Major TV Networks Boycotted “Hospital Bomber” Story
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James Joyner | Friday, June 24, 2005 |
The story of a Palestinian woman who attempted to blow up the hospital where she was being taken for burn treatment has been all but ignored by the world’s television networks.
Bauer: Major TV Networks Boycotted “Hospital Bomber” Story (Israel National News)
Despite the IDF’s distribution of a video of the Arab suicide bomber who intended to blow up a hospital, nearly all foreign news agencies chose to boycott the story almost totally.
An outraged former undersecretary in the late US President Ronald Reagan’s administration, who was also a candidate to be the Republican Party’s presidential nominee, Gary Bauer, has written a scathing critique of the world mediaâs decision to avoid the story.
Excerpts from Bauerâs letter:
âIf you don’t get the Fox News Channel then you didn’t see any of the dramatic footage of the Israeli army’s arrest yesterday of a 21-year old, female Palestinian homicide-bomber, strapped with 25 pounds of high-explosives, just moments before she was to commit mass-murder by detonating herself inside an Israeli hospital. No other television network featured the story.
âUtterly ignoring the extraordinary video of the homicide-bomber’s arrest, both the BBC and CNN focused extensively on how much ‘damageâ Israel’s early morning arrest – for which there was no video – of 55 Fatah and Islamic Jihad terrorists, described by CNN as âPalestinian activists,â would cause to today’s scheduled âsummit meetingâ between Israeli Prime Minister Sharon and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
This is quite bizarre given that the initial story, widely cited around the Blogosphere, was on the AP wire.
The obvious explanation is that this doesn’t fit into the storyline that the leftist press wants to portray of weak Palestinians being bullied by powerful Israelis. The problem with that, though, is that there is generally plenty of coverage of suicide bomber attacks and especially ones like this that have a “hook” that would keep viewers tuned an extra few minutes. A story of violence with a unique angle–and video!–is pure gold. That the networks would choose not to cover it to advance a political agenda is rather hard to believe. An alternative explanation eludes me, however.
Related: Palestinian Woman Heading for Treatment at Israeli Hospital Caught Carrying Explosives
About the Author: James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. He lives just outside the Beltway in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife and infant daughter.
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The media covers explodeys. What we have here is a mere pre-explodey.
Does that mean that there was no imminent threat of an explosion?
It is my understanding that she had already been to the hospital for treatment and this was a follow-up visit.
I saw the story on NBC Nightly News the other night - albeit I had read about it days prior.
A quick google search turns up some coverage online by the NY Times and the Guardian among others - two of the poster children for complaints of liberal media bias.
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