Media Mulling Not Bothering To Report Calls For ‘Restraint’ Anymore

New York, August 29 – Leading news organizations are considering ignoring the occurrence of international leaders calling on the parties to a conflict to avoid escalating it, industry analysts say, as those pronouncements are simply not newsworthy.

In the wake of numerous violent incidents in the Middle East recently, leaders such as UN Secretary-General Ban -Ki-Moon and US President Barack Obama initially responded to those events with a plea that the aggrieved party or parties exercise restraint. However, in not a single case has any party to those conflicts paid attention to those words of caution, leading editors and correspondents to the realization that they should probably not bother reporting when those admonitions are issued.

The question arose again this week when terrorists fired rockets into Israel from Lebanon, and when loyalist soldiers and Syrian rebels in the Syrian-controlled section of the Golan Heights fired artillery and tank shells into Israeli territory. Soon afterwards, the Al-Qaeda-linked rebels drove the Syrian army out of the Quneitra border crossing and took 43 UN peacekeepers hostage.

UN Secretary-General Ban immediately called on “all sides” to “show restraint” and called on the Al-Nusra Front to release the hostages, who are mostly from the Philippines. Predictably, says Washington Post Editor-in-Chief Bob Woodward, no one of consequence paid any attention to those statements, and that non-event has prompted the media to reconsider whether it should bother mentioning such pronouncements in the first place.

“We might as well report what some nanny from Park Slope, Brooklyn, has to say on the subject,” mused Woodward. “While clearly Ban feels he has to react somehow, we’re under no obligation to report a meaningless reaction from someone who probably won’t do anything about the situation anyway.”

The issue also achieved newsroom prominence in the initial confrontations that marked the beginning of Israel’s Operation Protective Edge last month. At the time, President Obama asked Israel and the Palestinians to “show restraint,” but restraint was not on the agenda for either side, rendering that plea meaningless.

White House Chief of Staff Jacob Lew welcomed the development, saying Mr. Obama was tired of having to posture. “The president prefers not to address things at the level of mere rhetoric, but to take practical steps to foment disaster,” he said.