The Peace FAQ:

Media Bias

Frequently Asked Questions:

Shouldn't Israel do its best to get good press?
Is there any reason to loathe the press?
I assume the BBC is not guilty of such bias - aren't they known for their journalistic integrity?
Does PBS have a consistent anti-Israel bias?
Why, in the media, do we sometimes see Israel refered to as "Tel Aviv", while, when other countries are refered to by a city, it is always their capitol?
If Israel were in fact being unfairly maligned why doesn't she fight back? Maybe the criticisms ARE valid.

Shouldn't Israel do its best to get good press?

The only time Israel gets sympathy is when tragedy strikes and innocent Israelis are murdered. But that is too high a price to pay for good press.
For now, Israel must continue to endure the negative reporting while maintaining its own high standard of morality, foregoing the world's tears of pity while awaiting the time when the Jewish nation will be appreciated, not for its suicidal sacrifices, but its determination to live.
- Gary Rosenblatt, editor and publisher of The Jewish Week in New York.
"even if we [Israel] sneeze, people might concede that it's legal but we would still be told it's provocative".
- David Levy, Israel's foreign minister, speaking to a group of Jewish journalists in New York
Preoccupied as it is with defence in the military sense, Israel sometimes appears too little concerned with defence in spheres where it is as legitimate and in the long run hardly less important.
- Jacques Givet, "The Anti-Zionist Complex"

Is there any reason to loathe the press?

