‘DEATH AS A BLESSING’ & HUMAN FACTOR IN THE TV WORLD – 12.10.2023

Daily entry of the War & Humanity Special Project

Michael Rogatchi (C). Spiral of Faith. Oil on canvas. 2005.

There you have a father who is crying in agony over his murdered in the attack against kibbutz 8-years daughter and saying that he felt her death as a blessing. An absolute blessing’ – due to the simple truth of what would have been waiting for his child as a hostage of the savages. So this assault on humanity which this war has to be called, actually, brings people to an existence beyond nature. The CNN correspondent who took the interview with the grieving father, took it well, both professionally and human-like.

Looking at the horror of the terrorist attack against Israel in October 2023, I do not remember when a military assault had created so many devastating, unbearable images during such a short time, 5-6 days. Each of them shows incredible human suffering, both victims of the Hams terror and their families, friends and all those people who have their hearts in the right place.

Professionally, extreme situations are always a litmus test for any media. Both in their professionalism and their decency. There are no other criteria in journalism, actually. This I can state having many decades’ experience of it.

When humanity is switched on in covering unspeakable, a decency works as a parachute saving us from falling on the ground of the abyss of horror after seeing for example a photo of a completely burned down Jewish child just a few days ago, on the Shabbat and the festive end of Jewish High Holidays.

CNN, Fox, Deutsche Welle, SKY News most of the time, and many other leading world TV channels work well, both professionally and human-wise. BBC and MSNBC are unsurprisingly appalling, with a shame of funding of tax-payers money in the case of stubbornly and so very lowly ever-biased BBC, and professionally off any standard MSNBC.

And then, there are those channels in some unlucky countries which are using hybrid tactics covering their barely veiled anti-Israel die-hard stand. In Finland, while commercial MTV3 works decently, after initially losing grip of the situation, its main, tax-payers funded YLE is a total blunder, both professionally and humane-wise.

Utterly biased in the beginning of their coverage of the terrible crimes against humanity, being justly and promptly criticised, they have opted for this too cunning for their own good hybrid tactics: sending a very good, honest, human-champion correspondent Antti Kuronen to cover the unfold of the terrorist attacks on the Israeli side, while supplementing his brave and honest, but edited as a very short reports by all usual suspects, all of them explaining the poor palestinian cause and ever excusing them for anything, in a decades-continuing motion. Their choices for interviews are heavily biased too. In contrast with existing documentation of the massacre and crimes, this is simply sacrilege.

This tactic does not really outsmart no one in our age of a massive stream of news from anywhere. But the stand of Finland’s state TV on the worst crimes against humanity in the modern time is appalling and unpardonable. In the end, people would remember not the media’s coverage. They would remember the media’s stand. And it is a deep memory, for both humans and its opposite.