En intressant artikel om hur Neheda Barakat försöker hjälpa palestinska journalister att bli bättre i sitt yrke.
Getting past the black and white
Citat från artikeln i Jerusalem Post:
"Her contract with Search for Common Ground was to assist an independent Palestinian News Service which had already been established to get its act together so that it could operate in a more professional manner in accordance with international journalistic standards. She worked mainly in Bethlehem and Ramallah while commuting from Jerusalem.
A passionate professional committed to the ground rules of journalism, she was dismayed with what she found in the Palestinian independent news network.
"The resources aren't there and the skills aren't there," she said over coffee in Jerusalem.
Always ready to tackle a challenge, Barakat, recalling that she had been taught by some of the great teachers in Australian journalism, decided to try to pass on what she had learned to the Palestinian journalists.
The first thing she discovered was that they knew almost nothing about investigative journalism. "They don't know anything about reporting beyond one and a half minutes of news," she says. "They were doing stuff beyond their capability."
Part of the project was capacity building, which meant taking on interns. Although they were very keen, they had no skills, she says, adding: "All they'd been taught was cut and paste."
Moreover, none of them spoke Hebrew; nor, indeed, did the journalists with whom Barakat was working. "I don't know how they could be objective if they didn't know the language of the other side."
As a wordsmith, it also bothered her that the terms used by the Palestinian journalists were biased and non-objective. She took exception to their definition of martyrs, and told them bluntly that the people they considered to be martyrs were suicide bombers and that this was how they were perceived by the Israelis. She also balked at the Palestinians' use of the word "apartheid."
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