TV ANNOUNCER IN THE AL-DURA, THE-PALESTINIAN-BOY-MARTYR CASE, STARS IN DISHONEST REPORTER AWARDS
December 20th 2007 21:21
The French judge might be still out in the Mohammed al-Dura case, but the verdict of the ‘jury’ is in, the jury being the courtroom spectators and journalists who watched 18 minutes of footage of this famous incident and who seem to have universally declared the footage is basically inconclusive – no one can say who shot the boy.
This week HonestReporting web site, which considers its raison d’etre to correct what it regards as anti-Israel bias in the media, celebrated what it claims as a victory in this case by naming Charles Enderlin as the “Worst Film Editor” in its Dishonest Reporter Awards 2007.
“When the judge asked correspondent Charles Enderlin why only 18 minutes of footage were submitted, instead of an expected 27 minutes, the veteran reporter told the court that when he transferred the images to DVD for the court, he had to manipulate some footage that wasn't relevant for that day.
“Although a final ruling isn't due till the end of February, the development and the footage discredited the myths of Mohammed al-Dura.”
Reports from journalists who have seen the footage seem to conclude that it’s impossible to tell who shot who, or what happened during the incident, and that initial reports that the Israelis shot the boy are therefore incorrect.
HonestReporting’s Alain Benjamin, who saw the video in court, said, “We can definitely say that nobody can say who was shooting at who. Charles Enderlin said in court that the Palestinians started shooting first, but in the end, there's no way we can say what happened that day. You can't tell who did what. The assertion from Charles Enderlin, that the Israeli army killed the boy, is totally wrong. The least he could've said was that the boy was killed – but we don't know by who.”
MediaBlab has run several items on this story over the last six months, and to recap, Al Dura, a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, became an icon of the Palestinian uprising on September 30, 2000 when he was filmed crouched behind his father, then killed, during a gunfight in the Gaza strip at the beginning of the Second Intifada.
The footage of the incident originated with the French public television station, France 2.
The footage was filmed by the network’s Palestinian cameraman, Talal Abu Rahma. The voice-over accompanying the footage was provided by France 2’s Jerusalem bureau chief Charles Enderlin.
- From MediaBlab
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