An Israeli official accused leading Western news organizations of slanting reports on Middle East events to curry favor with Palestinian terrorists.
Zeev Chafets, director of the Government Press Office in Jerusalem, also claimed in an interview in the Jerusalem Post, that American and other Western broadcast media, newspapers and wire services deliberately concealed or played down the murders and manhandling of their own correspondents in the region so as not to offend the terrorist groups responsible.
Chafets singled out for condemnation ABC television news whose recent documentary on the West Bank infuriated Israeli officials because it depicted harsh measures taken against Arab residents of that occupied territory. Chafetz called the 16-minute segment which appeared on the ABC News “20-20” program a week ago “one of the most malicious, distorted and one-sided programs about Israel shown on any American network in recent years.”
According to Chafets, ABC was “worming its way back into the Middle East” by pandering to Arab terrorism after terrorists murdered one of its correspondents in Beirut last year, allegedly because he had contributed to an ABC film about Palestinian terrorism around the world.
He charged that Reuters, the British news agency, played down the shooting of its Beirut bureau chief, Bemt Debussman, a year ago. He said the shooting was witnessed by BBC correspondent Tim Llewellyn who himself fell afoul of the Palestine Liberation Organization for his reportage and had to be transferred to Cyprus.
Chafets contended that the New York Times and Washington Post correspondents were among five Western reporters detained and physically abused by the PLO late last year. But both papers played down the incident and agreed not to publicize it in order to obtain the men’s release. Similarly, he said, the International Herald Tribune played down attacks on its correspondent, Joseph Pritchett 18 months ago for his report about Syrian shooting of political prisoners.
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