MEDIA STUDIES
It was a dreadful picture — but
it spoke for humanity
STEPHEN GLOVER
Last Saturday a 12-year-old boy called Mohammed al-Durra was shot dead by Israeli forces in the Gaza strip. According to one account, the boy had left home to join a rock-throwing exercise and got caught in the cross-fire. Another account, seemingly more prevalent, has him returning home with his father after a visit to Gaza's used-car mar- ket. Either way, the pictures of his death or rather, the few seconds before his death — are among the most horrifying that we will ever see. The boy is crouched by a wall which is pock-marked with bullets. He is clutching his father and is either screaming or sobbing. His father has his right hand on his son's right arm, and he too has his mouth open and looks as desperate and hopeless as a man can look. Shortly afterwards his son was shot in the stomach and died.
The pictures arrived quite late in London on Saturday evening. Only later editions of the Observer and the Mail on Sunday carried the most affecting one — on the front page and inside respectively. The Sunday Times's story referred to the incident, though it got the location wrong, which may have been forgivable given the speed of events. As far as I could see, the other Sundays did not run the photograph. This could have been because they had no time. Another possible explanation is that some night editors thought the picture too harrowing, though this seems rather implausible. A more likely reason is that some of them did not want to use an image that inevitably discredited the Israeli forces who had shot the boy.
Monday morning brought a different problem. Technically it was an old picture that had already been used by at least two national newspapers and widely shown on television. Nevertheless, some newspapers decided to run it, rightly in my view. The Daily Mail carried a half-page colour ver- sion. The Mirror, Daily Star and Times used it, though much too small, I think. The Daily Telegraph presented it in slightly larger form, and in a leader described the photograph as `horrible'. The Independent carried the pic- ture across only two columns though this was accompanied by a characteristically anti- Israeli dispatch from Robert Fisk. Rather oddly, given its sentiments, the Guardian ran it the size of postage stamp. The Financial Times, Sun and Daily Express ignored it alto- gether, though the Express more than com- pensated the following day by covering the entire front page with a photograph of a two-year-old girl shot dead by Israeli troops near the West Bank town of Nablus.
In writing about this I should say that I regard myself as a friend of Israel. I have written pro-Israeli pieces. As far as the pre- sent clashes are concerned, I do not take sides. If the Israeli forces have been too aggressive, the Palestinian police have been at least equally at fault in fighting with the Palestinian rioters. That's where I stand.
We could argue, as our forefathers would have done, that it is always wrong to run pictures of dying people, but few of us would accept that now. This was a photo- graph of such heart-breaking intensity that any newspaper should want to run it promi- nently, and most readers, however appalled, would not wish it to be censored. What strikes me as odd about this case is that, with a few honourable exceptions, newspa- pers did not make more of it. As I say, tim- ing may have been a factor. But there is also, I believe, a tendency for some papers to hang back for fear of representing the Israeli army in a bad If Mohammed al-Durra had been a 12-year-old Jewish boy murdered by a Hamas terrorist bus bomb in the centre of Tel Aviv, we would have seen more of him on more front pages.
Would I argue in the same way if a 12- year-old boy — unlikely event — had been shot dead by British soldiers in Northern Ire- land? I hope so. The point is that the killing of Mohammed al-Durra took place. It may have been committed in error, and it was cer- tainly done in the fog of battle when young soldiers can lose their nerve. No doubt Pales- tinian extremists will now make a martyr of him for their own political ends. All that is true. But his death was still dreadful and still utterly unforgivable. Where was the rage? News editors and foreign editors and picture editors and editors should cast aside their ideological predilections or fear of causing offence, and let their humanity speak.
The other day in Bournemouth I ran into our old friend Andrew Neil, the Barclay brothers' chief honcho. We were in a scrum by a hotel bar, and I was bobbing along in one direction, and he in another. As we passed, he cried out, surprisingly affection- ately I thought, though it was admittedly late at night and the rum and blacks had flowed, `We haven't been sold yet, and we've just made a new bid for the Express.' The first part of this statement was pre- sumably a mild dig at me, though readers may recall that I did not suggest that the Barclay brothers were about to sell their newspapers, only that they had shelved any plans for expansion. So the second part of his statement was surprising, if true. Per- haps I will have to eat my hat. Perhaps the Barclay brothers really are about to acquire the Express, and install Andrew Neil. We shall see.
Meanwhile there has been a spirited response to my suggestion last week that Lord Hollick's business disappointments explained the desertion of New Labour by the Daily Express, of which he is the leading light. It is not denied that Lord Hollick is sick at heart as a result of losing his pre- cious television franchises, and that he blames the government for changing the rules which have led to this loss. Nor is it denied — how could it be? — that in recent weeks the Daily Express has been clobber- ing Tony Blair & co. on an almost daily basis. The objection is that it is not Lord Hollick who is master-minding the jihad but Rosie Boycott, the paper's editor. It is suggested that in his bereavement Lord Hollick can barely bring himself to think about the Express, let alone dictate its edi- torial line.
My intention was not to suggest that the paper's attacks on New Labour were insin- cere. I am sure they come from Ms Boy- cott's heart. So let me float a more com- plete theory about the Express's falling out with the government. Ms Boycott is disen- chanted with Mr Blair. She opens a front against him. She knows that Lord Hollick is, for rather different reasons, also fed up with the government, and she relishes the editorial freedom which the grieving and peripatetic tycoon is affording her. So she lets rip. But we come back to the same point. Lord Hollick is allowing her to attack the government. He is giving her a free rein. Would he have done so if he had not lost his franchises? I don't think so.
Imade a mistake last week when I said that the Sun gave Sir Richard Branson 'an enormous boost when Virgin Mobile was launched in March'. It certainly gave Virgin Mobile a boost then, but Mr Branson's mobile telephone company was actually launched in November 1999.
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