AMHERST — A University of Massachusetts professor was recently the subject of a research complaint about one of his documentaries, and although the university quickly dismissed the accusation, the professor says it was an attempt to chill his free speech.
The complaint against communication professor Sut Jhally was filed by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, or CAMERA — a Boston lobbying group that seeks to challenge criticism of Israel in the news media.
At issue was a single edit in the film “The Occupation of the American Mind: Israel’s Public Relations War in the United States,” a production of the Media Education Foundation in Northampton where Jhally is the executive director. The film “explores how the Israeli government, the U.S. government, and the pro-Israel lobby have joined forces, often with very different motives, to shape American media coverage of the conflict in Israel’s favor,” according to MEF’s website.
The documentary features clips from a 2012 piece on the show “60 Minutes,” in which reporter Bob Simon analyzes the exodus of Palestinian Christians from holy cities like Jerusalem and Bethlehem, and the role that Israel’s 50-year military occupation of the West Bank plays in that mass departure.
In the original “60 Minutes” clip, Simon discusses the Israeli-built barrier wall that separates Israel from the West Bank. Defenders of the wall say it is meant to provide security against terrorism, but Palestinians and their allies see it as an “apartheid wall” enforcing racial segregation.
The wall has faced international criticism, including overwhelming condemnation from the United Nations General Assembly and an International Court of Justice ruling that it is illegal under international law.
In Simon’s piece, he says the wall “completely surrounds Bethlehem,” but Jhally’s film does not include that portion of Simon’s segment. To CAMERA, that omission is important.
“In the part of the sentence that was spliced out, there was a factual error,” said Dexter Van Zile, a Christian media analyst at CAMERA and the person who filed the complaint with UMass.
Bethlehem is not surrounded on all four sides by the wall. Parts of the city, like a family’s home that Simon visited, are surrounded on three sides, and the city is under military occupation.
If the film’s audience had known that Jhally made that edit, Van Zile said, they would view the whole documentary in a different light. “Omissions like this are the hallmark of deceptive propaganda,” he said.
UMass officials, however, disagreed with Van Zile’s assertion. College of Social and Behavioral Sciences dean John Hird conducted the university’s preliminary review of the complaint. Hird wrote that Van Zile was right in stating that Jhally combined two of Simon’s quotes, which were roughly 40 seconds apart. But Hird said Van Zile’s allegation that the edit is a “distortion of the journalistic record” was unfounded.
“There is nothing in the MEF’s interpretation and rendering of the 60 Minutes broadcast that is deceptive, as it does not at all distort the segment’s overall meaning,” Hird’s review reads. “The 60 Minutes segment highlighted that the Palestinian Christians in Bethlehem are under the control of the government of Israel, and whether the wall ‘completely surrounds’ Bethlehem or not — an apparent error by Mr. Simon that Mr. Van Zile highlights — is immaterial to the larger point of the broadcast.”
Based on Hird’s review, Michael Malone, the university’s vice chancellor for research and engagement, determined that “there is insufficient substance to the allegation to warrant the convening of a Committee of Inquiry.”