Position reporting - is this the end?

AS SOON as its jets take to the sky, the airwaves become clogged with pundits and politicians ready to condemn any action Israel takes. Some even go as far as to draw completely insensitive and insulting comparisons with the Holocaust, inferring that generals and ministers are on a level with the commandants and guards who sent many Israelis' ancestors to the gas chambers.

Such strident and misplaced commentary is always likely to muddy the waters for a news-consuming public, as any debate on the rights and wrongs of any Middle Eastern conflict becomes lost behind language semantics.

This time, however, a more even-handed approach to reporting on Israel's invasion - or incursion - into the Gaza Strip has emerged. It seems that for all his lame duckery and march into historical ignimony, departing US president George W Bush's remarks about Hamas, and its willingness to go to war with its far larger neighbour, have played on the minds of some journalists. They have gone on to investigate and highlight the numbers of missiles Hamas has fired at Israel over the last year (thousands, say some reports), how its troops do it (via remote tunnels that keeps them safe from counter-strikes, apparently), and where the leaders' hearts lie in relation to the peace process (go left at Pluto, travel for another 100 light years, and you're halfway there).

It has also emerged that, despite David Beckham's new year in Dubai being railroaded by ruler Sheikh Mohammed's cancellation of celebrations as a gesture of solidarity with Palistinians, most Arab countries would privately prefer that Hamas didn't hold any position of responsibility and - more importantly - the keys to any armouries.

Of course, if Hamas didn't, that would be unlikely to deter them. Since 1994, it's suicide bombers have killed an estimated 480 people, many of them non-combatants. Its approach to conflict has made it hard for opponents of Israel to defend the group's actions. Instead, the focus has switched to the suffering of the Palestinian people.

No one could pretend that life for ordinary Palestinian citizens is anything but harsh. Poverty levels area appalling, and Israel has contributed to that in no small way by closing borders and denying workers access to jobs and other economic opportunities. A lack of basic living amenities all contribute to the daily toil and drudgery of life in the Gaza Strip in particular, and also the West Bank. So when the Israelis roar in with their trademark tactics, it serves as a powerful refocus on what many Palestinians see as the cause of their problems.

Initially, there was some reporting upon the proximity of civilians to the action. For example, there were stories about a police station situated next to a school that was hit by an Israeli jet. However, this soon evaporated, presumably because no fighting force can choose where its enemy places its command structure. As Sky News put it: "In such cramped communities, it is impossible to isolate a target."

The Israelis would help themselves if they were to engage in charm offensives as frequently as military action. But that simply is not their way. I spent time in the country in 2002, when Israel faced its worst year for suicide bombers, with Hamas at the forefront of that campaign of terror. Crossing the country and speaking with many different people, I found only one person - a liberal journalist regarded as controversial within his own country - who was willing to concede that years of endless conflict had left the country's citizens brutalised, and innured to the consequences of long-term sectarian warfare upon Israel, the Middle East, and the world. Bunker mentality, or fortress syndrome hardly does it justice. This was on a national scale.

What the coverage of this conflict has shown is that it is possible to report upon it without feeling compelled to take a side. The cold truth is that nothing meaningful and long term is going to be won in this way, and that both parties would achieve far more by returning to the negotiating table. In the meantime, we'll have to make do with clear explanations as to why this conflict began and continues, and we seem to be getting them.

The rod that Haringey has made

WITH the verdicts delivered in the Shannon Matthews case yesterday, it soon became apparent that the fallout from the death of Baby P has stretched far beyond the confines of Haringey's borough, with the conduct of social services remaining very much a topical media issue.

It's true that there are some similarities. Both cases involve child neglect - although, thankfully, Shannon's not quite to the same degree as Baby P's. And once it became known that social services at the local authority for Dewsbury Moor had become involved - to the point of commissioning a report on Karen Matthews, which painted a poor picture of her parenting skills - before uninvolving itself, it was obvious that the same questions asked of Haringey would be directed at Kirklees.

It is very often the case that a single piece of journalism will set the tone of coverage for a subject that receives consierable media attention, and that appears to be the case with Panorama's excellently-researched, timely and very well-measured one-hour special on the Matthews case last night.

While interviewing key dramatis personae and unfolding key developments in the case, it also managed to ask the big questions that have swirled around this case, including the big one: what does this tell us about the Britain we live in today.

I have to confess to being braced for a parade of privileged and insulated media liberals, attempting to shift the personal responsibility away from Matthews, Donovan and their family's lifestyle and make it some sort of issue that the state should legislate for. But this didn't happen. This is primarily because, while there are families like the Matthews who have effectively disengaged from society, her neighbours behaved in a thoroughly-decent, community-minded way, working round the clock in helping the police and often giving to the family when they had nothing to give. That they didn't turn up on the family doorstep with burning torches once Shannon's fate became known distanced them further from the popular view of sink estate inhabitants.

