred. Social media has its place but is so prone to be unconstructive it cannot be mistaken for actual news.

Amongst Dr Lee Duffield’s vast journalistic experience, he has served as ABC's European correspondent. He is also an esteemed academic and member of the editorial advisory board of Pacific Journalism Review.