In the first of an occasional series of student bloggers, we welcome Amanda Nunn, an LSE student, commenting on the media spectacle in the West Bank.
A selection of Amanda’s photography can be viewed here.
Men with guns always make interesting news headlines.
Often it is the things, generally less exciting things, which the cameras aren’t showing you that really tell you what’s going on.
Halfway through my trip to the Palestinian west bank I was checking my email in an internet café, when an unusual amount of shooting start outside the window, unusual because this generally didn’t happen during daytime. Although you would think you would instinctively stay inside – you don’t. In true British style I went to see what all the fuss was about. To my surprise there was a jeep parading around the town centre, with 10 of the insurgent fighters lounging on it, thankfully firing blanks. It was adorned with Lebanese and Palestinian flags, and pictures of Nasrallah and Yasser Arafat. Anywhere else it would look like a carnival float. I asked a boy what was going on and he told me the war had started between Israel and Hezbollah and that the Lebanese were coming to liberate Palestine. Slightly sceptical, I wondered about getting closer to take some photos. One of the armed men grinned at me so I gathered there was little threat to my safety, so ventured closer. The whole spectacle had been arranged by the militia group, officially to ‘improve Palestinian morale’ but was in essence a self-promoted posing day for the men. What superficially looked like a terrifying group of terrorists ready for battle, fundamentally was a photo shoot. The camera crews were apparently there before the car had even arrived. When the car veered around a corner, my masochistic curiosity got the better of me and I followed. To my surprise I saw the men posing with their massive guns in various positions around the car directed by the photographers. I saw some of the footage on BBC World that evening talking about the Palestinian resistance continuing and the difficulties of the menacing terrorists on everyday life. But what was going on behind the cameraman’s back was far more interesting, the real struggle was going on between huge, fully hijabed women scrambling over the latest shipment of children’s clothes that had just arrived. What the cameras also missed was the frequent rolling of eyes at the men, and the general lack of interest or enthusiasm of Palestinians (except of course the young boys and me). People were just trying to go about their shopping without interference, one little old man with a donkey even shooed the car out of his way. Most people view the news with a pinch of salt, looks like we might need even more to get a true taste of what’s really going on.
This is interesting as draws attention to the belief that the media does more damage than good sometimes just by virtue of the way it chooses its stories.
Why cannot the mainstream media give the complete story? And if they can’t, why do we still trust the media?
its strange when we think of terrorism similar to that of the communist monolith in the cold war. I guess the division between militans and domestic opinion are there and its this factor that we need to exploid to comabt the terrorist threat.
As a journalist who’s spent a considerable amount of time working in the Palestinian territories I think Amanda’s slightly missing the point. First of all the cameramen, who I recognise from the photos, were Palestinians working for the main news agencies (AP and Reuters). So these were local journalists deciding on the way to cover the story – not as you would suggest foreigners. Perhaps it would be better to ask them why they chose to focus on the gunmen rather than the people around ? More importantly why not ask the Palestinians, who seemed so fed up with the militants in their midst, why they don’t make a stand against them ? This is a story about the Palestinians’ own chosen narrative – not the blindness of the Western media.
i am not to sure where the connotation comes from that she is only talking about western media, that isnt in the blog as i understood it. And it may well indeed be true that this is the way that some Palestinians wish to be viewed – but not all of them. Like i most societies the mass opinion is never really heard (look at the protests before iraq for example) so if anything her argument does not go far enough as this is present in the British media. It a very difficult point to argue against that extremities are
a) more interesting
b) it’s what sell the newspapers
you could ask everyone what they think of the militants but its the ones who are really pro or against that will be shown on the news.