News Gathering Under the Gun

Israel accuses U.S. journalists of suppressing stories, out of fear

No nation keeps a sharper eye on foreign press coverage of its flammable affairs than Israel. When it does not like what it sees, the Israeli government is quick to express its displeasure to newsmen. But rarely is the criticism as pointed, as personal or as outrageous as it was last week. Angered by a report on ABC'S 20/20 describing Israeli treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank, Ze'ev Chafets, director of the government press office, charged that certain U.S. and European news organizations suppress negative stories on Syria and the Palestine Liberation Organization because they fear terrorist reprisals. The supposed culprits: the New York Times, Washington Post, British Broadcasting Corp. and ABC. "I don't think that it's always, or even usually, the newsmen on the spot who are necessarily intimidated, although they have every right to be afraid as well," Chafets said. "But very often organizations acting in the interest of their personnel, which is legitimate, make decisions not to publish a certain thing because it would get somebody in trouble, or get somebody shot at."

As evidence, he cited ABC's coverage of the region since the murder of Sean Toolan, a part-time radio reporter for ABC in Beirut. He was killed shortly after ABC-TV aired a special report by Correspondent Geraldo Rivera that was sharply critical of Palestinian terrorism. Said Chafets: "ABC, from the time that [Toolan's death] happened, in my view, began a policy which I would describe as cowardly." The recent 20/20 segment "Under the Israeli Thumb" by Correspondent Tom Jarriel, Chafets said, was "one of the most malicious, distorted and one-sided programs about Israel shown on any American network in recent years." The 20/20 report was inordinately sympathetic to the Palestinians, but there is no evidence to suggest that the tone or content of the piece was influenced by Toolan's murder. In fact, almost everyone who is familiar with the circumstances of his death is convinced that he was killed in a personal dispute, not because of his reporting.

Chafets also cited an incident last May involving two newsmen from the Times and one each from the Post, Associated Press and Newsweek. The five were having drinks at the Commodore Hotel in Beirut when they decided to try to follow up a report that Israeli commandos had landed near Damur, twelve miles south of the capital. They rushed off to cover the story, leaving behind their passports and press identification cards. At about 2 a.m., they were stopped by Palestinian militiamen and detained when they could not prove that they were journalists. At least two of the newsmen felt their lives were in danger. They were released some twelve hours later after friends tracked them down and vouched for their identities. Said one of the detained journalists: "We made an informal agreement that we would not write anything about the incident. The stories would have just embarrassed everyone involved."

No accounts of the misadventure appeared in the press, but the correspondents talked freely about it with acquaintances in Israel, including Chafets. Chafets intimated to TIME last week that the news organizations actually suppressed the story as a condition of the journalists' release, though there is no evidence of that. He added: "The moment the newspapers give in to terrorists' demands and begin to hide the truth from their readers, then they have allowed the thugs their victory."

Violence against reporters is a fact of life in the Middle East, especially in Beirut, where in the past three years two Western journalists have been killed and several others assaulted. A TIME correspondent was once threatened with death. Britain's Guardian has even described the atmosphere in Beirut as "censorship by terrorism." But the hazards of operating in Beirut have not distorted coverage from there. "Utter nonsense," says ABC News President Roone Arledge of the Chafets charge.

As for the detainment of the reporters last May, Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Jim Hoagland recalls that the Post man taken into custody did not feel it was "all that big a deal." Agrees Craig Whitney, deputy foreign editor at the Times: "People run into difficulties of various kinds in pursuit of stories all over the world. There are times when it becomes news, but in this case we didn't feel like it was."

But the Times gave Chafets more ammunition when it reported his charges last week. The original dispatch by Times Jerusalem Correspondent David K. Shipler, which was distributed by the Tunes News Service, made reference both to Chafets' criticism of the Times and to the incident last May. But both of these sections were deleted from the version that appeared in the New York Times itself. By removing the paragraph about then-own reporters' run-in with a left-wing faction of the P.L.O., Chafets argued, the paper "did not report terrorist intimidation against itself for the second time running."

The next day the Times printed a full account of Chafets' criticisms, including the previously deleted sentences from Shipler's dispatch. Says Whitney: "We probably should have left it in in the first place, and would have, if we had considered it more carefully. We had no intention of trying to suppress criticism of ourselves.' ' Moral: all the news is fit to print.

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