THE ISRAELI TAKE

The Israeli Take was an imported "in-depth" news item shown last night on NZTV Sunday programme. Previously we had had a home-grown item interviewing Nicola Enchmarch, a real Kiwi hero, who had been on the Mavi Marmara. She had attended to a dying man who had been shot numerous times, including the head. She did not hide down below with other women, she was obviously not an extremist, and she had important things to say about what happened. But she had a wonderful Michaelic will and focus for what had to be done for the people of Gaza.

The Israeli Take threatened to be a complete excuse for the Israeli military, but surprisingly the voices from two or three persons on board the Mavi Marmara were included. Perhaps in the interest of "balance", for the whole item was the usual ambiguous establishment news item in which no firm journalistic stance was taken. It was an essentially disgraceful piece of work which chose not to deal with the relevant issue of the blockade. Instead time was wasted on wondering who started the hostility, as though - yet again - we are dealing with two equal and morally equivalent forces.

If I put aside the fact that the Israelis have no right to own a good deal of the eastern Mediterranean and do just what they like there, and were therefore "starting" the "fight" - having already started it by setting up Gaza as a concentration camp - if I put these facts aside, the programme itself seemed to answer this question for me. The Israeli commander was heard to warn the Mavi Marmara that it was entering an area of hostility - that is, an area made hostile by the presence and intentions of Israeli forces. But the programme makers chose not to notice this.

Instead I think we were shown men on the Mavi Marmara sawing lengths of metal from the railings, as if this was the moment which started the fight. It was also the moment at which the programme makers seriously took the side of the Israelis by implying that it is not OK to take steps to defend yourself from a pirate in uniform. As if it is not quite the done thing to actually be serious about the objective of the flotilla. As if it was indeed just a stunt. The Israelis - and presumably the British programme makers - do not accept the right of others to resist.

When I see men making weapons out of a ship's railing I draw the conclusion that essentially they did not have weapons. When I realise that not a single Israeli soldier was killed this conclusion is reinforced. When I learn that firearms taken from Israeli soldiers were not used against them, even the moral standing of the flotilla is reinforced.

This was a programme which enabled the Israeli perspective to be given. What did we get? Surprisingly little. We saw flotilla men justifiably manhandling - but not killing - soldiers who assumed they had a right to board a vessel. We saw men making those metal bars. We saw - note this well - Muslim men having an anti-Israeli meeting. Surprise, surprise. With an adversary capable of any crime it would have been just one way to bolster courage. We heard Israeli soldiers claiming they were being shot at. Did any of them receive gunshot wounds? The Israelis and the programme failed to say.

We were told that the Israeli commandos fired paint-ball guns, as though they were carrying out an exercise in benevolence. An example of Israeli humour perhaps? The programme told us that the very first person shot was shot by a paint-ball. He was one of the persons from the Mavi Marmara who was interviewed, but curiously he was not asked - for the viewer anyway - to confirm that his seeming agony on the ground and the red patch on his body was due to a paint-ball. It would have been so easy to have cleared this matter up.

Having been thumped by establishment media for presuming to resist tyranny, the flotilla was then trounced with the accusation that they were not so much humanitarian, as political. How dare they also presume to take part in the political process. The writer William Trevor was once asked if he was a political person. He replied that he took a concerned interest in matters that occurred in the world, but this did not make him political. I take this as a starting point and from this one's concern is made to be political by others who really are political. If you are concerned and do nothing about it you are not political. If you do something about it you are forced to be political. Yet you have as much right to be political as any other human being set up as an agent of state.

Once again time was wasted on the intentions of the flotilla, rather than the obscenity of people in a concentration camp. There is absolutely no shame in saying that the flotilla was both humanitarian and political. The people of Gaza needed to be strengthened and the state of Israel needed to be weakened.

This accusation of political action was reinforced by the programme makers by making fun of some of the items eventually delivered to Gaza. Wheelchairs which appeared to have been damaged in transit from helpful Israel, and out of date medicines. The programme did not wonder why so many wheelchairs were in bad condition. It did not imagine that perhaps any medicine is better than none and that only the comfortable worry about expiry dates. No, these two amusing items reinforced the supposed hypocrisy of the flotilla mission, rather than perhaps its ability to do the best it could with the resources available.

AMERICAN TALK

I confess that apart from three exceptions my view of American talk is dictated by on-screen programmes and their participants. Americans talk a lot. Any one of their documentaries can be exhausting in its verbiage without being exhaustive in its incisiveness. American talk appears to be designed to conceal rather than to discover the truth. It seems very difficult to call a spade a spade.

An example recently was an American television documentary on the fiery deaths of seven American astronauts. The programme was designed to show what happened and what was done about it. Within the space of 60 seconds somewhere in the programme it became very obvious that what happened was a piece of foam coming off and ripping a hole in one wing. You could see the hole and it was significant. Upon re-entry this hole allowed the fire to begin.

