The Palestinians

If you have an interest in the Middle East, particularly in light of what has been happening this Summer, then spending the next half hour or so watching the following stories will be enlightening.
This five part news series first aired on KPIX-TV, San Francisco in 1987, 20 years after the 1967 Six Day War in the Middle East, 14 years after the Yom Kippur War ,and shortly before the first Intifada.

It’s purpose was a simple one. We set out to explore the Palestinian experience through the eyes of the Palestinians. Despite national and international coverage of the tensions in the Middle East, very little (some would say none) of the coverage, American in particular, centered on who the Palestinians were, where they lived, what they wanted and how their daily lives impacted the politics of the region. The stories were compiled over a period of a month traveling in the Middle East, one reporter and one photographer. Damascus, Cyprus, Jordon, Israel, Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon were all included in the journey. While there have been historical changes since 1987, i.e. Arafat and Sharon are dead, the PLO has morphed into something else, three generations of Palestinians have been born, the essential emotional and psychological truths are the same and therein lies the root cause of much of what still goes on in the area. One of the U.N. schools in these stories was the school recently bombed in this Summer’s conflict. There is no doubt that some of the children in the piece joined the early iterations of Hamas and are now likely dead.
But if you listen to what the people in these stories have to say then you’ll have a better understanding of why it’s so difficult to ‘solve’ the Middle Eastern ‘problem’.

For students of broadcast journalism this series and the hour documentary that grew out of it, are an interesting testament to the state of the business in the 1980s and early 1990s. Local television news departments set about to fill the gaps left by the network newscasts (cable was just beginning). International and national stories were brought home to local viewers by their local television news departments, often generating stories that served to spur network coverage. I encourage you to listen to language used in these reports and to the exchanges between the reporter and the anchors on the news set after each story. Clear, concise, focused copy with intelligent and genuine interaction between colleagues on the air. These two anchors by the way, Dave McElhatten and Wendy Tokuda were two of the best to ever ply their trade. Rick Lee was the photographer, Molly McCrea was the producer and Ray Santiago was the editor.

The series and the documentary played to great local and national acclaim–both positive and negative–winning awards and kudos and harsh criticism and brickbats. The fact that it’s still relevant today says something about the quality of the product and to the unfortunate circumstances that exist in the Middle East.