The editor of the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz spoke to Kansas University students Monday night about journalism and the state of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
With Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat hospitalized, and on the same day a 16-year-old Palestinian suicide bomber killed three people in Tel Aviv, Elli Wohlgelernter's speech, "The Media, the Middle East, and the Message," had a timely significance.
An audience of about 30 people, mostly students, listened to Wohlgelernter explain the challenges of being a journalist in the Middle East. After his talk in the Kansas Union's Alderson Auditorium, he took questions from the audience.
Wohlgelernter said he didn't think the media in the United States was generally biased.
"What you more often have in America is a case of ignorance and laziness," he said. "And that by itself does contribute to seeming bias and what appears to be a slant toward a story."
Wohlgelernter used real newspaper headlines to illustrate the difficulty of accurate reporting.
"Not all facts are true," he said, emphasizing that without context, facts can present a distorted picture. Wohlgelernter cited the example of a photo of a lone Palestinian boy throwing rocks at an Israeli tank. Israel appears as Goliath and the boy as David in such pictures, Wohlgelernter said.
The photo may be truthful, but when paired with a story on the Israeli parliament condemning Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's speech, the picture changed the tone of a story, Wohlgelernter said.
Adam Shapiro, a KU sophomore majoring in political science and International Studies, said Wohlgelernter's talk was informative.
"It was nice to hear the opinion of an Israeli writer," Shapiro said. "We usually only hear Americans' opinions on the Middle East."
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