From the Hannuka miracle of the oil to the virgin birth (to mention but those currently being celebrated), Israel has a reputation for marvels of mystical intervention stretching back thousands of years.
But miracles are not a thing of the past in the Holy Land; even in contemporary times we frequently witness the wonder of a journalist becoming an expert authority on the Middle East faster than you can say “half a portion of falafel with amba and don’t forget the chips”.
The Guardian’s Phoebe Greenwood is a classic case in point.
Having graduated in 2003 with a degree in English Literature, Greenwood began her career in journalism with an Australian celebrity gossip magazine before moving on to Grazia fashion magazine where, according to her own description, she was engaged in “writing and commissioning news and showbiz features, editing party pages”. A brief stint at the Daily Mail was followed by a post with a community advertising magazine before moving on to work as in-house journalist for Christian Aid. Eleven months later, Greenwood moved to another post within the NGO sector as she took on the role of media manager in Latin America, the Caribbean and the Middle East on behalf of Save the Children UK. She has also worked with Amnesty International.
During her time with Save the Children (March 2009 – December 2010) Greenwood’s concurrent activity as a freelance writer saw a shift from articles mostly about the popular music scene to world politics (with a heavy accent on the Arab-Israeli conflict) which have appeared in numerous outlets including Al-Jazeera, the Guardian, the Telegraph, the Sunday Times and the UN OCHA online magazine IRIN.
Since July 2011 she has been employed as a stringer – based in Jerusalem – for the Guardian/Observer and the Daily Telegraph newspapers.
As anyone who has ever worked in the charity sector is aware, one does not attract the donations necessary for financing either the organization’s activities or its employees’ salaries by telling the public that the situation in that particular field of operation is not too bad. A freelance journalist doubling up as a charity worker therefore clearly has a conflict of interests when reporting – supposedly objectively – about the situation in a foreign country in which he or she is also employed by a charity working in the field.
Several of Greenwood’s articles have relied heavily upon information and quotes from Save the Children UK’s country director in what it terms the OPT (Occupied Palestinian Territories) – Ms. Salam Kanaan – who clearly has a very politicized agenda easily discernible in her quoted statements, reports and interviews.
Greenwood’s rapidly acquired ‘understanding’ of the Middle East (a subject which she herself now defines as one of her ‘specialties’) is obviously influenced considerably by the organizational culture she absorbed whilst working for Save the Children UK. According to her self-composed LinkedIn profile, she continues to act as a consultant to that organization, as well as for Amnesty International and ACT Alliance.
Greenwood is a clear example of what we at CiF Watch have termed in the past a ‘journavist’: someone promoting a political agenda by means of what the public assumes to be objective reporting.
Her increasingly frequent articles on the pages of the Guardian’s Middle East section (cost-cutting in progress?) may initially appear to be little different from the often ideologically-motivated reports filed by Harriet Sherwood until one remembers that Greenwood’s lightning apprenticeship for her new trade as ‘Middle East Specialist’ was learned not at a foreign editor’s news desk, but at the knees of several of the more offensive anti-Israel charities at work in the region. That she claims to still work as a consultant with some of them indicates a continuing conflict of interests.
The fact that the Guardian is publishing supposedly serious reporting on the Middle East from a comparatively recently re-vamped former writer of pop music reviews and celebrity gossip with apparently no formal training in Middle East history or current affairs and whose ‘expertise’ on the subject was gained in a grand total of 22 months spent working on two rather large and far apart continents for a fairly notoriously biased charity is hardly likely to cause regular CiF Watch readers to set aside their Christmas pudding or Hannuka donut in shock.
The ‘miracle’ of Phoebe Greenwood’s meteoric transformation into a regular Guardian contributor with a self-described ‘specialty’ in the Middle East clearly has more to do with the fact that her ‘progressive’ one-sided approach dovetails very conveniently with the Guardian World View of the region rather than any boring, earthly factor such as knowledge, expertise or understanding.
Actually, it might well be a miracle if she wasn’t writing for the Guardian.