LOATHING THE PRESS
Emanuel A. Winston
Middle East analyst & commentator
The Jewish people have good and plenty reasons to loathe and despise most of the press. While reporters and TV newspeople will accurately cover almost every news event with some reliability, when it comes to the Jewish State of Israel, all rules of ethical journalism cease. Even when they are forced to report on a bombing of Jews by Arabs, they manage to put a spin on the story that makes the Jews equally guilty for having been murdered. This horrific distortion called "spin" teaches the readers that Jews are always wrong and Arabs are always right - no matter how heinous the crime.
Do the Arabs lie to reporters and to the world at large? Indeed they do, as does the media. But, even prima facie evidence compiled in the libraries of the nations is ignored when the Press decides to take sides. For example, Jerusalem, the City united by King David as the capital of the Kingdom of Israel and where King Solomon built the Jewish First Temple is now claimed as the capital of a Palestinian people which did not exist before Israel became a State. It was not until 1967 that Yasir Arafat's propagandists saw the benefit of claiming Jerusalem as their "holy" capital.
The hostile Press accepted these oft-repeated lies simply because they are other pressure points against the Jews. PLO propaganda was always effective because, no matter how transparent the lie, the Press would solemnly print the lie - usually with grand embellishments. Jerusalem has been the capital of the Jewish for 3000 years. Even when conquerors evicted them, Jews have always prayed to return. Jerusalem is mentioned 667 times in the Bible but not once in the Koran.
In the seventh century Mohammed tried to recruit the Jews of Arabia to his new religion of Islam, for a time turning his direction of prayer toward Jerusalem. When the Jews refused to be converted, he turned his back on Jerusalem, directing Muslim prayer toward Mecca. Jerusalem became a despised place in Islam because it contained the very essence of Judaism. Arabs never made Jerusalem their capital when they had political control by virtue of war or conquest.
The Press, those seekers of truth and facts, ignored the explicitly documented history of Jerusalem and the Jewish people. Instead, with a certain amount of barely hidden lip-smacking satisfaction, they accepted the Big Lie of the Arab propagandists. For the Press to accept the Big Lie was not unusual. Who can forget the recruitment of a willing Press by Hitler's Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels? Every hate-laden word against the Jews was picked up by the German Press. Once their latent anti-Semitic attitudes, often taught by parents or the Church, were stoked up to a white hot heat, they assisted the Nazi Genocide on a scale that condemns humanity.
Yes, it was the Press who collaborated by printing the Goebbels' lies and the world Press who refused to print the truth about the gruesome atrocities in Europe's death camps - or claimed that it was all an exaggeration.
Once there were ethical journalists who honestly reported the news. And, except for some brilliant exceptions like A.M. Rosenthal, William Safire, Cal Thomas, Charles Krauthammer, and a few others, today's newspeople are entertainers making the news exaggerated theater. While this massaging of the story may be of little consequence in normal daily living, slanting the news is a matter of life and death for the Jews of Israel. The Press daily broadcasts the fiction that the Arab nations are the victims even after they attacked Israel in 6 major wars with the stated intention of finishing Hitler's Final Solution to his Jewish question.
Journalists, unlike doctors, lawyers, accountants, teachers, etc., don't pass any quality test for competence, honestly or ethics. If they can spin a story that will sell newspapers or get more advertisements for such TV stations as CNN, that's enough of a justification. However, underlying this desire to sensationalize a story well beyond the facts, is a visceral hatred of Jews. Do not be confused when you observe leftist Jewish journalists such as Tom Friedman, Joel Greenberg, Mike Wallace, etc., as the point men for hostile journalism against Israel. Perhaps not so strangely, the Bible explicitly tells us that the greatest enemies of the Jewish people will come from within.
As a relevant aside, take a look at the gaggle of leftist Jews who were chosen by former President Bush and Sec. of State Baker: Dennis Ross, Aaron Miller, Dan Kurtzer -later retained and expanded by President Clinton, along with Madeleine Albright, Martin Indyk, Sara Ehrman, Sandy Berger and others. Indeed, they were profiled as the best selection for finessing the Peace Process while, in fact, they act as Administration watchdogs for the American Jewish leadership.
The Washington Press Corps knew and understood their role in manipulating Jewish opinion, particularly when various Presidents found it necessary to appease Arab oil nations by betraying the safety of Israel. We have seen no articles which revealed that the role of leftist Jews around the Presidents was to betray their co-religionists. The Press knew, but asked no pointed questions, penned no articles - except for those castigating the Jews.
The Press can be a loathsome, slimy thing (witness their culpability in killing Princess Diana). The media were once viewed with respect, but no longer. They chose to crawl into the swamp of misleading yellow journalism. Compounding that, well-known journalists emulated by younger reporters, spun their venom on the printed page and TV, telling America why the Jews were always at fault. Of course, they couldn't use the words boiling in their stomach, like kike, sheeny, Jew bastard. Instead, they showed solemn diplomatic reserve and seeming objectivity by telling us how Arabs had suffered due to Jewish oppression. They, of course, ignored Arab proclamations made to this day that Israel must be destroyed. Daily, Arafat and his minions speak of marching across Israel to the Sea, making "all Israel the State of Palestine with Jerusalem as the capital of only Palestine - and anyone who doesn't like it can go drink Gaza sea water".
But, unlike other war criminals intent on Genocide, Arafat was accorded a princely scepter by the nations and the World Press. Even as he kissed the ringleader of his co-partner Hamas, the Press tried to create a moral equivalency. They couldn't NOT put such a brazen violation of the Oslo "Peace Process" on their front pages, but they would also blame Israel for building homes in Jerusalem, Israel's own capital. After all, suicide bombers aren't criminals, they're merely frustrated. So says the Press. And the Press forgets Arafat's continual use of Terrorism, basically low intensity warfare, saying: "What can the poor man do? He's trying his best".
Feel free to loathe, even hate the Press - for they are provocateurs when it come to defaming the Jewish people. They sow poison in the minds of people who will one day allow or participate in an attempt to carry on the work of Hitler and Eichmann. They incite and then gather their harvest of murderers in articles and close-up scenes of Jewish flesh being scrapped off of walls in the marketplace. The terrorists are not trying to kill the Peace; they are succeeding at killing Jews. The Press is aiding and abetting their murderous acts by minimizing their acts of terror and creating moral equivalency between building homes for Jews and blowing them up. The media have become de facto co-conspirators with the terrorists in organized murder. They often pose the children with stones to throw or American and Israeli flags to burn.
Clearly, the crime of incitement goes to the heart of the matter. Calling out Fire in crowded theater leading to a stampede, is the act of an irresponsible person who can be charged as a killer. So, too, does the media accept and encourage falsified, massaged, manipulated and biased stories about the Jewish nation of Israel. Even as such killer nations as Syria and Iran prepare for war with weapons of mass destruction, the Press manages to find Israel as the culprit. The reader soon gets the idea that, if Israel were not there, the Arabs would not buy missiles from North Korea and China. If Israel were not there, they would not purchase NBC (Nuclear, Biological and Chemical) technology from France, Russia, England - and America. Clearly, the Arabs would not resort to wars and terrorism if Israel were not present to upset their culture and planned hegemony over the Middle East with its oil resources - or so says the Press.
We often hear of the "feeding frenzy" of journalists, comparable to sharks shredding their victims. We saw Princess Diana pursued by photo sharks who are joined at the hip to other journalists in the media - despite their vociferous denials. Getting the story - spinning the story - getting paid big bucks for the story - these are the only criteria known to the Press. Accurate, fair investigative journalism is mostly a thing of the past. The media now rank with the crooked used car salesman and they are not to be trusted - even when they slip in the veneer of truth.
Dear reader: Feel free to copy this and send it to media nationally. Maybe they'll change?
"When a professional, sophisticated news organisation with its own massive research libraries chooses to ignore hard facts it has on hand, it is revealing that, in addition to working for itself, it has another master it performs for. Who or what makes CNN so interested in guiding the fortunes or fate of Israel by tilting its reportage against Israel?"
- Middle East commentator Emanuel Winston (Israeli & Global News, March 23, 1997)

I assume the BBC is not guilty of such bias - aren't they known for their journalistic integrity?

Consider, for example, the BBC's broadcast and now yearlong defense of a false story filed on June 5, 1997 by Stephen Sackur, then the BBC's Jerusalem Bureau Chief. As part of his report marking the thirtieth anniversary of the Six Day War, Mr. Sackur interviewed Mohammed Burkan, accepting without question Burkan's claim that the Israeli government had stolen his home in Jerusalem:

Sackur: An awkward meeting in the old city of Jerusalem, thirty years after Israel's military conquest. We returned with Mohammed Burkan, to the house he owned before 1967. Now a Jewish family lives there... .
Burkan: (translated) No, I don't hate the Jews who live here. They are not to blame for what has been. I hate the Israeli government because it took my house. No Muslim has the right to give up one inch of Jerusalem.

