The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA), formerly the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, is an American nonprofit pro-Israel Zara Myers. The Name of the Game? Advocacy for Israel. Jewish Exponent. Philadelphia: November 25, 2004.To encourage effective advocacy on behalf of Israel, the Center for Israel and Overseas of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia will host a daylong program -- its inaugural advocacy event -- on Sunday, Dec. 5, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., at Hillel at the University of Pennsylvania, Steinhardt Hall, 215 S. 39th St. in Philadelphia. In the morning will be a panel featuring representatives from the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, all of which will discuss "Methodologies on How to Advocate for Israel...Dr. John Cohn, a local physician named Camera's "No. 1 Letter-Writer" in 2004, will serve as moderator of the panel. CAMERA Articles For Students. Apply Now to Be A CAMERA Student Representative—Earn a Free Trip to Israel and $1000! Posted on CAMERA website, September 25, 2007.CAMERA is looking for fifteen passionately committed undergraduate students with excellent communication skills who can organize pro-Israel events on campus. Students earn $1000 and a free exclusive trip to Israel in June by becoming a CAMERA Fellows Representative. Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. CAMERA: Fighting Distorted Media Coverage of Israel and the Middle East: An Interview with Andrea Levin. Posted on JCPA website, June 1, 2005.Their work undoubtedly has impact, but the non-Israel-related groups do not have the same activist focus. They produce studies and polls. It is for this reason that I think pro-Israeli media watching has an importance beyond the cause of Israel. Efforts that induce better adherence to ethical journalism in one subject area are positive generally in helping to strengthen American democracy, especially, again, as there are no enforceable codes of professional conduct in the media. – CAMERA Executive Director Andrea Levin. The New York Times. Mideast Turmoil: The News Outlets – Some U.S. Backers of Israel Boycott Dailies Over Mideast Coverage That They Deplore. Posted on NYTimes website, May 23, 2002.While the pro-Israeli Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, or Camera, studies newspapers for evidence of bias, Palestine Media Watch has been monitoring the coverage of newspapers like The Philadelphia Inquirer, The New York Times and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. media-monitoring, research, and membership organization. According to its website, CAMERA is "devoted to promoting accurate and balanced coverage of Israel and the Middle East." The group says it was founded in 1982 "to respond to The Washington Posts coverage of Israel's Lebanon incursion", and to respond to what it considers the media's "general anti-Israel bias".
CAMERA is known for its media monitoring and advocacy.Manfred Gerstenfeld and Ben Green. Watching the Pro-Israeli Media Watchers. Jewish Political Studies Review. 16:3-4 (Fall 2004). It releases reports to counter what it calls "frequently inaccurate and skewed characterizations of Israel and of events in the Middle East" that it believes may fuel anti-Israel and anti-Jewish prejudice. The group mobilizes protests against what it deems unfair media coverage by issuing full-page ads in newspapers,U.S. newspapers catching flak for Mideast war coverage: Media caught in the cross fire as both sides complain of biasHe said the network has been targeted by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, which ran a full-page New York Times ad calling NPR's coverage "false" and "skewed" against Israel. The advertisement also urged NPR's financial backers to stop supporting the network. organizing demonstrations, and encouraging sponsors to withhold funds.
CAMERA's critics have called it an "extreme Israel advocacy group" and said it is aligned with hawkish right-wing viewpoints, pays stipended fellows to write anti-Palestinian articles, and employs smear and intimidation tactics, routinely targeting media and journalists critical of Israel and pro-Palestinian activists on campuses.
History CAMERA has chapters in major U.S. cities and Israel, including New York City, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Miami, and in 1988 a Boston chapter and headquarters (founded and led by Andrea Levin); Charles Jacobs later became deputy director of the Boston chapter.
In 1991, Levin succeeded Winifred Meiselman as executive director of CAMERA. According to the organization's website, CAMERA's membership grew from 1,000 in 1991 to 55,000 in 2007. The director of CAMERA's Washington office is Eric Rozenman.
In 2002, The Jewish Daily Forward named CAMERA executive director and regular Jerusalem Post contributor Andrea Levin America's fifth most influential Jewish citizen, writing, "Media-monitoring was the great proxy war of the last year, and its general is Andrea Levin."
In 2008, CAMERA launched a campaign to alter Wikipedia articles to support the Israeli side of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The campaign suggested that pro-Israeli editors should pretend to be interested in other topics until elected as administrators. Once administrators, they were to misuse their administrative powers to suppress pro-Palestinian editors and support pro-Israel editors. Some members of this conspiracy were banned by Wikipedia administrators.
Structure, staff, and activities On its website, CAMERA calls itself "a media-monitoring, research and membership organization devoted to promoting accurate and balanced coverage of Israel and the Middle East" that "fosters rigorous reporting, while educating news consumers about Middle East issues and the role of the media." CAMERA also calls itself a "non-partisan organization" that "takes no position with regard to American or Israeli political issues or with regard to ultimate solutions to the Arab–Israeli conflict."See "About CAMERA" and "Our Mission" as featured on the official website. In 2008, CAMERA complained that the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (of which it is a member) did not consult it before disinviting Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin to an anti-Ahmadinejad rally. CAMERA has also criticized the Israeli non-governmental organization B'Tselem for some of its reporting on Israel.
