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In the summer of 2006, when the Israel Defense Force headed north to fight with the Hezbollah militia in southern Lebanon, all three networks found the conflict so newsworthy they dispatched anchors to the region. ABC's Charles Gibson traveled to Jerusalem; NBC's Brian Williams to Tel Aviv and Haifa; CBS' Bob Schieffer in New York shared anchoring chores with Lara Logan in Israel. Now, as 2009 starts, the IDF is heading south into the Gaza Strip to confront the militiamen of Hamas. The Gaza conflict was Story of the Day for the third straight weekday of the new year--but the networks did not even use it to lead off their newscasts, let alone send their anchors out of New York. The economy, specifically President-elect Barack Obama's legislative proposal for fiscal stimulus, was their unanimous choice as lead item. Meanwhile the Palestinian death toll in Gaza at Israeli hands this week neared 550, dozens of them civilian children.

None of the networks had correspondents file from inside the Gaza Strip as the IDF invaded from north and southeast. "It is very difficult to get an accurate impression of what Gaza is like. The Israeli government has banned foreign troops from going inside," NBC's Richard Engel explained. "Israeli officials openly say they are trying to control the images coming out of Gaza." So ABC's Simon McGregor-Wood relied on the eyewitness accounts of his Gazan producer Sammi Zyara, the roof of whose building was shot at by an IDF Apache helicopter. CBS had Richard Roth in Tel Aviv narrate videotape from the "overwhelmed" emergency room of Shifa Hospital, the same miserable conditions that ABC's Miguel Marqeuz monitored from Jerusalem last week.

Just because reporters were not on the ground inside the Gaza Strip, they were in no doubt about the abject state of its residents. NBC's Engel called it "a growing humanitarian crisis--a million people are with electricity, more than a million have no access to clean water." The IDF's "relentless air and artillery pounding has traumatized Gaza's population," asserted CBS' Mark Phillips, airing "desperate" pleas for food and water. NBC's Martin Fletcher illustrated the asymmetry of the carnage on the two sides by taking us to the Israeli township of Sderot, just one mile from the Gazan border. He waited safely in a bomb shelter with local firefighters as a single Hamas-fired rocket "crude but terrifying" zoomed overhead: "This time it fell in a field harmlessly. All is clear."

CBS' Phillips explained the outlines of a compromise between Gaza's Hamas government and Israel: "The Israelis want the missiles to stop and some guarantee that Hamas will not import more weapons. Hamas wants the blockade lifted." Such a deal is unlikely to be struck yet, an unidentified senior Israeli told NBC's Engel: "The military needs another ten days to finish the offensive." The IDF's goal "is simple, blunt and requires force--to break Hamas, bring it to its knees and force it to beg for a ceasefire." Meanwhile ABC's McGregor-Wood quoted Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar by name: "When you kill our children we are allowed to kill yours. When you bomb our mosques, we will destroy your synagogues."


Andrew Tyndall 1/7/09 3:39:34 pm

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