However, the programme and its participants spent the entire time showing how heroic the leader of the ground team was, how they went through all the planned procedures with strength and courage - and yet how they had to suffer failure at the end. It became very apparent that the ground team and the programme pretended that the hole in the wing was not significant. There was a wish to blank out the implications. This may have been due to the fact that in their arrogant planning failure was not an option, and there was nothing to be done. But American talk can be based upon such spurious assumptions and shortcomings.

Then the inquiry into the disaster by yet another American hero, while blaming organisational failure, failed in itself to be specific with the public. Or perhaps it was the programme makers who had to be non-specific with us, so that a spade could not be called a spade and the wooden-jawed leader of ground crew kept his job. But we can be assured that there was much talk analysing and explaining irrelevant factors.

As for the three Americans who visited me, I had been warned in advance not to speak about American political matters with them. He was Republican, she was Democrat, and the daughter was apolitical, but it made no difference. After all the tears of joy and hullabaloo about Obama he was beginning to show what a flop he was, but we had to close our eyes to this unwelcome fact and not talk about it. Just as the ground team had closed their eyes and not talked about the hole in the wing.

ESTABLISHMENT MEDIA

It is heartening to find one's own insights given expression by prominent commentators one respects, but it is somewhat disconcerting to find that there are those in the establishment media who are also perfectly aware. So here in New Zealand John Campbell who normally twitters on in a most irritating fashion suddenly shows a genuine knowledge and admiration in an interview with Robert Fisk. Or some right-wing morning radio journalist switches to a real knowledge and appreciation in an interview with Dahr Jamail. They are living a double life, normally happy to espouse an antithetical establishment viewpoint.

The election of Obama was a good example which showed that members of the establishment media know the truth perfectly well. In New Zealand they decided to awake from their cowardice and begin to express hopes for necessary change in the world. Suddenly it was OK to publicly hope that the United States would be more reasonable in the world, that it would take Israel by the nose and force it to behave decently. Statements mildly critical of Israel surfaced; sympathetic items about Gaza and the Palestinians occurred. Iran or Venezuela or you name it escaped irrational villification.

However, the media establishment manoeuvres ponderously. The Gaza war crime had already occurred. It was already too late. The real nature of the new man was revealed in one telling scenario, but the media wanted to miss it. In the midst of the international crime, Obama was shown playing golf, a vision horribly reminiscent of his predecessor. He said not a word then on the subject nor thereafter.

But now the establishment media has rushed back into obedient silence and untruth. It has seen again that the truth cannot be revealed and will not be acted upon by this unsavoury new president.

ORWELL IN TRIBUNE

'As I Please' and other writings 1943-7. I know that Orwell is the independent journalist that all contemporary independent journalists look up to. Even people who have no right to quote him do so. Here he is performing the luxury of writing an uncensored column. The range of his subject matter and the depth of his insight are impressive. What is an insight? In Orwell's case it seems to be extreme common sense and logic. With these he makes many an uncanny prediction.

What is actually most remarkable about Orwell's journalism for me is the complete lack of egoism. This absence produces the impression that he has rather a lacklustre style. He writes his perceptive comments in a matter-of-fact and unemphatic manner. His style does not button-hole you, hold you by the collar, or grab you by the throat. You are fully responsible for your attention.

Orwell comes across as a thoroughly decent and civilised man, and also perhaps as a somewhat reserved Englishman concerned with particulars. He is an undoctrinaire socialist. Statements he makes during these years on topics such as world peace and international affairs turn out to be completely valid and relevant today. They turn out to be true.

Rating: Very good

EDWARDS, DAVID & CROMWELL, DAVID. NEWSPEAK IN THE 21ST CENTURY

The authors are co-editors of Media Lens (http://www.medialens.org/) a website devoted to challenging how British newspapers and broadcasters report the news. We discover as a result of detailed evidence provided, that there are no sources of news which are reliably independent of power and establishment, of the government, owners and advertisors, not even the so-called liberal newspapers such as the Guardian or Independent. All we have in print are independent commentators who can be named on one hand: Chomsky, Pilger, Fisk, perhaps Seamus Milne. Chomsky and Pilger in particular are subject to the resentment of hacks who yap at them from the end of their corporate leashes. No sense of admiration for a better workman in the world of media.

The point is made that for those of us who wish to think for ourselves, rather than to sit back and receive the supposed knowledge of establishment journalists, we have only the internet. It is also the internet which allows freedom of speech and dialogue, whereas the newspaper editor deletes contributions.

There is no such thing as neutral reporting, there is either indifference or compassion. We are either honest or bent. Many of us of course cannot decide which. If we are a human being another's pain must be felt as our own, otherwise what real value is there in what we have to say? We would only be contributing to the power of Newspeak. "Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?" - George Orwell.

One hack is quoted equating thoughtful and honest language and presentation as boring, indicating that we have in journalism persons who have no wish to read. This attitude leads to an atrophy of thought and language. "In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it" - George Orwell.

There are chapters on the BBC and on the British media's complicity in refusing to speak the truth on topics such as climate change, the Blair government's duplicity and criminality in invading Iraq, the Iraqi death count, Israel and Palestine, Iran, and Venezuela.
Rating: Very good.