OPINION & EDITORIAL
‘Campustruth’ more like campus lies
Looking for a print version?
Simply choose ‘Print’ on your computer and a printer-friendly document will be generated.
Also by Alexandra Gekas:
Related Stories:
- Campustruth ads dangerous, irresponsible (March 13, 2003)
- Letters to the editor - 2/7 (February 7, 2002)
- Newspapers must take extreme care in dealing with victim identity (February 2, 2006)
- From the desk of the editor (December 6, 2006)
by Alexandra Gekas
Wednesday, February 26, 2003
In the Badger Herald, yesterday, there was an ad published by campustruth.org that partly brought into question a line a newspaper should draw between its first amendment right in its published reports and the decisions it makes about publishing advertisements.
However, because the same code of integrity does not apply to verifying advertised statements as reported statements, organizations with money still have the resources to publish biased and inaccurate information.
The media’s misrepresentation of issues is perfectly exemplified in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and the American media practices all too well the golden rule of he who has the gold, makes the rules.
The advertisement was paid for by an money from a private organization. Because the opposite side does not have the same financing, they impress a very biased view on a public that has foolishly come to trust the mainstream media as an accurate and dependable source.
This advertisement sold nothing but hate and prejudice by associating an entire ethnic group with terrorism, blind hatred of America and Americans, disrespect for human life, and violence.
The Palestinian people have been misrepresented in the media for too long because of the financial upper hand that their oppressors have, and unless Americans start to think independently from the media, and challenge its inaccuracies, they will continue to be bamboozled into thinking that injustices are just, and that their best interest lies in the defense of an occupier instead of with the oppressed occupied people.
There are more ways for the media to violate journalistic integrity than for them to lie. Misrepresentation through disproportional coverage of an event is one of the most subtly effective ways of manipulating public opinion.
I will give you an example; instances of rape are reported more often in the media when an African American man is the culprit. This leads me to believe that as a woman I should fear black men more than white men. In reality, however, the actual statistics show me that I am more likely to be sexually terrorized and assaulted by someone from my own demographic group.
This is not only one of the many injustices done to the African American community through practices that promote prejudice, but through its inaccurate presentation of the facts, it puts me at a higher risk. While I am holding my purse and walking quickly past the African American male walking across the street, I should be more cautious of the polite white terrorizer who offers to walk me home from a party with his own agenda in mind.
I consider my rights to be similarly violated by misrepresentation of the facts by the media with respect to the Palestine question. Since the second intifadah started in September 2000, over 2100 Palestinians have been killed, over 25,000 have been wounded, almost all of them innocent civilians, unless you consider children throwing stones to be legitimate targets of the illegal Israeli occupation of their homeland.
Crimes have been committed on the opposite side as well. However, were the media to proportionally present the situation, whole issues of the New York Times would be devoted to reporting Palestinian deaths and the Israeli Occupation Forces’ crimes in the West Bank and Gaza.
As someone aware of the situation, I know that that the occupation is responsible for the deaths of both Israelis and Palestinians, and more importantly what this tells me is that until the occupation ends, and there is a just peace, deaths of innocent civilians will continue on both sides.
As I am sure some of you were aware, while we are in economic crisis, while our tuition is being increased 18 per cent, and our citizens are being denied the fundamental right of health care, fifteen billion dollars have been promised to Israel this year, in addition to their annual 4 billion dollar stipend. Fifteen billion of my money and yours has been promised to a state that is responsible for the deaths of its own people and of a people that it is occupying and oppressing.
Recently there was a front page story in the New York Times, with a color photograph which inaccurately reported the shooting of Israeli settlers. It turned out that no civilians were shot, and only military personnel were targeted (in line with the Geneva convention which legitimizes the right of an occupied people to resist their military occupiers by force).
The update was put on the 3rd page, no picture, small headline. The same week Palestinian civilians were killed by Israeli Defense Forces in the occupied territories. This story was in the back pages, no picture showing a Palestinian mother mourning the death of her child.
This prioritizing of stories is only one example of the mainstream media’s misrepresentation of the issue. Based on the number of Israelis killed versus the number of Palestinians killed, one would think that we would see 2000 more articles about Palestinian deaths in the paper.
Photographs are also an effective way of personalizing such events. Palestinians deaths are not documented in this way because there is little interest in recognizing their humanity.
There are no photographs showing their mothers weeping over the deaths of small children caught in the “cross fire” of Israeli shooting at market (this is Orwellian “Doublespeak” for defenseless people killed in cold blood by the occupation forces.)
This leads the mainstream public to think that Palestinian crimes far out number Israeli crimes, and therefore one is “guiltier” than the other.
This misrepresentation has caused the mainstream to support an occupying force in its every action, to such an extent that we are financing the whole state terrorist operation. The amount of money that we have given to Israel directly implicates us in the crimes committed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and when the systematic destruction and exile of the Palestinian people is complete, we will ask ourselves where they went, and if history proves true, we will find a scapegoat to blame so that we do not have to recognize our own guilt.
The advertisement published yesterday misrepresented a people in such a fundamentally racist way, it is difficult to comprehend that some people may buy into its lies.
Dehumanization is an age old strategy in the oppression of a people.
Associating an entire indigenous group as terrorists, because of their ethnicity through such misrepresentation of images, will lead people who don’t know the truth to assume it to be the truth because it has been published in a journal that they respect and trust.
You can call a people rats, vermin, or terrorists but when you do this, it is clear that your objective is to isolate them from humanity so that you can destroy them. One should also note that historically, indigenous people’s struggles to free themselves from colonialism and oppression have been labeled “terrorist.” This facilitates their dehumanization, and thus allows people to explain away their extermination and the destruction of their traditional society (for example, native American resistance to colonization was labeled “terrorist”).
The only benefit to the advertisement, yesterday, was that to those who can see clearly; such inflammatory claims expose the agenda of those who published it, and of their cause.
On Sept. 11 the world wept for the loss of innocent American lives because the loss of any human life is a waste. There are people who hate America, no doubt, but just as you cannot call every white person a racist because of the Ku Klux Klan, you cannot call every Palestinian a terrorist because less than one percent of them has committed a crime.
The advertisement read “there are always two sides to a story. But only one truth.” But for anyone who respects human rights and dignity, it is clear that the truth does not lie in the hands of an oppressor who seeks an ethnically pure state.
Alexandra Gekas is a junior majoring in english literature and can be reached at algekas@wisc.edu.
