Because Israel has a free press and an open society, we are able to draw on reporting from
Ha'aretz, Yediot Ahronot, and the
Jerusalem Post, non-governmental organizations, and largely uncontrolled reporters for non-Israeli news media.
In Lebanon the story is rather different. CJRDaily recently ran a story on Lifting the Cover of the Hezbollah PR Effort, which reveals how unfree reporters are when covering the story inside Lebanon. Christopher Allbritton, a freelancer and contributor to Time writes in his blog: "Hizbullah is launching Katyushas, but I'm loathe to say too much about them. The Party of God has a copy of every journalist's passport, and they've already hassled a number of us and threatened one."
In fact, beyond that, it has very, very good control over its areas in the south of Beirut. They deny journalists access into those areas. They can turn on and off access to hospitals in those areas. They have a lot of power and influence. You don't get in there without their permission.
According to a CNN reporter in Lebanon, Nic Robertson, "Hezbollah has a very, very sophisticated and slick media operations."
Robertson acknowledges that reporters in Lebanon, accompanied by Hizbullah minders, see what Hizbullah wants them to see:
[T]here's no doubt about it. They [Hizbullah] had control of the situation. They designated the places that we went to, and we certainly didn't have time to go into the houses or lift up the rubble to see what was underneath.
CJR [Columbia Journalism Review] Daily carries a similar message from Anderson Cooper:
"[W]e found ourselves with other foreign reporters taken on a guided tour by Hezbollah ... They only allowed us to videotape certain streets, certain buildings."
"This is a heavily orchestrated Hezbollah media event. When we got here, all the ambulances were lined up. We were allowed a few minutes to talk to the ambulance drivers. Then one by one, they've been told to turn on their sirens and zoom off so that all the photographers here can get shots of ambulances rushing off to treat civilians ... These ambulances aren't responding to any new bombings. The sirens are strictly for effect."
I am not saying that nothing reported from Lebanon should be believed. Nor am I disputing that terrible things are going on in Lebanon, some of them due to errors on Israel's part. (Although it is worth echoing David Aaronovitch that "when the Israelis miss their targets they hit civilians and when Hezbollah misses, they don't.")
But I am saying that, before accepting claims emanating from Lebanon regarding the numbers of civilian versus military casualties or the presence or absence of military targets, we should verify.
Sure, both sides are trying to spin news coverage their way. But when one side -- Hizbullah -- controls physical access to the locations and, as CJR Daily comments, "has copies of reporters' passports, and may be using that as leverage over them[,] . . . it does bring the question of intimidation, and journalists' ability to report freely, into focus."