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No headline in May, when Israel bombed the Freedom Flotilla’s aid ship in international waters off the coast of Malta. No headline last week, when the World Food Programme identified 76,000 children in Gaza as acutely malnourished. No headline on Friday, as thousands of volunteers walk aid across North Africa in a bid to break the siege on Gaza. But when ‘Greta Thunberg’s ‘selfie yacht’ stunt is brought to an end’ (LBC), the Telegraph leads with ‘The Greta photo that exposes the hollowness of Leftie activism’.
It is not hard to understand why activism is “hollow” when it takes a stunt to make the media do its job.
These media are not as allergic to “self-serving PR” as they claim. The “selfie yacht” and “Instagram story” jibes come directly from Israel’s foreign ministry, who can also be credited with the Telegraph’s leading image of Greta Thunberg being “offered a sandwich and a bottle of water” (give me a stuntier stunt that spraying a boat with chemicals and then photographing yourself handing its crew sandwiches). “That awkward moment when the Israel Defence Forces spoil your Instagram story”, writes Stephen Daisley. But a news outlet that lets leaders write their own headlines is just Instagram with bylines.
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According to Daisley, this IDF-accredited picture is “perfect” because it “exposes the hollowness of Leftie activism”. Activism can be hollow, believe me. I grew cynical of celeb-fronted humanitarianism in my days distributing aid in despairing environments. But nothing makes my stomach pang like the hollowness of the coverage I have seen from these outlets, which give more airtime to male keyboard warriors bitching about women half their age than they do to plausible genocide.
Search ‘Gaza’ on The Telegraph. This month, the outlet has published 10 (11, if I’m generous) news reports about what is happening inside the warzone. Just one is about Israeli attacks. It tells us “Israel has admitted firing ‘near’ civilians in the vicinity of a Gazan aid centre”. This was the third fatal shooting of Palestinians by Israeli military in three days of aid distributions under the new militarised arrangement. On the first day, the Telegraph headline was “Israel denies shooting dead dozens of civilians at Gaza aid site”. Other than these contradictory press releases, there is not a single report given to the killing of 2,000 Gazans by Israeli attacks in the two weeks of June.
The Telegraph has, however, published sixteen opinion pieces regarding Gaza. opinions entirely unjustified by a balance of factual reporting to demonstrate their writers really know they’re talking about. Comically, 10% of The Telegraph’s total coverage of Gaza this month is about the bias of the BBC’s coverage of Gaza. Over a quarter is about Greta Thunberg.
Again: over a quarter of the Telegraph’s total Gaza coverage this month is about Greta Thunberg. This is absurd. The Telegraph is one of the oldest news outlets our proud nation has to offer. But it is trading in unearned opinion, not information, and I fear its readers are unaware.
On Monday, Piers Morgan interviewed the UN Special Rapporteur to the Occupied Palestinian Territories on TalkTV, and spent twenty minutes denigrating Thunberg. “All I can say for sure,” said Morgan, “is that this stunt has done absolutely zero to help any of the people in Gaza”.
Francesca Albanese replied: “I’m an international law expert and you call me on your program to talk about Greta Thunberg? You don’t want to talk to me about Gaza and the awful situation there? You just wanted to talk about what you think is a ‘stunt’?” The interview was over, and Albanese left in fury.
The next day, I asked Albanese to explain her anger during my own interview on Middle East Eye. “Poor Piers, he really got the worst of me!” she admitted. “This is as upset as you can ever see me.”
