“There is cruel irony in reports that Radio New Zealand has edited foreign news reports in favour of Palestinians”, says John Minto, National Chair of PSNA.
It’s ironic because Radio New Zealand reporting is consistently and systematically biased against Palestinians – in large part because RNZ relies significantly on BBC reporting which is methodically dreadful.
PSNA has raised this time and again with RNZ Head of News, Richard Sutherland, but to no obvious effect.
“Whatever tweaks may have been made to some news reports it can’t erase the ongoing RNZ misreporting from the Middle East that comes courtesy of the BBC”.
Systemic anti-Palestinian bias in RNZ reporting from the Middle East:
- RNZ wire stories typically talk about the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem when they should be reported as the occupied West Bank, occupied Gaza and occupied East Jerusalem. “Occupied” is the status these territories have under international law and United Nations resolutions and NZ government policy and should be consistently reported as such.
- BBC stories, and by default RNZ, consistently refer to Palestinians resisting occupation as Palestinian “militants” or “terrorists” or similar derogatory and dismissive descriptions.
We wouldn’t call Ukrainian teenagers throwing stones at occupying Russian soldiers as “militants” so why does RNZ think it’s OK to use this term to describe Palestinian teenagers throwing stones at Israeli occupation troops?
Under international law Palestinians have the right to resist Israel’s military occupation and should not be abused for doing so by RNZ. Palestinian resistance groups should be described as “resistance fighters” while Israeli soldiers should be described as “Israeli occupation soldiers”.
- The BBC, and by default RNZ, will often give wide sympathetic coverage to Israelis killed by Palestinians but do not give similar sympathetic coverage to Palestinians killed, on a near daily basis, by the Israeli occupation.
For example, when two British Israelis were killed earlier this year they received wide sympathetic coverage on RNZ and TVNZ while the hundreds of Palestinians, including dozens of children, killed this year are simply reported as statistics.
- Wide coverage is given to Israeli spokespeople in most stories with rudimentary reporting, if any, from Palestinian viewpoints.
RNZ’s consistent Eurocentric reporting from the Middle East, particularly in its uncritical use of BBC reports, is insulting to New Zealanders.
John – Its’ called balanced reporting…ie RNZ is not parroting pro Palestine propaganda…
“Occupied” is the status these territories have under international law and United Nations resolutions.
They parrot what the BBC write and the BBC is terribly afraid of attacking Israel and their occupation of Palestine because gee wiz they might be seen as anti semitic.
Michal – BBC does not fall for Palestine propaganda – why is this Michal??
If they were balanced, they would be referring to those principalities founded and defined by the U.N. General Assembly (Jerusalem International City, Arab State of Palestine, Jewish State of Israel).
They would state simple facts: part of the Arab State (governed by the Resistance Movement Party) is under illegal blockade by Israel; the other part (governed by the Liberation Movement Party) was invaded and is now occupied by Israeli troops; and that the International City is also occupied (against the sovereign administration of the U.N. special international regime).
Keep in mind that we in the west only hear about Palestinians when they are shooting, bombing or launching rockets, or rioting.
That doesn’t built a great amount of sympathy.
And yet when we hear about Israeli armed forces and settlers doing the same things (and worse), we are still hearing how the Palestinian people are worse?
Ada, the reason we only hear negatively about the indigenous Palestinian is because it a settler colonial state similar to AO/NZ, AUS, CAN, USA etc… Remembering that apartheid Israel is the only democracy in the M.E. (sarcasm) and the west supports other democracies even when they commit horrific crimes against humanity.
The Indigenous populations in these countries mentioned all experience negative connotations but more so the Palestinians, who constantly are humiliated daily by people that really don’t belong there.
The language around their status should be alarm for concern as the bible has been weaponized against Palestinians to de-indigenize them as people of the land. This zionist settler colonial project supported by great powers of the world has done a thorough execution of dehumanizing a population that initially welcomed jewish immigration in the late 19th early 20th century.
Free Palestine.
Here’s the supreme irony…the BBC is notorious for its anti-Israel bias.
gaby – Correct
You mean they don’t think Israelites are literally children of God, superior to the rest of us? Sure, Gaby.
I was wondering when you were going to turn up with one of your brain farts
Insults…last redoubt of the barren mind. Nathan has it right.
