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! Two Wars, Two Narratives: A Comparative Study of AP’s Coverage of 1982 and 2006 Israel-Lebanon Conflicts ! by ! Shahrzad Faramarzi ! ! A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of ! Master of Journalism ! in ! Journalism ! ! ! ! ! Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario ! ! ©2014 Shahrzad Faramarzi ! ! ! ! Acknowledgements Foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my advisor Professor Karim Karim for the continuous support of my study and research, for his patience, motivation, enthusiasm, and immense knowledge of the subject. His guidance helped me in all the time of research and writing of this thesis. Also, I would like to thank the rest of my thesis committee: Susan Harada, Klaus Pohl and Antoine Char. Special thanks go to former AP Middle East news editor GG Labelle, Special AP correspondent Charles J. Hanley and former BBC Middle East correspondent Tim Llewellyn for tirelessly providing insight into the workings of journalism. I am also grateful to fellow Carleton student Masoud Nematollahi for sharing his technical skills and creative input in the presentation of this thesis. I also thank my friends and former Globe and Mail colleagues Joan Ramsay and Wayne Walters for their stimulating discussions about the thesis and support in seeing it through. Also, I would like to thank my family: my brother Faramarz, sisters Nazanin and Maryam (despite her aversion to politics) for supporting me in this endeavor, my niece Farnaz Faramarzi for helping me transcribe many of the recorded interviews, and my grandniece Ava Shisheboran who kept me on track when I tended to detour towards procrastination. Lastly, I would like to pay tribute to Anthony Shadid, whose excellence in journalism gave me hope for the future of the profession, and AP photographer Anja Niedringhaus with whom I covered many stories in Iraq and who encouraged me to write this thesis, and whom I interviewed on Skype from Afghanistan for this thesis. Unfortunately they are no longer with us: Anja was killed in Afghanistan earlier this year; Anthony died while covering the war in Syria in February 2012. Their death is a huge loss to journalism. !1 ! Table of Contents Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................1 Table of Contents ...............................................................................................................2 Chapter 1: Introduction ....................................................................................................1 Chapter 2: Summer of ‘82 ..............................................................................................40 Chapter 3: Competing Narratives – 1982-2000 ............................................................82 Chapter 4: “War on Terror” .........................................................................................125 Chapter 5: Summer of ’06 ............................................................................................159 Chapter 6: Conclusion ...................................................................................................196 Appendix A: Interviewee List .......................................................................................223 Appendix B: A History of The Associated Press .........................................................225 Appendix C: List of Internal AP Communications ....................................................233 Appendix D: Letter from Tel Aviv Bureau Chief Frank Crepeau to Sr. Editors .....235 Appendix E: Letter from Beirut News Editor Stephen Hindi to Senior Editors .....237 Appendix F: Some of the General Questions Posed to AP Interviewees ..................250 References .......................................................................................................................251 List of Cited AP Stories ................................................................................................254 ! "2 ! ! Abstract This thesis investigates how coverage of Western mainstream media, with a focus on The Associated Press news agency, changed over more than two decades by studying and comparing reporting of two Israeli wars on Lebanon: in 1982 and 2006. The two wars represent a microcosm of media coverage of the conflicts between the same two countries decades apart. Israel's effective use of public relations campaign to regain its reputation in the international mainstream media following its 1982 invasion of Lebanon and following the massacre of Palestinian refugees there, coupled with America’s post-9/11 “war on terror” narrative are at the center of the evolution of media coverage of the Middle East and conflicts there, including the 2006 war. This evolution in coverage of two wars is the main theme of this thesis is explored in detail; its effects are demonstrated throughout the chapters with academic evidence as well journalistic examples almost entirely through the coverage of the AP, one of the world’s largest international news organizations, whose enormous influence forms the narrative. The striking difference between AP’s coverage of the two Israeli wars on Lebanon reflects the extent of the evolution of media reporting, not least because the latter war was waged in the name of counter-terrorism. The research for the thesis is foreground in extensive scholarly work, using a hybrid of academic and journalistic research. I have borrowed from the works of several academics, as well as journalists. "3 Introduction Chapter 1: Introduction "If there were no coverage [...] there'd be no war. Yes, the newsmen and the media men around the world are actually the fighters, not the 1 ! soldiers any more." - Marshall McLuhan “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy 2 ! of the State.”- Paul Joseph Goebbels ! Mainstream Western media coverage of the Middle East has evolved vastly over the more than 30 years that I have been a reporter - gradually in the first couple of decades, but more dramatically since 9/11, when Cold War ideology was all but replaced by that of “war on terror.” Nowhere has this transformation been as marked as in the coverage of Middle East conflicts. In 1982, following Israel`s invasion of Lebanon, reporters could walk into Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut in the aftermath of a massacre and talk to survivors, do their own investigation, and write very much what they saw and heard. The story overwhelmingly reflected what had happened. Nowadays, when reporters come back from a story, they are not always expected to write what they saw and heard, but are often told by editors: “Here's what we need from you…” This thesis investigates how Western mainstream media coverage, with a focus on The Associated Press news agency, changed over more than two decades by studying and comparing the reporting of two Israeli wars on Lebanon: in 1982 and !1 Introduction 2006. The two wars represent a microcosm of coverage of the conflicts between the same two countries decades apart. Israel's effective public relations campaign to regain its reputation in the international mainstream media following its 1982 invasion of Lebanon and the massacre of Palestinian refugees there, coupled with America’s post-9/11 “war on terror” narrative are at the center of the evolution of coverage of conflicts in the Middle East during the period under study. “Since 9/11, Israel's PR strategy has been to frame all Palestinian actions by, violent or not, terrorism. To the extent that they can do that, they've repackaged an illegal military occupation as part of America's war on terrorism,” says Robert Jensen, a journalism professor at the University of Texas in Austin.3 The evolution in coverage of the two wars is explored in detail; its effects are examined throughout the following chapters with academic evidence as well as journalistic examples almost entirely through the coverage of the AP, one of the world’s largest international news organizations that employs 2,500 journalists in more than 100 countries. The media around the world depend on the AP (as on other wire services such as Reuters and Agence France Presse) for news, allowing the news agency a vital role in framing the narrative and what it considers worthy or unworthy news. This thesis demonstrates that during the 1982 Israeli invasion, the AP relied mostly on field reporting and facts on the ground. Reporters’ knowledge of the area - history and geopolitics - allowed them to exercise a fair amount of skepticism in their work, and they were willing to risk their lives in order to get their teeth into the story. !2 Introduction In contrast, the coverage in 2006 unambiguously leaned toward the Israeli side that claimed it was fighting a “terrorist” organization - Hezbollah. Israel’s military and official position was the main narrative, sometime even not giving enough space or credence to its own journalists whose reports may have challenged that narrative, leaving some reporters to wonder if it was worth risking their lives. Human interest stories that reflected the plight