Evolution of a very predictable -- and largely predicted -- controversy
Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land was broadcast on the French CBC on October 23, 2008, provoking a flood of complaints to the Canadian network. These complaints overwhelmingly took the network to task for running what they deemed to be a "pro-Palestinian" film, largely sidestepping the critically acclaimed 2004 documentary's explicit focus on how pro-Israeli pressure groups methodically influence American media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This was perhaps not surprising given that the vast majority
of these complaints, according to the CBC itself, were coordinated by just such a pro-Israeli pressure group: "I received 156 complaints about this broadcast," a CBC official later said. "Most of
those filing complaints, who were in various countries, did so in response to an appeal by HonestReporting Canada, a pro-Israel media watchdog that encouraged
visitors to its website to send complaints to my office."
Yet without mentioning the source of these complaints, or the fact that the film explicitly examines how watchdog groups such as HonestReporting regularly exert pressure on networks and journalists, the
corporate affairs director of the CBC almost immediately issued an apologetic statement that not only legitimized the complaints but vowed to act on them: "[This film] presented a highly personalized point
of view on the conflict," the corporate affairs director said. "We recognize that this point of view was clearly pro-Palestinian. We wish to ensure you that we have recently acquired other documentaries
offering different insights into the situation in Israel and Gaza, and we intend to broadcast them in the coming months."
CBC management then took matters a step further, asking the network's Ombudsman to launch a full-scale investigation into the substance of the complaints and the central charge that the film was unduly biased.
On December 8, 2008, the Ombudsman released her findings. She issued a report concluding that Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land should not have been shown on French CBC at all.
In response to the Ombudsman report, Sut Jhally, the executive director of the Media Education Foundation, the producer and distributor of the film, drafted and sent a detailed letter to
the president of the CBC challenging the accuracy and professionalism of the Ombudsman report, and criticizing how CBC management handled the pressure they faced.
"We believe that the Ombudsman's report reveals a distinct lack of professionalism in substantiating its primary claims, and a disturbing lack of courage in standing up for the editorial
integrity of the CBC editorial staff," Jhally wrote. "It would be virtually impossible to tell from the Ombudsman's report that the focus of Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land is not the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but the American news media's coverage of that conflict and the external pressures that often shape it."
Jhally, who co-directed the film with Bathsheba Ratzkoff, concluded: "The result of all of this, in perhaps the greatest irony of all, is that these organized complaints about the fairness of our film
actually appear to make the film's point for us: namely, that otherwise 'objective' and professional journalists - in the present case, a standard-bearing Ombudsman - too often allow external pressures to
dictate the terms of discussion when it comes to coverage of Israeli foreign policy. And in this case, as in so many others, the terms of the new discussion distract from what the film is actually about:
a double standard in American news coverage that alternately erases and excuses fundamental human rights abuses against Palestinian people."
>> Read MEF Executive Director Sut Jhally's full letter.
>> Read the full CBC Ombudsman report.
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Also Available:
War Made Easy:
How Presidents & Pundits
Keep Spinning Us to Death
more info. . .
Hijacking Catastrophe:
9/11, Fear & the Selling
of American Empire
more info. . .
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©2007 MEDIA EDUCATION FOUNDATION
