Abstract
James Rodgers begins Headlines from the Holy Land with a straightforward declaration: ‘The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is the ultimate challenge for an international correspondent’ (p. 1). He presents a solid case in support of this, relying on his own experiences covering the region and his interviews with diplomats and fellow journalists.
Rodgers spent two decades as a journalist, mostly for the BBC, reporting primarily from Moscow, Brussels, and Gaza. He now teaches journalism at City University of London and one of the many strengths of this book is Rodgers’s ability to describe the complexities of journalism. Covering Israeli–Palestinian affairs requires more than merely observing events and taking notes. News consumers desperately need context, and if journalists are to provide that, they must understand the constituent elements of the conflict: history, religion, the global political backdrop, and more.
There are plenty of prolonged conflicts in the world, but the struggle between Israelis and Palestinians has unique features, many rooted in several thousand years of history. Rodgers notes that ‘different narratives of the past serve to divide people in the present … People living surrounded by conflict, or the threat of it, feel the consequences of their history in a way that those living in the more tranquil West do not’ (p. 116). As Daniel Kurtzer, former US Ambassador to Israel told Rodgers, ‘There’s some primordial attachment that people have, especially in that region, to the olive tree, to the brook, to the wadi – which diplomacy has not yet figured out how to integrate’ (p. 96).
Religion provides yet another test for news professionals. In July 1946, before the birth of the modern state of Israel, Jewish terrorists led by future Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin blew up part of Jerusalem’s King David Hotel, which served as the British mandate headquarters. Rodgers notes that in the aftermath of this attack, there was no tiptoeing around religious sensitivities. British officials did not separate ‘terrorists’ and ‘Jewish’ the way governments today make a distinction between ‘terrorists’ and ‘Muslims’ (p. 18). British news reports were similarly explicit in headlining the religion of the attackers.
Handling religious matters remains a challenge today. One of Rodgers’s journalist colleagues reflected on the difficulties of assigning the proper role to religion in his coverage, saying that there is among journalists a ‘natural tendency to see everything in political terms. On the other hand, I’m also slightly resistant to the idea that everything can be explained in terms of religion’ (p. 177).
Journalists covering this region know they cannot avoid allegations of bias. One of Rodgers’s colleagues noted that ‘we’re very closely scrutinized in terms of what we write and accused by both sides of favouring the other side’ (p. 73). Part of this is a function of the evolution of Israel. During the first decades after World War Two, Israel was often portrayed as David taking on the Goliaths of the Arab world. But then, noted one of Rodgers’s interviewees, ‘all of a sudden it turns on a dime and David becomes Goliath’ (p. 77).
Whoever is in the roles of David and Goliath at the moment, journalists know that each will be hypersensitive about semantics. Both sides have global constituencies, and when criticism of the news media comes, it arrives as a deluge. One reporter told Rodgers: You’ve got to be so careful about the terminology you use. Not because you should be worried about offending people, because you’re always going to offend somebody. It’s more about trying to find as accurate a way through it as possible. (p. 106)
In his analysis, Rodgers wisely includes the role of a non-journalistic player, the diplomat. Those who make and implement foreign policy have a sometimes fraught reciprocal relationship with those who cover the news. In terms of what gets covered, one reporter based in Jerusalem told Rodgers, ‘It’s clear to me that the foreign editors of the media basically follow their foreign ministries’ outlook on international affairs’ (p. 87). For their part, diplomats need journalists. Ambassador Kurtzer cited ‘synergy’ when he told Rodgers, ‘As a diplomat you foster relationships with journalists not just to convey the views of your government, but also to learn what they know that you can’t or don’t know’ (p. 136).
Yet another topic Rodgers addresses is the evolving role of social media in covering Israeli–Palestinian issues. As with their relationship with diplomats, journalists find that social media use is a two-way street. One correspondent told Rodgers, ‘If you want to know what’s happening, it’s on social media first, before any other news outlet, so it’s essential to be monitoring Twitter all the time’ (p. 151). Rodgers agrees that social media have changed journalism. The change, he notes, has been both positive and negative: For better, in the case of availability of information, for worse in the sense that it shortened even further the time to consider the kind of complex issues which characterize the reporting of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict – a time which was already compressed by the advent a couple of decades earlier of 24-hour television news. (p. 154)
More broadly, Rodgers notes a journalist’s comment that ‘there’s something more democratic about social media which isn’t related to the traditional power structures within the media business’ (p. 161).
Despite the technological advances in news gathering and the financial constraints under which most news organizations operate, Rodgers insists that ‘being here physically is where journalism offers its great value’ (p. 189). Governments have become more adroit at managing news and contesting journalists’ independence, but the public would suffer greatly in the absence of knowledgeable reporters being on the scene of great events.
In 200 pages, James Rodgers covers an array of topics thoroughly and thoughtfully. Journalists, journalism students, and anyone else interested in how the world works will find great value in Headlines from the Holy Land.