July 03, 2004

Philo fights his corner

The Daily Mail's. Alex Brummer has a weekly slot in the Jewish Chronicle. which he uses to smear people, and sometimes whole peoples, he doesn't like. This means, actually, that the Daily Mail. has two Melanie Phillipss. Scary. Anyway, last weeks victim was Professor Greg Philo who Brummer accused of using "flawed methodology". This was refuted by Greg Philo in yesterday's JC thus:

ALEX BRUMMER (JC, June 25) accuses us of using "flawed methodology" in our study of news coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He notes that words such as "lynching" and "brutal murder" are appropriate for the deaths of two Israeli soldiers killed and eviscerated by a "mob" in Ramallah.

Yet it is apparently acceptable that the deaths of 13 Arabs killed two days before should not merit such a description.

He makes the familiar division of the partisan observer between "their" victims and "our" victims. We also showed that the deaths of the two Israeli soldiers received over five times as much coverage as those of the 13 Arabs.

He also says that in Jenin "almost as many Israeli troops perished as Palestinians." The UN report of August 1, 2002 gave the number of confirmed Palestinians deaths as 52, while the number of Israeli deaths was 23.

He also shamefully attacks Professor Avi Shlaim, accusing him of "propagating his ideas from the comfort of an Oxford college." Does he say this because he does not like the conclusions of this Israeli professor or because the dangers of working in the Daily Mail give Mr Brummer a special insight.

In point of fact, we also refer in our work to a very wide range of historical accounts and include the very extensive political and cultural debates which have existed on these issues within Israel. We did this in the hope that it would open a more constructive debate about the origins of this conflict and possible ways of resolving it.

(PROFESSOR) GREG PHILO
GLASGOW UNIVERSITY MEDIA GROUP
gkca28@udcf.gla.ac.uk


So Brummer's a liar and the JC was forced to admit it. Anything else in the news? Oh yeah, Brando died.

No comments:

Post a Comment