- 02 Sep 2014 02:23
#14459482
A worthy article by Johnathan Cook on media bias regarding Israel & Middle-East stuff. Familiar, but more true now than ever;
So, when it comes ot the NYT, they don't just propogate for Israel, but many of the correspondents are themselves Jewish. With the presumption, perhaps, by being Jewish that would make their bias favourable to Israel and be reflected in their output, etc. And to henceforth denounce the media as giving too much news-coverage of the Israel/Palestine conflict is absurd. Those doing it want to.
I have noted in several previous articles the unusual, possibly unique, problem relating to media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The reporting corps is awash with “partisan reporters” – that is, Jews who have an ideological, social or familial connection and sympathy with one side, the Israeli side.
I have no objection to reporters having views, even strong ones, about this conflict, or any other issue in the news. I do myself. In fact, I believe journalists cannot be “objective”, as I have explained at length elsewhere. But in the case of Israel-Palestine, many reporters are being chosen precisely for their partisanship – and these reporters are being selected because they are partisan in one direction only. Just check how many Palestinian reporters (I don’t mean glorified fixers or undervalued stringers) report for the US media on the conflict.
Editors possibly justify their policy to themselves by assuming that Jewish reporters, especially ones with family in Israel, will improve their access to Israeli elites. Given the rampant chauvinism in Israel, this may be so. But it means only one side of the elite debate is being accessed – the Israeli one.
Illustrations of the partisan reporter’s mindset have been thrown up afresh in a debate about media responsibility during Israel’s attack on Gaza. A prime example is Matti Friedman, who worked for many years at the US news agency Associated Press. AP has a pretty terrible record in its coverage of the conflict, as well as documented examples of its local staff censoring stories that reflect badly on Israel.
Preposterously, Friedman asserts in his essay for the Tablet magazine that the media’s disproportionate interest in Israel-Palestine reflects an unhealthy and “hostile obsession with Jews”. In fact, it indicates something else entirely: the West’s long and unhealthy interest in supporting the Zionist movement’s dispossession of the Palestinian people in their homeland, and a deep sense by Western elites of their political and military investment in the Jewish state project.
The media’s obsession with Israel results both from Israel’s place at the heart of the West’s perceived strategic interests in the region and from a need to pander to influential domestic Jewish readerships. There is a reason, after all, why the New York Times is probably the most Israel-obsessed newspaper in the world outside Israel itself – and it has nothing to do with anti-Semitism.
So, when it comes ot the NYT, they don't just propogate for Israel, but many of the correspondents are themselves Jewish. With the presumption, perhaps, by being Jewish that would make their bias favourable to Israel and be reflected in their output, etc. And to henceforth denounce the media as giving too much news-coverage of the Israel/Palestine conflict is absurd. Those doing it want to.
"Why is it always the innocents who suffer most, when you high lords play your game of thrones?" Lord Varys, Game of Thrones.