(Attack was on Wednesday 9th November 2006)
Wednesday’s dawn attack on the sleeping Palestinian family in Beit Hanoun by an Israeli artillery barrage (part of operation `Autumn Clouds`) was barely reported in the mainstream media. The focus was on the US mid-term elections and the resignation of defence secretary Rumsfeld.
Thursday 9th November 2006
Rupert Murdoch’s Sun had nothing - yes, it’s easy to rubbish the currant bun as a comic but remember it ranks number one in circulation in Britain. The Edinburgh Evening News had nothing. The Times had a piece on page 35 headlined `Israel braced for revenge attacks after dawn barrage kills family`.
The BBC1 early evening news gave it all of 10 seconds or about 0.6% of the bulletin, informing us that the attack was due to a `technical failure`. The ITN early evening news did not mention it all while devoting a sizeable 1 minute 40 second report or around 6% of the programme about endangered Orang-utans in Borneo. Channel Four news was little better giving only 30 seconds out of 50 minutes which included Ehud Olmert expressing his `regret`.
ITV’s TELETEXT did briefly mention the massacre on page 318 though this page was subdivided in to a further 7 pages. BBC’s `CEEFAX` had it on page 105.
Radio 4’s `World Tonight` did report that close to 400 Palestinians have been killed in the past 4 months against 3 Israelis in its 9-minute report. This was a much more substantial report than the TV news bulletins amounting to about 20% of the programme. However, about a third of this was given to an interview with Daniel Carmon, Israel’s chargé d'affaires at the United Nations. By contrast Riad Mansour, Palestinian observer to the United Nations, got about 1 minute.
Saturday 11th November
The Independent of Saturday 11th November did devote the first two pages of the paper to Gaza though bizarrely the leader article opined that `this is an opportunity for Mr Olmert to open up new avenues to peace talks. `
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