Pet Peeves: Misleading Descriptions, Inaccurate "If Onlys," Etc.

By John Law

Journalists who assume that their readers, or viewers, are experts on the subject upon which they are reporting.

For example, in The Washington Post of March 19, George Lardner, Jr., had a story from Washington about the arrest of a Palestinian "terrorist," Abdul-Rahirn Khaled, in which he referred to him as a top aide to the leader of the "Palestinian Liberation Front. " He assumes that the reader will unhesitatingly recognize that this is the hard-line extremist group that hijacked the Achille Lauro, whose leader is Mohammad Abu Abbas (Abul Abbas), and whose creed is that armed struggle and terrorism—not diplomacy—are the only ways to regain Palestinian rights.

It's unlikely, however, that most readers are that knowledgeable. Why should they be? Sorting out and keeping straight the numerous political groupings with confusingly similar names in the area is a headache even for people who follow Middle Eastern events very closely. It seems a safe guess that very many, if not most, of the people reading that story thought it referred to the Palestinian Liberation Organization, a name far more familiar to them, whose chairman is Yasser Arafat (Abu Ammar).

The pity is that this kind of sloppy writing over the years, on top of deliberate disinformation efforts by those who seek to depict the PLO as a terrorist leopard that can never change its spots, has helped to preserve the myth that the PLO is not really interested in a two-state solution to its conflict with Israel.

Journalists who quote comments by officials or "experts" who say that the reason why there has not been any progress in settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that "there are no Sadats anymore." Sometimes the experts add, wistfully, "If only an Arab leader would step forward, as Sadat did. . . "

Virtually always, when a version of this remark appears in print (as it did, for example, in The Washington Post on May 17, when Jackson Diehl and David Hoffman quoted an American official visiting Jerusalem), the comment is allowed to hang there, all by itself, as though it needed no interpretation. However, it badly needs to be put into context, as should always be the case when apples are spoken of as though they were oranges.

The Sinai Peninsula, which the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat retrieved from Israeli occupation by deciding to "step forward, " was by no means the equivalent of the West Bank and Gaza. Sinai was not part of Palestine, and in fact was a territory on which Israel had been making no historical or Biblical claims.

On the other hand, Israel regarded the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza as integral parts of the "Land of Israel." When Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin gave back Sinai to Egypt in return for a peace treaty, he believed he could do what he wanted with the rest of the territories without having to fear any attack from Egypt. So what Begin did, in fact, was give back the Arab land he wanted the least in return for a chance to keep permanent possession of the West Bank and Gaza, the Arab lands he wanted the most.

Journalists who seldom if ever identify countries by noting the religious affiliation of the majority of their citizens—unless the majorities are Muslim.

In one example (out of zillions available), an editorial in The New York Times, on May 4, referred to Turkey as "NATO's only Muslim member." Yet nowhere in the editorial, which discussed general conditions in Turkey and its relationship with the US, was there any suggestion that the religious faith of Turks—who in any case live in a secular state, where a citizen's religion is a private matter—was a relevant issue. Unless Christianity were relevant to a problem under discussion, I can hardly imagine the Times ever referring to the United States as "the largest Christian member of NATO. " Sometimes it can be pertinent, as it would have been in the Times's editorial, to identify another country by its geographical location. So why didn't the Times call Turkey "NATO's only Near Eastern member"? Think about it, Editorial Page Editor Jack Rosenthal! Gobbledygook.

"Some Israelis…will fight the surrender of land all the way. But this does not negate the validity of land as a central concept in diplomatic exchange. It merely underlines the drawbacks of accepting peace as a balancing concept. "If you don't get it, call the guy who wrote it: Stephen S. Rosenfeld, Deputy Editor, Editorial Page, The Washington Post. Perhaps he knows what it means.

Reporters who keep substituting "cautious optimism" for hard facts.

It's one thing when diplomats use this phrase—it can be good diplomacy (and sometimes self-serving) to spread the impression that a situation is better than it really is, or to alert other players that you have an ace in the hole. But this is not the job of reporters and commentators, who should be trying to describe the scene, or the hidden cards, with honesty and realism.

The Sinai Peninsula was by no means the equivalent of the West Bank and Gaza.

Nonetheless, throughout the spring, while Israeli attitudes towards the "peace process" grew progressively tougher and nastier, many reporters across the media spectrum could not resist copy-catting the diplomats. "There's reason for cautious optimism," said an early-morning anchorman for CNN during one of the least successful of the Baker visits. During another Baker visit a month later, no more successful than the earlier one, an unbylined New York Times reporter in Jerusalem opined that the general mood was "cautiously optimistic." And Peter Ford of the Christian Science Monitor, in an op-ed article, started out his column: "Just possibly, this time, might it work? In Jerusalem, the pale flame of hope for a peaceful solution to the Middle East conflict is flickering again, (with) a sense among many Israelis that the time may, perhaps, finally be right."

When a journalist talks of "cautious optimism," he should give the reason why he does. If he is quoting a diplomat, he should not just let the phrase stand, but try to put it in the context of other facts. For many who have been waiting in vain since Eisenhower to see the US reduce aid to Israel to rein in its aggressive behavior, "confident pessimism" seems more appropriate. But if any journalist has strong evidence that Shamir's increasing defiance of US policies has pushed the administration very close to a decision to slash aid, he should indeed tell his readers that he is "cautiously optimistic"—but should also let them know why he is.

John Law, founding and chief editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs from 1982 to 1984, was for 22 years the chief Middle East correspondent for US News and World Report.