When CAMERA perceives an inaccurate statement in the media, it says it gathers information, sends findings, and asks for a printed or broadcast correction. CAMERA lists 46 news outlets it says have issued corrections based on its work.[Corrections. http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=10 ] The organization also publishes monographs about topics relating to the Arab-Israeli conflict. CAMERA reports it has over 65,000 paying members.
CAMERA runs a student-focused site containing specialized information available for countering misinformation. It also provides one-on-one assistance to students who encounter Middle East distortions in campus publications, flyers, rallies and classroom teaching. CAMERA has offered student representative positions that include compensation and training in Israel.
CAMERA-UK (formerly UK Media Watch and BBC Watch) is the UK division of CAMERA."About Us", camera-uk.org.
Criticism by CAMERA
Among the organizations and works that have been criticized by CAMERA are:
National Public Radio CAMERA's 2001 report "A Record of Bias: National Public Radio's Coverage of the Arab–Israeli Conflict: September 26 – November 26, 2000" asserted that National Public Radio's "coverage of the Arab–Israeli conflict has long been marred by a striking anti-Israel tilt, with severe bias, error and lack of balance commonplace." CAMERA supported a boycott of NPR, and demanded the firing of NPR's foreign editor, Loren Jenkins. CAMERA said that Jenkins had a long record of partisanship in favor of Palestinian views, and let his personal views tilt NPR's coverage. CAMERA also said Jenkins compared Israel to Nazi Germany in his writings and referred to it as a "colonizer".Andrea Levin. Just Say No to NPR. The Jerusalem Post, September 27, 2002.
NPR's then-Ombudsman, Jeffrey Dvorkin, said in a 2002 interview that CAMERA used selective citations and subjective definitions of what it considers pro-Palestinian bias in formulating its findings, and that he felt CAMERA's campaign was "a kind of McCarthyism, frankly, that bashes us and causes people to question our commitment to doing this story fairly. And it exacerbates the legitimate anxieties of many in the Jewish community about the survival of Israel."Camille T. Taiara. All bias considered: Bizarre attack on NPR as "anti-Israel" shows how fringe groups are pushing Mideast debate. San Francisco Bay Guardian. May 28, 2003. See also Jeffrey A. Dvorkin, "NPR's Middle East 'Problem,'" , NPR: Archive of Ombudsman Columns February 22, 2002, accessed July 21, 2006. [In June 2006 Dvorkin left the position of NPR Ombudsman to become the executive director of the Committee of Concerned Journalists (CCJ), an organization founded by Bill Kovach as part of the Project for Excellence in Journalism (CEJ), effective July 1, 2006; see Dvorkin's last column as NPR Ombudsman, "Dear Listeners: Thanks and Farewell,"
"Israel's Jewish Defamers" In October 2007, CAMERA organized a conference called "Israel's Jewish Defamers", in which a panel of discussants accused Jewish critics of Israel, as well as one of Israel's leading newspapers, Haaretz, of distortions and falsehoods about Israel. CAMERA director Andrea Levin said the Jewish critics—who included Richard Falk of Princeton University, writer Norman Finkelstein, New York Review of Books contributor Henry Siegman, former New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis, Trent University professor Michael Neumann, and Tikkun magazine publisher Michael Lerner—were guilty of "demonstrably false and baseless defaming of Israel, wildly distorted out-of-context accusations against Israel." Among the panelists were writer Cynthia Ozick and Harvard psychiatrist Kenneth Levin, who likened the Jewish critics to chronically abused children.
In response, Anthony Lewis told the New York Sun that the conference was "about a nonexistent phenomenon", noting that Jewish criticism of Israeli policies was not necessarily defamatory. Haaretzs editor-in-chief, David Landau, refused to comment on the conference, calling it "a matter of policy and principle" not to respond to CAMERA, which he called "McCarthyite". Tikkun editor Michael Lerner also rejected the notion that he was anti-Israel.Elliot Resnick. Conference Focuses On Israel's Jewish Defamers. Jewish Press, October 24, 2007.Gabrielle Birkner. Conference Focuses On Israel's Jewish Defamers. The New York Sun. October 19, 2007.Ben Harris. Media watchdog blasts 'Israel's Jewish defamers'; Michael Lerner, Ha'aretz editor reject charges. The Jewish Review, Vol. 50, No. 8, October 2007.
Quotation misattributed to Moshe Ya'alon
In 2009, CAMERA investigated the dissemination of a quotation widely misattributed to Moshe Ya'alon: "The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people". The quotation was attributed to a 2002 Haaretz interview, but Ya'alon never said it. CAMERA tracked publications that printed the quotation, such as The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, the Toronto Star, and Time, which later issued corrections.
The New York Timess coverage of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict In 2012, CAMERA released a monograph analyzing six months of The New York Times'''s coverage of Israel, calling it "a disproportionate, continuous, embedded indictment of Israel that dominates both news and commentary sections".
Reception