Facts refute Iqbal Survé’s ‘fairness’ protestations

Allan Wolman

Consider the following: During the Gaza war last year, The Star continued to run a vicious campaign of vitriol that fanned the flames of anti-Semitism that was last witnessed in the 1930s in Germany. When a newspaper continues to print opinion pieces that do not present the full picture, the result is not only dishonest but borders on thought manipulation.

On August 18 last year The Star published a full-page op-ed by one Kim Sengupta. Is he a journalist of international repute? Is he someone whose opinion resonates a credible discourse? Or was he simply writing with a bias (or perhaps hatred)?

Just a week prior to that report, I sent the editor an article by Dennis Ross which appeared in The Washington Post. Ross, a counsellor at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, served as President Bill Clinton’s Middle East negotiator and was a special assistant to President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2011.

Surely with such credentials Ross’ piece would have warranted similar exposure as Sengupta’s?

This is where the dishonesty, bias and lack of integrity of The Star is exposed. Its editor simply ignored any veneer of an attempt at balance, ignoring that there is another narrative to that conflict, ignoring most importantly, the truth!

During the first week of October last year, The Star published a scathing attack on Israel by Suraya Dadoo, a member of an advocacy group. An opposing advocacy group requested the right of reply to that op-ed, but it fell on deaf ears.

Where is the balance? How many times does INL allow opinion space to The Media Review Network, a well-known anti-Israel advocacy group, but has never allowed the Israel Media Team the same consideration?

Again on October 14 last year, The Star featured a report on a donor conference for Gaza, emphasising the number of deaths “most of them civilians”, and again the following day a similar report about the reconstruction of Gaza. But it couldn’t resist underscoring the 2 100 Palestinians killed, “most of them civilians”.

Every report was accompanied by those subliminal photographs designed to stir up more hatred.

Dr Survé, please read Malice, Media bias and The Cape Times, by Mike Berger, then perhaps you may understand the criticism that you are trying to defend.

Rosebank, Johannesburg