I teach high school journalism, and one of the most important things to train students on is how to get more than one side of the story. Sometimes a second source can reveal the complexity of a story, smashing open what you even thought the story was about. This is a hard thing for high school kids, who might be writing a story about a student council election in which their own friends are running, or a controversy involving a beloved teacher.
It’s not just teenagers who have a hard time allowing themselves to be disabused of prior beliefs in pursuit of an accurate story. It’s also hard for adults to consider that their version of the story might not be the whole story.
This is why journalism still matters. We need to expose the multivalent truths of our complicated world.
But what happens when the truths we expose obscure a deeper truth? Both-sides reporting becomes two truths and a lie.
An excellent example of both-sides reporting came out this week in the Seattle Times: Gaza ceasefire news sends waves of emotion through Seattle communities. This article localizes the international conflict, humanizes both sides, and reveals the shared humanity of Seattle-area residents who are lacerated with grief and anxiety.
The story sources a local Israeli, Natalie Smith, who had family members taken hostage and murdered, as well as regional AJC director Regina Sassoon Friedland, local StandWithUs director Randy Kessler, and a Jewish Voice for Peace member, Kate Raphael. It also sources Bothell City Councilman Rami Al-Kabra, activists Yaz Kader and Sabrene Odeh, Samah Park Imtiaz, Ramzy Baroud, and Haneen Ahmad. It references letters written by Federation director Solly Kane and Hannah Katsman, the mother of Hayyim Katsman, who was murdered on October 7th. It starts off with neutral statements from politicians and wraps up with an uncontroversial quote about taking things “one step at a time.” It’s a model of community reporting.
What’s not mentioned? That Al-Kabra, Kader, and Odeh were all active in the uncommitted movement to pressure the Biden administration into a ceasefire and an end to Israeli aid. (That’s not incriminating, but it feels like an omission.)
Baroud, described in passing as a journalist, is the editor of The Palestine Chronicle, the paper that allegedly employed a Hamas operative who held Israeli Almog Meir Jan hostage in his family home.
Perhaps no conflict is subject to more “both sides” reporting than the Israeli-Arab conflict. The problem with both-sides reporting on this conflict is that it often allows subjects to shift the window of reality ever so slightly.
Not only has the local press skipped the Palestine Chronicle debacle, it has platformed the defendant as a legitimate source. “Baroud said he struggles, wondering whether he could have somehow done more to raise political awareness and stop the violence sooner,” the story reports. This is coming from a man who may have contributed to the violence.
Neither side of this conflict wants war. But what they do want can’t be won without a war. Israel needs Hamas to go away forever. No amount of negotiating and concessions and mini wars has worked. And supporters of Gaza have had a hard time articulating that they want any sort of peace with Israel. Because, in fact, most of them don’t.
Sabrene Odeh, in a KUOW piece from November 2023, laments that she and others have had to become “spokespeople for October 7.” She feels the pain of her people, and it’s hard not to feel her pain, too. Yet she states that what “from the river to the sea” really means is…the eradication of present-day Israel.
“When we say we want our land back from the river to the sea, what we’re saying is we want to have full governance of our human rights from the river to the sea,” she said. “We don’t want any outside influence or decision-making or interference by any occupying power.”
This is the subtext that reporters and readers alike miss. This is what we get for taking sources at face value.
Here’s another example that stands out. In the one-year anniversary of October 7th, KING 5 interviewed Rabbi Daniel Wiener, then the next day brought on local Muslim advocate Jeff Siddiqui. The newscaster introduces Siddiqui as having “a different perspective and vision for a peaceful future.”
Siddiqui, a grandfatherly Pakistani-American man in glasses and a suit, speaks quietly. Siddiqui admits he has not been in contact with anyone in Gaza and has no relatives there. The interviewer seems to struggle for a moment to land on a question that will get him talking. She throws him a line: What do you know of what’s going on there? He grabs on: It’s a genocide, paid for by America with “unlimited money,” and if it gets its way, Israel will go on flattening Lebanon and Iran.
The interviewer finds her footing and pushes back: What about the claim that Hamas is putting its own civilians in harm’s way? Siddiqui dismisses this. These are resistance fighters, he says, like the resistance fighters of World War II fighting the Germans, with no barracks, no bases. Just partisans fighting the good fight. If only they were given opportunities for peace, maybe we wouldn’t be here.
Now they are both warmed up. The interviewer puts him on the spot: Does Israel have a right to defend itself? What about the hostages? Siddiqui replies with the responses that win over Americans who don’t have the knowledge to understand the duplicity: Israel has a right to defend itself, sure, but this is an offensive. The hostages should be freed, but Israel is holding thousands of Palestinians captive. He’s referring, of course, to prisoners, many of whom are doing time for failed attacks. (Remember, Sinwar was a “captive” who was released in the Shalit deal.) It all just needs to stop, Siddiqui pleas.
But the only ones that need to stop are Israel and America. By setting up moral equivalencies and working with an alternative version of history in which the Arab world is blameless, advocates of Gaza can manipulate the mainstream press with heartbreaking narratives of suffering. Why are they killing us? We just want to live!
Yet when you read or listen between the lines, a clear agenda emerges: There can be no vision of peace for Israel unless Israel gives itself over to the Arab world.
We say that sunshine is the best disinfectant. But sunshine can also be blinding. The media’s attempt to tell the full story often results in perpetuating falsehoods.
The sad thing is that we do have a shared experience. Here we are, humans on the same spot on the planet, experiencing the same emotions of rage and sadness. We all do want an end to the fighting.
But in reality, the chasm between our communities just keeps widening. That is the story no one is telling.
In other news
An Office of Civil Rights Title VI complaint against the University of Washington found that the UW “generally declined to take responsive action even when it received reports stating that persons felt threatened, unsafe, and targeted based on their shared ancestry.”
The report addresses some 140 reported incidents of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. Despite the creation of task forces, the UW did not respond adequately at the time of reporting, the report finds.
The UW has entered an agreement with the Department of Education to revise its policies, implement a Title VI coordinator, train employees on Title VI, implement responsive actions to the task forces, and review past reports and take any outstanding remedial action.
According to Hillel UW director Amee Sher:
This resolution isn’t everything we were hoping for, but it does provide a path forward. We hope that with this agreement, we will start to see a meaningful culture shift at UW to counter antisemitism for all Jewish students and faculty.
We plan to work closely with the administration to ensure they uphold their commitments to the Jewish community. As part of this work, our new Director of Campus Affairs and External Relations, Sigal Bujman, is currently working to improve bias incident reporting and work with students and faculty to document each and every incident.
The task force report documents numerous instances of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel harassment that began to crescendo after October 7th.
Community Announcements
Check out the Seattle Jewish community calendar.
Candlelighting in Seattle is at 4:30 p.m. The parasha is Shemot.
Cholent subscriber and fellow Substacker Broadway Maven David Benkof will be coming to Seattle from Jerusalem to present “Barbara Streisand’s Musicals” at Limmud Seattle Sunday, February 16th.
The media no longer seems all that interested in presenting the truth. It's about the money and clicks, not honesty. Portraying the chosen people as evil villains plays to a pervasive, nascent antisemism.