Why the NUJ boycott of Israel is not completely unexpected: the journalism of Robert Fisk

My last entry concerned the NUJ decision to boycott Israel, a subject that has stirred some passionate debate.

The majority of journalists, and members of the NUJ, whose blogs I have seen disagree with the decision on a number of points including:

• The arbitrary decision to boycott Israel and not apply the same "principles" to other countries of which there are many that are more deserving of a boycott: China, Russia, Sudan, North Korea to name a few.

• The ineffectual nature of the resolution.

• The NUJ should concentrate on the key issues, supporting journalists and their concerns and not be deflected from achieving these aims.

• The democratic nature of the decision; voted by a small number of delegates and not holding a vote of its 40,000 members to truly reflect the union's beliefs on a point where many members would like a say.

Toby Harnden offers a brilliant critique of the vote in the context of recent events in the Israel and Lebanon. His experience of the region gives him a more balanced and objective view, something you would expect from any journalist worth their salt.

However, he states that the language used by the NUJ was, " tendentious and politically-loaded propaganda that would be rightly edited out of any news story written in a newspaper that had any pretensions of fairness."

That is true but there are newspapers such as The Independent that exactly use that type of language. One proponent is Independent journalist Robert Fisk. His coverage of the Israel Lebanon war was, to say it mildly, partisan. On October 28th 2006 he strongly suggested that Israel had used uranium based shells while the UN report was in still in progress. In fact in seemed at a matter of time before it was proven. Fisk's story made the front page of the Independent.

On the 8th November, not even a fortnight later, the UN concluded no uranium was used although I don't think the updated article made the lead somehow.

Robert Fisk is no stranger to controversy and even has his own term named after him; the term fisking, a point by point rebuttal that highlights factual errors and analysis in an article.

Robert Fisk's book on the middle eastern history had such factual errors as getting the birthplace of Jesus wrong to being a couple of years out on the date of the assassination of Anwar Sadat.

What am I trying to prove? If a mainstream daily such as The Independent, which purports to be well independent and fair, is so biased then it is hardly surprising that such boycotts seem perfectly reasonable to so many.