News Brief

(IsraelNN.com) The main stream media should take an interest in the media repression and torture being perpetrated by the Palestinian Authority (PA), writes PA journalist Khaled Abu Toameh in a June 24 article on the Hudson NY website which was reported by media watchdog Honest Reporting. Toameh wonders why there was no coverage of a recent incident in which an Al-Jazeera crew, investigating the death of an apparently tortured PA prisoner, was stopped at a PA checkpoint and had their videotape confiscated and erased.

“One can only imagine the international media's reaction had the TV crew been detained by Israeli security forces. Anti-Israel groups and individuals would have cited the incident as further proof of the ‘occupation's brutal measures’ against the freedom of the media. Yet foreign journalists and human rights activists working in Israel and the Palestinian territories either chose to ignore the story or never heard about it simply because it was lacking in an anti-Israel angle,” he writes. “One can also imagine how the media and human rights organizations would have reacted had a Palestinian died in Israeli prison after allegedly being tortured.”