I MEDIA MONITOR

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Apology To '60 Minutes,'
Attack On CNN

ARTHUR J. MAGIDA

Special to The Jewish News

C

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harges that the news
media are biased are
all too common, but
apologies for such accusa-
tions are all too rare.
One such rarity came last
week when Abraham Fox-
man, the Anti-Defamation
League's national director,
retracted his eight-month-
old criticism of a Dec. 2 seg-
ment on CBS-TV's "60
Minutes."
The segment had ques-
tioned the official Israeli ac-
count of police firing upon
Palestinians at the Temple
Mount in Jerusalem last Oc-
tober. Seventeen Palestin-
ians were killed in the inci-
dent. The government had
claimed the violence was in-
itiated by Palestinians
throwing rocks at Jews pray-
ing at the Western Wall at
the base of the Temple
Mount. Palestinians blamed
police for inciting the riot.

Four days after the broad-
cast, Mr. Foxman stated that
the segment's "unprofes-
sional techniques (had
demonstrated) clearly a bias
and prejudicial attitude
toward the incident."
But after an Israeli judge
determined that police began
the violence, Mr. Foxman told
"60 Minutes" producer Don
Hewitt that although he still
had "some problems" with
the segment's methodology,
he was "publicly apologiz-
ing" for his former criticism.
One network that will

Arthur J. Magida is senior
writer for the Baltimore Jew-
ish Times.

probably not get an apology
from a critic is CNN. In the
current Commentary, An-
drea Levin, national presi-
dent of CAMERA (Com-
mittee for Accuracy in Mid-
dle East Reporting in
America), attacks "The
Israeli Connection," which
was aired on CNN on April
20. The show purported to
examine the "extraordinary"
U.S.-Israeli relationship. But
according to Ms. Levin, it "in-
sidiously distorted" history
and portrayed Israel as "a na-
tion of morally corrupt oc-
cupiers."
Among her criticisms are
that the program:
• Omitted mentioning that
Jews have continuously liv-
ed in Israel for more than
3,000 years, that armies
from six Arab states attack-
ed Israel upon its creation in
1948, and that 1967's Six
Day War was prompted by
aggressive Arab military
moves.
• Alleged that Israel
agreed to the 1978 Camp
David accords only to reap a
$3 billion windfall from the
United States and that
Israel never delivered on its
"promise of progress" for Pa-
lestinians.
Ms. Levin states that
American funds — which
were loans, not grants
—helped defray the cost of
Israeli withdrawal from the
Sinai and that Palestinians
rejected the Camp David ac-
cords.
• Relied on anti-Israeli
"experts" to "indict Israel,"
including a former U.S. am-
bassador to Saudi Arabia
and ex-Sen. Charles Percy,
now a board member of the
American-Arab Affairs
Council.

Is Mike Wallace A
'Self-Hating Jew?'

Mike Wallace, the "60
Minutes" correspondent who
worked on the show's Dec. 2
segment that Abe Foxman
criticized, was called a "self-
hating Jew" by CBS Chief
Executive Larry Tisch, says
an excerpt in Esquire from
Ken Auletta's forthcoming
book, Three Blind Mice: How

the TV Networks Lost Their
Way.
The accusation came after
an Oct. 23, 1988, "60
Minutes" piece in which Mr.
Wallace noted that AIPAC
(the American-Israel Public
Affairs Committee) used
large sums of money to
punish political candidates

it deemed insufficiently pro-
Israel.
The profile infuriated Mr.
Tisch, writes Mr. Auletta.
Although the CBS News
staff feared that Mr. Tisch's
reaction "would lead to self-
censorship, Mike Wallace
did not share this concern."
After his report last
December on the Temple
Mount killings also "inflam-
ed many of Tisch's friends,"
writes Mr. Auletta, Mr.
Wallace told him that the
AIPAC incident had taught
the head of CBS "a fact of
life: Larry Tisch should not,
and will not, meddle with
news coverage on CBS."

