News trust is an important public service value in democratic societies. It justifies the existence of our media. Facts should be facts, and sources need to be reliable. The media consumer should be alerted if there are doubts, and counter versions of any story should be included.
If mistakes are made, they need to be corrected as quickly as possible, as well as prominence equitable to the original story provided.
While news providers and media consumers have no contractual relationships, there are laws that can be and should be generated if a media network insists on disregarding the responsibilities and obligations.
What is increasingly a problematic aspect is the preprogram/pre-script editorial framing that goes on behind the scenes. What has the editor decided will be the content and the message? What has he told the interviewer? Is the presenter/reporter primed to say or do something to control or highlight a content element? Or, worse, does the correspondent already know what is expected of him or her as regards delivering a biased story?
Asking AI what it means
My term for this assumed framing is “narrative locked.” Checking to see if I invented a term, an AI engine explained to me what I meant.
“Narrative locked” likely refers, it informed me, to the concept of establishing a specific narrative or storyline in a way that limits or controls how the story unfolds or is interpreted. This could be in the context of storytelling, marketing, or even strategic communication. It’s about setting the “frame” for how events are understood.
It even broke down the concept, and I paraphrase:
“Setting the narrative” means consciously choosing the language, perspective, and framework through which a story or situation is presented.
“Limiting interpretation” means controlling the narrative so as to influence how an audience understands events, characters, or situations. Moreover, it possesses the potential of preventing alternative interpretations or understandings.
The technique of “locking the narrative” can be strategically applied to shaping a plot or the overall message of a story. It is very useful in political communication, for it frames events or policies in a way that favors a particular viewpoint. As it can act as a tool of manipulation, it can mislead, particularly if the narrative presented is not based on accurate or complete information.
Framing the death of children
As an example, let’s review Daniella Weiss’s July 17 appearance on Piers Morgan’s YouTube interview program, specifically the part where she refused to condemn the loss of life among Gaza children. Morgan claimed 20,000 had been killed, but did not make the necessary distinction not only as regards that number but also as regards who is a “child.”
Moreover, his locking narrative was that the fate of Gaza children is solely the responsibility of Israel. Not a word referenced the parents who allow their children to be recruited by Hamas, the imams who encourage the terrorist recruitment, as well as UNRWA and other agencies that turn a blind eye to, at best, or encourage the Hamas ideology. No noting that Hamas embeds itself among the civilian population.
As blogger Elder of Ziyon noted recently, and all the proof is out there, “War crimes are Hamas’ entire military strategy... attacking civilians, using civilians as human shields, stealing aid meant for civilians, hiding weapons and terrorists in hospitals, using ambulances as military vehicles... recruiting children as militants....” The Hamas charter clearly calls for the genocide of Jews, even in its 2017 rewrite.
To be truthful, Weiss could have retorted, “Mr. Morgan, I would suggest to you that I am concerned for Gaza children more than their parents, more than their imams, and certainly more than Hamas is.” Unfortunately, that would not have sufficed Morgan.
Another instance was the murders of two Arabs in the general proximity of both Sinjil village as well as the El-Tel location on Friday, July 11. The report was that settlers beat an Arab to death last week, and simultaneously another was killed kilometers away. Was any reliable evidence presented? Did the very few photos prove anything? Was a postmortem done?
Did any reporter query the narrative’s veracity? Did anyone ask how that could have been done? Did anyone inquire as to what they were doing before supposedly being attacked? What were two Jewish Israeli anti-occupation anarchists doing there? The army was present. Were soldiers involved?
All of the above are legitimate questions a good editor should have insisted his reporter confront. Or, was this a narrative-locked situation? “Settlers,” after all, are always “violent.”
In 1947, the Hutchins Commission on Freedom of the Press, a group of American intellectuals appointed by Time magazine’s Henry Luce, wrote in its report: “The press should offer a truthful, comprehensive account of the day’s events in a context which gives them meaning.” Does the charge that Israel is committing “genocide” align itself with that instruction?
According to Wikipedia, already back in 2010, historians Martin Shaw and Omer Bartov debated whether the 1948 Nakba should be regarded as a genocide. Shaw agreed, whereas Bartov disagreed. Gaza has changed Bartov’s mind, however.
A 2019 book, A century of cultural genocide in Palestine, strengthened the “genocide” narrative.
Of course, a question posed by Mitch Bard is relevant here: “If Zionists wanted to eradicate Palestinian Arabs, why did they agree to coexist beside such an entity on at least 10 separate occasions from 1937 to the present?”
Moreover, what Arabs did to the Jews residing in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza during the Mandate period, particularly in Hebron and Safed, as well as the Kfar Etzion and Hadassah convoy massacres in 1948, never merits a “genocide” label.
For George Orwell, the freedom of the press meant “the freedom to criticize and oppose,” but that is exactly what today’s media betray with their “narrative-locked” reporting on Israel.
The writer is a researcher, analyst, and commentator on political, cultural, and media issues.