Why journalists say Israeli-Arab reporting is ‘rigged’

By Dafna Maor for Haaretz, part of an article in Mosaic by Tom Gross

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict receives a disproportionate amount of attention in relation to its size and importance in the world; journalists follow the herd and suffer from groupthink; and there is fear of Palestinian censorship, backed up by threats.

These are just a few of journalist Matti Friedman’s claims against the foreign media and its coverage of Israel.

“As a former insider, and as an Israeli with left-wing opinions that are not radical, I think the decisions that the bureaus of the large global media outlets in Israel make are politically motivated and disguised as motivated by journalistic considerations,” says Friedman, a Canadian-born journalist who immigrated to Israel in 1995 and worked as a reporter for the Associated Press.

During his career he has worked as a reporter in Egypt, Morocco, Lebanon, Moscow and Washington, D.C.

In 2013 he published “The Aleppo Codex: In Pursuit of One of the World’s Most Coveted, Sacred and Mysterious Books” (Algonquin Books).

His article about press coverage of Israel, entitled “An Insider’s Guide to the Most Important Story on Earth,” which appeared in Tablet magazine in late August, was shared tens of thousands of times on Facebook and made a good many waves.

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