Insults? It only says exactly what I said in the “Holy Book”, on which all the whole sorry State is based and justified… Maybe have a read that one day?
Israel: the cherry on the tit of US exceptionalism.
I can’t tell, are you making a comment in favour or against?
I would think they would be pleased to be part of Israel.
Israel GDP per capita 54,997
Palestine GDP per capita 3,663
All they have to do is give up their rights, culture, religion, land and all they hold dear. Cheap at half the price!
DS, don’t forget the constant early morning raids, the daily humiliation and checkpoints, the judiciary killing and settler colonial violence, the bombing and maiming and ethnically cleansing them from their villages and homes… etc. Is that a democracy? Get back to me when you figure it out?
I was wondering when John Minto would pen a piece at being outraged that RNZ was deemed biased in favour of Palestine sympathy reporting.
Facts always win out in the end eh!
Propoganda always gets caught out as RNZ has.
Borat was right!
Powerful graphic.
Draw the same graphic of NZ. Or for that matter of any geographical location on earth.
I read many opinion pieces on this issue and these shape my understanding of the situation.
We all get “confused” by “news” articles that are biased.
It goes very deep.
Allan Hall – prosecutors withheld crucial evidence that would have swung the jury! Allan spent 19 years for a crime that he did not commit.
DS, don’t forget the constant early morning raids, the daily humiliation and checkpoints, the judiciary killing and settler colonial violence, the bombing and maiming and ethnically cleansing them from their villages and homes… etc. Is that a democracy? Get back to me when you figure it out?
DS
Bro, this is about the Indigenous Palestinians not the incompetence of NZ criminal legal framework
Only if that is how you choose to interpret it.
But that is OK.
Palestinians are a made up people who want to destroy Israel.
There is some truth I that.
There are also Palestinians who do not see the need to destroy Israel. Some Palestinians are in the Knesset and represent Palestinian and Jewish constituents.
Zionist, it’s always funny when you monsters reveal yourselves.
You are a ‘person’ who thinks it’s funny when your fellow zionists murder men, women, and children. When they rape kids just for fun. When they, as they did in Deir Yassin, throw a young boy into a baker’s oven, just for they joy of hearing him scream.
There will be a reckoning for what you have done to so many innocent, beautiful human beings.
Looks like inversion propaganda, RNZ is of course biased to Israel. Then comes the projection, that Palestinians are everything the Israelis actually are, a violent occupying people who steal land and strangle resources, who dehumanise and imprison the other, and who dominate and subjugate using deadly force. Like the nazis did mid 20th century and the Americans do to this day.
With Iran and the Saudis kiss’n and making up. And all the Arab Nations along with China and Russia agreeing to work toward common goals for Peace in the Middle East.
I suspect Israel is about to get their nono kicked. And there will be no one for them to call on as the US, NATO and others will be busy fighting to survive on 3 fronts.
But the common denominator for all is WWIII. At this stage I think we’re past the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Peace can only be achieved if one can first create more un-peace. Johns Hopkins dictionary.
That will be tactical genius on the part of Putin if he can create this diversion.
I do not think the geopolitics playing out at present will result in that outcome. I sure as hell hope not. I would like my kids and grand kids to spend my savings once I am no longer here.
Iran is a military superpower it has the capacity to defend itself
Correct, we are.
We’ll have our faces melting from radioactivity and the “we’re the good guys” brainwashed Nato fanchildren will still insist Russia is weak, but totally menacing and evil, good will prevail and they’re doing the right thing.
Logistics aside, the propaganda machine is Nato’s only real gun in the fight, and it will kill us all.
Hey thanks for these maps John, the green is so helpful in updating on the places no one in the Arab world cares about.
Israel, we all understand and sympathize how they got a state. But the righting of a wrong shouldn’t be a wrong to others. The Palestinians didn’t want them. A rotten foundation.
Commenters on Left blogs are often ignorant. ‘Own the Libs’ shite from the American dead-set Right.
Agree John. I cant comment on whether it is still the case as I have not followed the BeeB for the last ten years but as of about 2010, everything you have said was true. It seems since then the situation has got ever worse for the Palestinians so I imagine that Israel still has the overwhelming support of the Brits and the US. IF they werent getting their unequivocal support (and presumably using their power at the UN) then the land grabbing would have stopped before now due to international pressure.
They wont stop any other way.