I was not present at Saturday’s student rally in Manchester against the British Government’s plans to sharply raise university tuition fees, but here are the facts that the British media seem to agree on:
Hawkeye
Omar2
WellofSense
Medusa
The Alchemist
Louise
Tosca
Maimon
Telling the Truth
Israelinurse
Adam Levick
Margie in Tel Aviv
Guest/Cross Post
Hadar Sela
The miracle of Guardian writer Phoebe Greenwood
December 26, 2011 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: Amnesty International, anti-Zionism, Antisemitism, Christian Aid, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, Delegitimization, Guardian, Phoebe Greenwood | by Israelinurse | 6 comments
From the Hannuka miracle of the oil to the virgin birth (to mention but those currently being celebrated), Israel has a reputation for marvels of mystical intervention stretching back thousands of years.
But miracles are not a thing of the past in the Holy Land; even in contemporary times we frequently witness the wonder of a journalist becoming an expert authority on the Middle East faster than you can say “half a portion of falafel with amba and don’t forget the chips”.
The Guardian’s Phoebe Greenwood is a classic case in point.
Having graduated in 2003 with a degree in English Literature, Greenwood began her career in journalism with an Australian celebrity gossip magazine before moving on to Grazia fashion magazine where, according to her own description, she was engaged in “writing and commissioning news and showbiz features, editing party pages”. A brief stint at the Daily Mail was followed by a post with a community advertising magazine before moving on to work as in-house journalist for Christian Aid. Eleven months later, Greenwood moved to another post within the NGO sector as she took on the role of media manager in Latin America, the Caribbean and the Middle East on behalf of Save the Children UK. She has also worked with Amnesty International.
During her time with Save the Children (March 2009 – December 2010) Greenwood’s concurrent activity as a freelance writer saw a shift from articles mostly about the popular music scene to world politics (with a heavy accent on the Arab-Israeli conflict) which have appeared in numerous outlets including Al-Jazeera, the Guardian, the Telegraph, the Sunday Times and the UN OCHA online magazine IRIN.
Since July 2011 she has been employed as a stringer – based in Jerusalem – for the Guardian/Observer and the Daily Telegraph newspapers.
As anyone who has ever worked in the charity sector is aware, one does not attract the donations necessary for financing either the organization’s activities or its employees’ salaries by telling the public that the situation in that particular field of operation is not too bad. A freelance journalist doubling up as a charity worker therefore clearly has a conflict of interests when reporting – supposedly objectively – about the situation in a foreign country in which he or she is also employed by a charity working in the field.
Several of Greenwood’s articles have relied heavily upon information and quotes from Save the Children UK’s country director in what it terms the OPT (Occupied Palestinian Territories) – Ms. Salam Kanaan – who clearly has a very politicized agenda easily discernible in her quoted statements, reports and interviews.
Greenwood’s rapidly acquired ‘understanding’ of the Middle East (a subject which she herself now defines as one of her ‘specialties’) is obviously influenced considerably by the organizational culture she absorbed whilst working for Save the Children UK. According to her self-composed LinkedIn profile, she continues to act as a consultant to that organization, as well as for Amnesty International and ACT Alliance.
Greenwood is a clear example of what we at CiF Watch have termed in the past a ‘journavist’: someone promoting a political agenda by means of what the public assumes to be objective reporting.
Her increasingly frequent articles on the pages of the Guardian’s Middle East section (cost-cutting in progress?) may initially appear to be little different from the often ideologically-motivated reports filed by Harriet Sherwood until one remembers that Greenwood’s lightning apprenticeship for her new trade as ‘Middle East Specialist’ was learned not at a foreign editor’s news desk, but at the knees of several of the more offensive anti-Israel charities at work in the region. That she claims to still work as a consultant with some of them indicates a continuing conflict of interests.
The fact that the Guardian is publishing supposedly serious reporting on the Middle East from a comparatively recently re-vamped former writer of pop music reviews and celebrity gossip with apparently no formal training in Middle East history or current affairs and whose ‘expertise’ on the subject was gained in a grand total of 22 months spent working on two rather large and far apart continents for a fairly notoriously biased charity is hardly likely to cause regular CiF Watch readers to set aside their Christmas pudding or Hannuka donut in shock.
The ‘miracle’ of Phoebe Greenwood’s meteoric transformation into a regular Guardian contributor with a self-described ‘specialty’ in the Middle East clearly has more to do with the fact that her ‘progressive’ one-sided approach dovetails very conveniently with the Guardian World View of the region rather than any boring, earthly factor such as knowledge, expertise or understanding.
Actually, it might well be a miracle if she wasn’t writing for the Guardian.
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