A Jew In Gaza

Earlier this week, I participated in what was proving to be a very interesting thread on the Columbia Journalism School Facebook page.

A graduate of the school asked if anyone thought the press was biased toward Israel, in light of coverage of the current Palestinian/Israeli firefights and rioting.

There were many different opinions, and in the course of the discussion, I offered my own story of reporting from Gaza and the reaction of The PBS Newshour to my stories.

Sadly, and rather strangely, the thread, which was quite active and popular, vanished. No one would take responsibility for taking it down. No answer was given as to why it had been deleted.

My classmate, David Gregorio (CSJ ‘83), asked if I could re-post it. Instead, I am writing a bit of a longer version here. I hope you find it interesting.

I graduated from the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University in 1983, and by 1987, I was already a producer for CBS Sunday Morning, one of two flagship news programs on the network. Only four years out of J-school, and with absolutely no prior journalism training or experience, I was on a fast track to a very successful career as a network TV news producer.

It was in that year, however, that I quit my high paying and high profile job at CBS News. In an act of both arrogance and ignorance, I wanted to see if I could report TV news by myself, without all the encumbrances of traditional television news production — the camera person, the producer, the reporter and, needless to say, the network and the job.

So I bought myself a small, hand held video camcorder and went to live in a Palestinian refugee camp (Jabalya) in the Gaza Strip, moving in with a refugee family.

I was fortunate to be there when the First Intifada started, and I lived there for a month, shooting video every day — all on my own and apparently for myself.

I had been to Gaza before. In the late 1970s, like many New York Jews, I had gone to Israel. While there, I had made my way down to Dahab, in the Sinai, which was then under Israeli control. Dahab was a kind of hippie crash spot on the beach and one night, I got into a heated discussion with a Peace Corps volunteer who had come to Israel on R&R from Rwanda. We argued about Gaza.

As a New York Jewish teen, of course, I was a vehement defender of Israel.

“Your problem,” he said to me, “is that you have never been to Gaza. You should go.”

He was right, I thought. And so I did. I grabbed my backpack, headed for Ashkelon on the bus and hitch-hiked into Gaza. I stayed there for about a month. It was an eye opening experience, to say the least.

So when I decided to quit CBS and try and report news on my own, Gaza seemed a logical place to go. And it was. The Palestinians I met in Gaza were incredibly warm and welcoming and glad to tell me their stories, show me their homes and their frustration and anger. Enough has been written about Gaza, so I don’t have to repeat it here. In a nutshell, it is more like one giant prison camp, sealed off from Israel on one side and Egypt on the other. Life there is nothing short of brutal and terrible. It is no wonder that Hamas gets so much support. Trust me, if you were trapped there, you would feel the same.

In any event, I spent a month shooting stories about what life was like in Gaza. This is was not a political story, this was a humanitarian story, or stories, because there are a lot of them.

When I came back, to the US, without a job, without a salary — with nothing but my pile of tapes, I went to see Les Crystal, who was the Executive Producer of what was then called The MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour and is today the PBS Newshour.

Much to his credit, Mr. Crystal not only looked at my tapes, he bought two stories from me, for $50,000. I had access no one else could get, and had he sent a crew, a producer, the talent, the fixer, the drivers, not to mention the airfares, the hotels and the meals, it would have cost him 10x that. It was a bargain.

Just before the stories aired, Mr. MacNeil, the Editor In Chief of the show, and the co-host, called me into his office.

“I have seen your pieces,” he said. “Where is the other side of the story?”

I looked at him.

“What other side?” I asked.

“The Israeli side,” he said.

“There is no Israeli side to this story,” I told him. These were not political pieces, these were simply stories about basic human suffering. They were diaries of what life was like in Gaza.

“When you report on life in Soweto, (the sprawling slum outside of Johannesburg — these were still the days of Apartheid), do you offer the Apartheid perspective on the story?” I asked him. “When you report on life in the Soviet gulag, do you give Moscow equal time?”

He told me the two stories could only air if there was ‘balance’. To provide balance, they invited a rep from the Israeli consulate to come into the office, screen the pieces, and they then interviewed him, I did not, and his responses were cut into my pieces.

Now they were ‘balanced’.

I went on to do many other stories on my own for MacNeil/Lehrer and many others, from Cambodia to Uganda. No one ever asked me again for ‘balance’, no one ever asked me again for the ‘other perspective’ to be allowed to respond.

I can only tell my own personal story.

As Walter Cronkite used to say — “that’s the way it is”.