August 26, 2002
Earlier this month the UN released its report on the so-called massacre when Israeli troops moved into the West Bank city of Jenin. According to the report, approximately 52 Palestinians died, most of them combatants or terrorists. The Palestinian propaganda that a massacre of epic proportions had occurred was taken a "fact" by the left-wing media and bought my many Canadian politicians, such as Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham and NDP MP Svend Robinson, the latter calling Israeli actions a crime against humanity.
When the UN report came out, almost all of the media wrote about the report's criticism of the Israelis; that they delayed and hindered ambulances and medical personnel who were attempting to aid wounded Palestinians. But a significant proportion of the media completely left out any mention of those parts of the report that criticized the Palestinians.
The report had cited the fact that combatants who choose to fight in civilian areas are breaching the Geneva Convention and those combatants are responsible for the deaths of innocent civilians. To report criticisms of Israelis but not the Palestinians is a clear case of the anti-Israel bias that exists in much of the media.
Meaningless statistics
An August 11 article on the Middle East, published on the Globe and Mail's website, globeandmail.com, concluded with the following paragraph:
"At least 1,497 Palestinians and 587 Israelis have died since September of 2000."
It seems to be quite common to end articles on the fighting in the Middle East by giving an up to date death toll. But it is totally meaningless other than to inform the reader that the Palestinian dead is more than double that of the Israelis. Those statistics leave the impression, in the absence of any other facts, that the Israelis are obviously the bad guys.
The statistics are almost meaningless in the absence of a breakdown as to how many of those dead were soldiers or combatants, how many were terrorists and how many were innocent civilians, including the elderly, women, children and infants. Only then would readers be given enough facts to really know what was transpiring.
Misleading Headlines
What often happens in newspapers is that the title of an article bears little relationship to what is in the body of the story or else is completely misleading. In an article published on August 19 by the National Post, the piece (dealing with Canadians) was entitled "Proportionate representation draws highest rating in poll." If one merely glanced at the title one would think that Canadians prefer proportionate representation.
In the body of the article it is stated that a poll conducted by the
Association for Canadian Studies and Enveronics and by Focus Canada found that 34 percent of Canadians prefer the proportionate method while percent prefer the current system. The last paragraph indicates that "the results are accurate to within plus or minus 2.2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20."
Given the pollsters' margin of error, there is no clear indication of which election method is preferred by the majority of Canadians and the title is completely at odds with the body of the article. What is certain is that the column writer and whoever wrote the title appear to favour proportionate representation.
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