The last thought on Panorama was given over to the officer in charge of the case. He described Karen Matthews as a woman who had lived her life with very little (if any) thought to her responsibilities, echoing the views given in the social services report of five years previously. Matthews, he said, was so bereft of these qualities that she had seriously expected his officers to pity her predicament. They rightly cold shouldered her, probably because she compared so poorly to her decent, hard-working neighbours.

In another echo, this time of John Major, he argued that we should attempt to understand her less and instead blame Matthews unreservedly for what she has done. When a terrible crime is committed - the Bulger murder being a good example here - it is understandable that a country will turn in on itself, examining its ways in an attempt to understand how monsters can be fostered, and it's right that the media should lead this debate. What has shocked people here is that it was Shannon's mother who was prepared to drug her daughter and have her kidnapped. Although not unprecedented, it is shocking, even if the level of the deception is just as remarkable.

Fortunately, this horrible episode hasn't ended in a fug of blame and calls for new law, because it is largely recognised that this case is unique. We have the Matthews' neighbours to thank for that.

Have legs, will run (and run and run)

MAKING sure that your bad news becomes tomorrow's chip wrappers is a challenging task for any organisation considered to have responsibilities towards the public.

If they can't front up to everything on day one, those bodies run the risk of attracting the interest of more and more reporters, whose default belief will be that there is something to hide if the full story can't be told as soon as they come calling. Maybe we're all like that.

In the last couple of months, three such organisations have fallen prey to the increasingly vociferous coverage that surely follows these situations: the BBC, the Government, and the London Borough of Haringey, and all for different reasons.

Perceived prevaricating over the fate of top star Jonathan Ross presumably did for the Beeb. Those that work outside the Corporation often find plenty of dark things to say about its workings. The real issue here, I believe, was the size of Ross' salary (reported to be as much as £18 million over the contract's lifetime, to 2010), and outrage about it still present among the British media.

There is an argument (which we'll go into more detail in later on) that such high remuneration confers certain standards of conduct upon its recipients (although why Ross' talents are sp highly prized, bidding war with ITV or not, is another debate altogether). But, almost perversely, his reputation for going a bit too far - and, more importantly, its importance in drawing audiences - is what Aunty values so highly. While there would have no doubt been some severence penalities to deal with (how do these well paid people get such good contracts?), the real issue for the BBC was whether to dispense with its star attraction. This was made all the worse by the voluntary departure of Russell Brand, the edgy face of the Corporation.

While the story would have carried on regardless, the role or absence of Home Secretary Jacqui Smith in arrest of Conservative frontbencher Damien Green has only prolonged its prominence. For her to claim that she knew nothing of the affair prior to the raid is, frankly, ludicrous. It is the very definition of gone political. How many civil servants, particularly in this era of blame culture, are going to miss the opportunity to pass this on up, particularly when you remember that it was her ministry that instigated the investigation into leaks at the Home Office?

Matters have become considerably bleaker for Ms Smith today, after ex-Labour Home Secretary John Reid said he would have expected to have been informed before an MP was arrested. However, despite protestations from Ms Smith's colleagues, they can continue to expect this to remain in the spotlight until something like satisfactory answers are given.

The last instance is by far the worst, not least because it grew out of the short life and horrible death of Baby P. Most people would have expected members of the responsible executive to have done the honourable thing and fallen on their swords. However, like some Aussie batsman waiting unsportingly for the umpire to call LBW, Haringey bosses slammed down the shutters and awaited the report to Children's Secretary Ed Balls before being dragged kicking and screaming from office. Or, in other words, being suspended on full pay.

Ah yes, the pay - believed to be around £120,000 for social services supremo Sharon Shoesmith. There are, of course, only two things that we are remunerated for: experience and responsibility. Lord Laming wondered with caution at the end of his report into the death of Victoria Climbie five years ago that, for all of Haringey's strict adherence to process and protocol, was it making the welfare of the child the priority?

Shoesmith's reaction to the jailing of Baby P's killers was to call a press conference, wave away any calls for an apology from the authority and then proceed to break out graphs that proved how effective Haringey social services is. It amounted to a collosal misreading of public sentiment and how raw it was, compounded by the claim (I forget from where within the council ) that you can't stop evil people doing evil things. If that's the case, we may as well save ourselves a few bob and disband the police.

Such a blatant admission of failure should be enough by itself to claim a council chief's head. Regardless of how well Shoesmith's department does its job, the cold fact of the matter is that a child died on its watch. That in itself should have been enough to shame her and others in the chain of responsibility to do the decent thing and jump. It is a risk in their line of work, and if they were not prepared to recognise that risk and plan successfully for it, then they shouldn't have taken the pay packet.

Following the near-witch hunt that followed the Ross furore, it was heartening to see the press, led by The Sun, inform and shape public opinion on this matter. A lot of the mobs we see these days are simply over the top. But we were right to be angry, both at Baby P's killers and at the cowardice and ineptitude that gripped the authority that should have protected him. There are occasions when a mob will do the job just right.