Apparently Mr. Sackur and his editors were unaware that Mr. Burkan had, more than 20 years earlier, brought his case to the Israeli courts, culminating with an appeal before Israel's High Court. At each stage Mr. Burkan's charges were found to be baseless, a key piece of evidence being a letter sent by Mr. Burkan on June 16, 1968 to Israel's then prime minister and finance minister, in which Burkan stated that he had been living in a rented apartment on the site in question, and only since 1963.
Other evidence cited in the appeal (HC 114/78) also contradicted Mr. Burkan's claim that the home had always been owned by Muslims. According to Land Registry records from the time of the British Mandate, the land and home in question were owned by a Jewish family that was driven out during the Arab riots of 1938.
The BBC was informed of the facts surrounding Burkan's claims the day after the program aired. In response, network officials steadfastly defended Sackur's report, initially arguing that it referred to a home different from the one dealt with in Burkan's court appeals. However, the network ignored repeated requests to provide the address of this other home so that Land Registry records could be checked.
Apparently unable to produce evidence of the second home, the BBC then offered a new defense of Sackur's report: "The section of Stephen Sackur's report that you are questioning should be seen in the context of the report as a whole... the short section... dealing with Mr. Burkan was illustrative of general issues of land and property ownership in territories occupied by Israel (emphasis added)."
That is, even if the Burkan story is fiction through and through, it doesn't matter because the fiction is "illustrative" of a higher truth, that Israel has dispossessed native Palestinians, stealing their land and homes. And stories which support that higher truth, however false, are evidently acceptable to the BBC.
Indeed, the misreporting of the Burkan case and subsequent journalistic dereliction are not anomalies. BBC journalists have long expressed their animus towards Israel both in their reporting, and in revealing actions after leaving the region.
- from Seeing Through the BBC, by Alex Safian, PhD, CAMERA, November 6, 1998

Does PBS have a consistent anti-Israel bias?

PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) is a US government-funded TV and radio network with many fine and worthwhile productions. However, mingling with lots of positive crea tive energy lurks a dark side...

After the 1993 broadcast of "Journey to the Occupied Lands", PBS received thousands of letters and phonecalls from viewers outraged at the airing of yet another in a series of inflammatory, inaccurate, anti-Israel documentaries.
Source: CAMERA

Why, in the media, do we sometimes see Israel refered to as "Tel Aviv", while, when other countries are refered to by a city, it is always their capitol?

The government of Israel is in Jerusalem. References to Tel Aviv in newspaper reports are a fairly reliable indication of what side the newspaper wishes its readers to sympathize with.
- Jacques Givet, "The Anti-Zionist Complex"

If Israel were in fact being unfairly maligned why doesn't she fight back? Maybe the criticisms ARE valid.

It is sad that the responsible authorities in the young State of Israel, as is the way with so many bureaucracies, should remain blind to the profit to be derived from this creative ferment in the ideological struggle. In this struggle, Israel seems all too often content to play a passive part. We shall now have to inquire whether there may not be a a deeper reason for this passivity; whether or not the fact that Jewish thought has traditionally been bewildered by and unable to account for or come to terms with the persistene of Evil may not have something to do with it. Some of the clumsiness or weakness in defence certainly derives from this, the more so in that the Jewish mind considers that Evil is irreversible and not to be made good once accomplished.
- Jacques Givet, "The Anti-Zionist Complex"

RELATED SECTIONS:
Double Standards, Anti-Zionism, Antisemitism, Leftists, Arabists, Fear, Socialism, Self-Hating Jews, Moral Relativism, Automorphism, Arab East Jerusalem, Occupied Territories
WWW RESOURCES:
Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA)
Honestreporting.com - A great resource. Subscribe to their mailing list.
"Israel's Media Watch" - Lada'at
Sword of Truth Mediawatch - an Indian/Hindu Media Watch page
Reason magazine - an American conservative media-critical magazine
BOOKS & PRINTED MATERIAL:
- Eye on the Media, by David Bar-Illan [VIEW BOOK HERE]
- The Other War: Israelis, Palestinians and the Struggle for Media Supremacy, by Stephanie Gutmann [VIEW BOOK HERE]
- Disinformation: 22 Media Myths That Undermine the War on Terror, by Richard Miniter [VIEW BOOK HERE]
- Poison, by Raphael Israeli [VIEW BOOK HERE]
- Weapons of Mass Distortion: The Coming Meltdown of the Liberal Media, by L. Brent Bozell [VIEW BOOK HERE]
- Covering the Intifada: How the Media Reported the Palestinian Uprising, by Joshua Muravchik [VIEW BOOK HERE]
- View from the Eye of the Storm: Terror and Reason in the Middle East, by Haim Harari [VIEW BOOK HERE]
- From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine, by Joan Peters [VIEW BOOK HERE]
- Myths and Facts: A Guide to the Arab-Israel Conflict, Second Edition, by Mitchell Geoffrey Bard [VIEW BOOK HERE]

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