FINALLY – AT 9:12 A.M. ET:  We are finally getting videotape out of Gaza that was strangely absent during the fighting.  But none of it is coming from American news organizations.  People are asking why we never saw any Hamas fights, why we never saw any Hamas rocket firing, why we never saw any pictures of Hamas casualties, only pictures of casualties among women and children.

Gee, you don't think there's a journalistic problem, do you?

Now a brave journalist from India comes out with documentation that Hamas fires its rockets right near civilian facilities.  From the Jerusalem Post, with a video: 

India’s NDTV filmed what The New York Times said it could not: footage of Hamas fighters in Gaza assembling and then launching a rocket aimed at Israel, from a residential area.

The launch took place in a dense, urban environment in Gaza with plenty of civilians around — and one intrepid Indian reporter.

The report on India’s NDTV by Sreenivasan Jain shows a Palestinian rocket crew using a tent as cover to set up a rocket launch, then launching the rocket. The footage was recorded on Monday.

Sreenivasan notes that the Hamas rocket launch takes places “meters away from our hotel” and “bang in the middle of what is a residential area full of hotels and apartment buildings.”

He then heads to the spot from where the rocket was fired but is “asked by people not to go to the location, so we’re just pulling back…”

The French TV station, France 24, also showed a rocket launching pad, located about 100 yards from a United Nations building flying the blue UN flag. A hotel housing journalists covering the Gaza conflict was located about 50 yards from the launching pad, according to correspondent Gallagher Fenwick, reporting from Gaza City.

The French video was released Tuesday.

“This type of setup is at the heart of the debate,” Gallagher reported. “The Israeli army has repeatedly accused the Palestinian militants of shooting from within densely populated civilian areas and that is precisely the type of setup we have here.”

Fenwick and members of his crew were forced to take cover when reporting from the site last week when a rocket was unexpectedly launched.

COMMENT:  Our networks have some 'splainin'  to do.  And they'd better do it fast.  If they were restricted in their reporting by Hamas intimidation, viewers have to be told.

Look, the problem is difficult, and journalists are familiar with it.  When I was on The Times, Abe Rosenthal used to say that the goal of a foreign correspondent was to get the news out and not get thrown out.  So our networks might be doing a delicate balancing act in Gaza.

On the other hand, I'm afraid we're also used to pure left-wing bias.  We saw it in Vietnam.  We certainly saw it in Iraq, when a minor scandal at an American prison was turned into the greatest atrocity in the history of the world (even though no prisoner was killed or hurt, only humiliated).  Organizations like CNN are losing their credibility, and have lost their ratings, in part because they have a biased image. 

August 6, 2014