Wednesday, September 07, 2005

Going home: Every step is a victory for truth.

Tuvia Grossman, 25, is moving to Israel. He is the young Jewish man from Chicago who had been dragged from a taxi, beaten, stabbed and nearly murdered by an Arab mob in Jerusalem in September, 2000 (Erev Rosh HaShanah). An Israeli soldier stepped in to shield him, probably saving his life.
The New York Times and other major news outlets published a dramatic photo of Tuvia, bloodied, with the visibly angry officer in the background. However, the photo featured an inflammatory caption implying that the victim was a Palestinian being beaten by an Israeli police officer on the Temple Mount.

This incident did not occur on the Temple Mount. A reporter who thinks that there is a gas station on the Temple Mount (examine the background) is either ignorant or blinded by bias. The angry cop is the good guy. The victim is a Jew, not an Arab. The bad guys--not in frame--are the Arabs who tried to murder him. How many key facts can a top news service get wrong in one little caption? Except maybe on purpose.

Please follow links to the historic Arutz Sheva (‘Channel 7’) radio interviews with spokesmen for The New York Times and Associated Press in the wake of the mis-reporting fiasco. These interviews are a revelation of mainstream media arrogance and evasion. AP--the source of the photo for papers around the world--thought that such a profound insult to the suffering of the victim and his family merited an editorial correction but no apology.

This classic instance of media bias--which is used as a textbook case in some journalism classes--led to the founding of HonestReporting.com.

Tuvia Grossman is undeterred by hatred and lies.
He is going home to Israel today.
Every step in his journey is a victory for truth.


For Tuvia's first-hand account and a glimpse of Tuvia as he is today, see the Jerusalem Post: 'Palestinian' Makes Aliyah?

From Israel National News: Terror Victim One of 200 Olim on Way to Israel

(Photo sources: Top photo, Jerusalem Post; bottom photo, Israel National News.)

1 comment:

estherissima said...

This is great!