Let us now praise honest men. Khaled Abu Toameh is a Palestinian journalist who tries to tell the truth. Yossi Klein Halevi called him “the bravest journalist in Israel.”
He said journalists have been arrested and roughed up, and had their notes or videotapes confiscated. Some have lost their jobs and newspapers have been shut down. The Palestinian media remains under the complete control of the PA, which perceives reporters’ jobs as serving “as a mouthpiece” for the government, Abu Toameh said. The result is that “professional journalists who want to do their job honestly are forced to work for either the foreign media or the Israeli media.”
. . . Abu Toameh said there is a great deal of self-censorship practiced by Palestinian and foreign journalists covering the Mideast because of fear of reprisals for reporting on issues sensitive to the authorities. “We always worry about losing access because that is what we live on,” he said. “It’s a constant dilemma,” he added, noting that “you have to find the balance between telling the truth and being able to continue to report.” Abu Toameh has reported on issues that most of his colleagues have refused to explore, including corruption within the PA and summary arrests and executions it has carried out. . . .
But this is the most important graf in the entire article:
Abu Toameh said that since the suicide war began in September 2000, there has been more widespread coverage of fraud and autocratic rule within the PA, primarily by the foreign press. But prior to that, “the media made the mistake of ignoring what went on within the PA,” he said, “and maybe world attention could have brought change.”
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