Source: Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa
A decision by the Broadcasting Standards Authority to uphold a complaint against a 1News broadcast in November is a warning to the news media, says the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa.
The Broadcasting Standards Authority has ruled that a TVNZ news item on violence in Amsterdam breached BSA rules.
1News described violence in the streets of Amsterdam following a soccer match as ‘disturbing’ and ‘antisemitic’ and stated the graphic video of beatings were Maccabi Tel Aviv fans under attack just for being Jewish.
Videographers who took the footage which 1News had used, complained to their news agencies that this description was quite wrong. The violence was perpetrated by the Israeli Maccabi Tel Aviv fans against those they suspected of being Arab or supporters of Palestine. The visiting Israelis were the attackers – not the victims.
(Before the match these same Maccabi fans had gathered in large groups to chant “Death to Arabs” – a racist genocidal chant which if used with the races reversed (“Arabs” replaced by Jews”) would have been rightly condemned in purple prose by western news media such as TVNZ. But no such sympathy for Palestinians or Arabs)
PSNA immediately requested that TVNZ broadcast a correction. TVNZ refused, though admitting they had got the story wrong.
PSNA then referred a complaint to the BSA who upheld the complaint as failing to meet the accuracy standard.
PSNA Co-Chair John Minto says the BSA decision should be seen as a warning to the news media to be aware that Israel is using fabricated charges of antisemitism, to justify and divert attention from its genocide in Gaza and silence its critics.
“Just because Benjamin Netanyahu and the then US president Joe Biden made statements turning Amsterdam attackers into victims, doesn’t mean TVNZ news should automatically parrot them,” Minto says. “That’s effectively what the BSA concluded.”
Minto also points to what he called a recent fabricated hysteria about antisemitism in Sydney, which the New South Wales police found to be completely based on hoaxes by a criminal gang.
“In the US, Trump is using the same charge as an excuse to close down university courses and expel anyone who protests against the Israeli genocide in Gaza.”
“The Human Rights Commission here has also been guilty of publishing misinformation through the news media, which it refuses to publicly correct, probably because of its own fondness for Israel.”
“Of course, we strongly condemn the real antisemitism of anti-Jewish, Nazi-type Islamophobic groups,” Minto says.
“It should be easy for professional reporters and editors to tell the difference between criticism of Israeli apartheid, ethnic cleansing and violence on one hand, and on the other hand Nazis and their fellow travellers who condemn Jews because they are Jews”
“The BSA is, in effect, demanding the news media educate themselves.”
John Minto
Co-Chair
Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa
