Mediators Palestinian Handlers
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Perhaps the single most powerful and subterranean impact on the kind of information that becomes available to groups like the MSNM, the NGOs and Fact-Finding missions like the Goldstone, are the Palestinian handlers. Â Handlers (also fixers) are key players anywhere there is an asymmetric conflict: locals with indispensable local knowledge and connections, they provide interviews, places to visit, and, perhaps most importantly, protection from the various and numerous sources of hostility that might threaten any outsider in areas where no tradition of press freedom and protection of the right to dissent exist. The dependence of Western sources on these fixers, and the lack of attention from those so dependent on the possible political agendas of those fixers, constitute one of the most important, and largely unaddressed, problems facing honest journalism. |
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