GAZA (Reuters) – Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said on Monday the Islamist militant group Hamas would never recognize Israel.
Haniyeh, a Hamas leader, said in an interview from Gaza with Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah’s al-Manar television: “Hamas will never recognize the legitimacy of the occupation (Israel).”
“Hamas will never show flexibility over the issue of recognizing the legitimacy of the occupation,” he added.
Does Ismail Haniyeh have the power to speak in parentheses? Did he do a little sign with his hands and say “Israel” after he said “never recognize the legitimacy of the occupation”?
I am quite willing to believe that Haniyeh would make contradictory statements about his position on Israel, but the above quote hardly seems to be as conclusive as the story’s headline and lead.
Wow. Just, wow. That’s some incredibly ballsy editing on a very sensitive issue.
He repeated “the occupation” when he could have said “Israel.” Consider me a skeptic as well.
Reuters has issues. Its said Khaled Mashal is pretty unhappy with his recent Reuters interview. He seems to think that saying Israel is a physical reality is not the same as confering recognition. The Lebanon photo issue from the summer suggested a deterioration in editorial control. These recent stories seem to indicate that the problem is company wide.
I’ve heard the same, although more about pro-Israeli leanings especially by top editors in London.
The Lebanon photo issue seemed blown out of proportion, since the photographer did not really gain any advantage from his doctoring except make his pics look more striking. I have been in a Reuters bureau looking at photographers work and there is quite a lot of beautifying of pictures — changing levels, brightness, cropping, rotating etc. The guy in Lebanon went further than this of course, but I don’t see what political advantage he derived from it.
The Lebanon photo deal seemed to be more about deficient oversight processes and a lack of training than anything else. All photographers manipulate images but I’ve been told Reuters, and the other agencies, are supposed to have clear guidelines about what is aceptable and what isnt. The guy in Lebanon obviously had not been properly drilled, and then no one caught it when he messed up.
On the text side, Reuters has lost a lot of its middle ranking regional people over the past three years. It’s pretty common to hear Reuters people now complain about money and bad management when about 10 years ago you only heard AP and AFP people doing that.
I don’t know about pro-Israel bias in London but if it’s true that would mean new editorial people came on the scene or that individual journalists have less say about what happens to their stories. I wonder if anyone has heard that this is the case.
It’s going to be interesting to see what happens to Reuters Middle East coverage in the near future.