Atlanta Journalists Discuss the Complexities of Reporting on the Israel-Hamas War – WABE

What is fair, credible and accurate reporting regarding the war between Israel and Hamas and the protests taking place across the country?

In every story, journalists are responsible for ensuring that their coverage of the ongoing war and crisis is fact-based, fair and balanced.

On Monday’s edition of “Closer Look,” host Rose Scott and several Atlanta journalists analyzed overall media coverage of the war and ongoing student protests. Guests also discussed the power of journalism and resources that can be used to ensure fairness and accuracy.

Guests include:

“Closer Look” Highlights from This Episode

Klibanoff: This is an extremely complicated historical conflict as well as an immediate one, and many journalists covering this topic locally need to get up to speed. There are a lot of terms that we need to be intentional about… There’s a lot of rhetoric that’s being thrown around by all sides of the issue. And a lot of times, as a journalist, you don’t completely understand that rhetoric. And so, if you repeat rhetoric that you don’t know the history of, you’re probably going to get in trouble.

Scott: Kelly, I want to ask you a question about your work. Obviously, you also work with NPR. What do you think of journalists referring to the genocide?

McBride: They are being investigated for genocide, but anyone who understands how genocides are determined knows that it takes years and massive investigations by international bodies to say declaratively that these are a genocide. So there are – and I don’t think it’s necessary to censor those who accuse Israel of genocide – obligations as a journalist to give Israel an opportunity to respond. RIGHT? Because Israel also has a point of view.

The second thing is being able to define the term “information consumers,” right? Because our stories don’t exist for sources who have opinions they want to share. Our stories exist to educate news consumers. This is why we fail these news consumers when we allow rhetoric without proper context.

Scott: Decaturish.com is very hyper-local, but have you reported on Israel and Hamas and all that or the student protests?

Whistle hunting: We’ve tried to be very thoughtful and deliberate about how we deal with this issue because it’s such a divisive issue and everyone has their opinion on it. One way we’ve handled this is by disabling all comments on these stories and limiting comments on Facebook. We’ve encouraged people to write letters to the editor because we think this conversation works best if everyone can take a deep breath, collect themselves, and think carefully about the issue before saying what they want to say. And it’s worked pretty well for us so far. I haven’t received much pushback against this strategy.

Scott: Alvelyn, you were here at WABE years ago. Now, as a former outside journalist, what did you notice in the reporting on all of this, and what caught your attention?

Sanders: It’s not just because this is an NPR story, but in October, shortly after the conflict began, “All Things Considered” host Ari Shapiro had a conversation with the imam Mohammed Herbert and Rabbi Susan Brouse.

They had an extraordinary conversation about how they were ministering to their congregations right after the October 7 massacre and hostage crisis in Israel. Both shared their perspectives on how they provide spiritual guidance. In that conversation, you could feel the weight of the fact that they had to minister to a particular congregation from their faith tradition, but also involve the other faith tradition of other people who were suffering, seeing both sides and sharing the pain that both sides were feeling. .

“All Things Considered” with Ari Shapiro released the mentioned episode on October 13, 2023.

Editor’s note: These questions and answers have been edited for clarity.