Israel hammers Norway's 'biased' Gaza coverage

Raphael Schultz, an experienced diplomat sent to clean up the mess after a sex scandal caused the early resignation of his predecessor, launched his attack in an open letter to the Norwegian press criticising the coverage of the anniversary of last year's Israeli attack on Gaza.

 

"A large selection of articles, leaders, opinion pieces etc were published last week in relation to operation Protective Edge starting," he wrote. "They all had a lack of professionally around them, just as in last year’s coverage. It was a totally one-sided coverage." 

 

The letter, titled "A lesson not learned", said that the Norwegian media had recognised in the aftermath of last year's conflict that its coverage had been biased.  

"Unluckily today, one year later, it looks as if the conclusion is forgotten and the lesson has been lost," he wrote. 

Arne Jensen, the Secretary General of Norwegian Editors' Association denied that the media had admitted to bias last year, saying that they had only recognised that the public should have been given more context and background.

"Israel can not expect that there be equal coverage, because the conflict is not equal," he told ABC Nyheter. "By that I mean that one party in this conflict is superior to the other." 

"The criticism is highly unfair," Jensen continued. "It is driven by the fact that the ambassador wants a different kind of coverage from what they received, which is fine in itself, but doesn't mean that the journalism is bad." 

In his letter Schultz complains that editors allowed journalists to use the word "murder", when it war people are not murdered but killed. 

Note: The ambassadors letter was originally  in English. The text in this article was translated back from a Norwegian text in ABC Nyheter's article.