"This is the 'Israel story,' and it has the advantage of being an easy story to report."
"An essay I wrote for Tablet on this topic in the aftermath of the war sparked intense interest. In the article, based on my experiences between 2006 and 2011 as a reporter and editor in the Jerusalem bureau of the Associated Press, one of the world’s largest news organizations, I pointed out the existence of a problem and discussed it in broad terms. Using staffing numbers, I illustrated the disproportionate media attention devoted to this conflict relative to other stories, and gave examples of editorial decisions that appeared to be driven by ideological considerations rather than journalistic ones. I suggested that the cumulative effect has been to create a grossly oversimplified story-a kind of modern morality play in which the Jews of Israel are displayed more than any other people on earth as examples of moral failure. This is a thought pattern with deep roots in Western civilization. [...]
"Many freshly arrived reporters in Israel, similarly adrift in a new country, undergo a rapid socialization in the circles I mentioned. This provides them not only with sources and friendships but with a ready-made framework for their reporting-the tools to distill and warp complex events into a simple narrative in which there is a bad guy who doesn’t want peace and a good guy who does. This is the 'Israel story,' and it has the advantage of being an easy story to report. Everyone here answers their cell phone, and everyone knows what to say. You can put your kids in good schools and dine at good restaurants. It’s fine if you’re gay. Your chances of being beheaded on YouTube are slim. Nearly all of the information you need-that is, in most cases, information critical of Israel-is not only easily accessible but has already been reported for you by Israeli journalists or compiled by NGOs. You can claim to be speaking truth to power, having selected the only 'power' in the area that poses no threat to your safety. [...]
"Most consumers of the Israel story don’t understand how the story is manufactured. But Hamas does. Since assuming power in Gaza in 2007, the Islamic Resistance Movement has come to understand that many reporters are committed to a narrative wherein Israelis are oppressors and Palestinians passive victims with reasonable goals, and are uninterested in contradictory information. Recognizing this, certain Hamas spokesmen have taken to confiding to Western journalists, including some I know personally, that the group is in fact a secretly pragmatic outfit with bellicose rhetoric, and journalists-eager to believe the confession, and sometimes unwilling to credit locals with the smarts necessary to deceive them-have taken it as a scoop instead of as spin.
"During my time at the AP, we helped Hamas get this point across with a school of reporting that might be classified as 'Surprising Signs of Moderation' (a direct precursor to the 'Muslim Brotherhood Is Actually Liberal' school that enjoyed a brief vogue in Egypt). In one of my favorite stories, 'More Tolerant Hamas' (December 11, 2011), reporters quoted a Hamas spokesman informing readers that the movement’s policy was that 'we are not going to dictate anything to anyone,' and another Hamas leader saying the movement had 'learned it needs to be more tolerant of others.' Around the same time, I was informed by the bureau’s senior editors that our Palestinian reporter in Gaza couldn’t possibly provide critical coverage of Hamas because doing so would put him in danger."
Matti Friedman published this piece in The Atlantic in 2014 reflecting on his experience working for the AP in Jerusalem from 2006 to 2011. Illuminating, damning, and now one can add the grim compliment of "prescient."