#1049 2/28/21 – This Week: Levin & Glick on Social Media’s Shtick

WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: Mark Levin and Caroline Glick had a conversation this week, in which Glick says Levin “sees a direct link between the U.S. media’s longstanding hostility towards Israel and its burgeoning anti-Americanism.”  He says that to stop conservative viewpoint suppression and censorship, Americans should opt for alternative channels to the currently dominant Twitter, Facebook et ilk.  I agree.

But a further deleterious effect, I think, of the media’s anti-Israel bent is prejudicial influence over the terminology in which controversial issues may be discussed – e.g., that  not “Judea-Samaria,” but “West Bank,” an antonym, not a synonym, be used in articles submitted for publication.    

This Week:  Levin & Glick on Social Media’s Shtick

If you’re in need of a quick refresher on how pervasively the mainstream western media misportrays Israel, make a quick visit to the homepage of www.camera.org, the website of the relentless media bias-fighting champion CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America.  Scroll down through the media bias examples on that homepage till your thumb hurts.  Then drilldown if you like.  Be struck by both the continuous occurrence of misleading media portrayals of our Jewish homeland of Israel and by the number, prestige and diversity of papers, networks and other respected news sources purveying them.

The mainstream media’s one-sidedness in Israel reporting isn’t an anomaly.  It extends as well to conservative political viewpoint in America.  In an interview this week at the launching of the Hebrew edition of his best seller Unfreedom of the Press (https://carolineglick.com/facebook-and-twitter-boycott-them-there-are-other-sites/, 2/26/21), author and American talk show host Mark Levin discussed with Israeli commentator Caroline Glick the perspective of mainstream media coverage of both Israel and America.  The two are related.  Levin:

     “The book isn’t about Israel.  But I don’t know how you can talk about America and America’s principles and the way America’s covered without talking about Israel and Israel’s principles and the way Israel is covered in America.”

So what’s to be done?  In that interview Levin told Glick it’s time for conservatives and Israel supporters in America to “learn from the BDS movement” and cease using media, social media and big tech channels that stifle conservative views and portray Israel unfairly, and switch to alternatives that exist and are being built.  He issued this challenge, based on his own experience,   to those who’d like to but don’t see alternatives to the giants dominating communications today:

     “People have given up a helluva lot more for liberty than Twitter and Facebook.  So my advice is just give it a year.  And then other companies are going to pop up.  Because once Parler figures out how to do it, others will be able to do it.  When you look at YouTube, there’s another small entrepreneur out there called Rumble.  And YouTube and Google are trying to crush it.  I used to have 4,000 followers on Rumble, but then two weeks ago I said, okay, I’m done with YouTube and now I have half a million followers on Rumble.  Come join us.  You could talk.  There’s a lot of people to talk to on Rumble.  There’s going to be a lot of people to talk to on Parler.  Water always finds the cracks.  Liberty always finds the cracks.  We’re going to find the cracks and we’re going to use them and exploit them.  We’re going to compete against these people once and for all.  What we reject is their attempt to crush us, and their attempt to use government to advantage them.  This is what we need to fight.  So you’re either in this fight, or you’re not.  Get the hell out of there.  Try other sites.  We still have more ways to communicate than we did 20 years ago.”

But, really, how serious a threat to democracy is this private hands’ power?  By me, it ought to  scare us all badly.  Caroline Glick in that interview said conservatives flocked to Facebook and Twitter early on because they saw them as giving conservatives who “have no voice in the liberal media an opportunity to be heard.”

“But in Trump’s final months in office, these platforms betrayed their conservative users.  They joined the liberal media to shut them down, censor and block them.  The most stunning moment came when, after weeks of aggressive censorship, they banned Donald Trump from all the major platforms while he was still president.”  [emphasis added]

That’s pretty frightening communications control power in private hands, don’t you think?

Communications Job One for Americans who value open debate and democracy is restoration of open discussion of issues in the media and internet, without private people prejudging what political issues are and are not discussable.  Implementing Mark Levin’s plea to us to migrate to alternative forums to the currently hugely dominating bigs may achieve this restoration of places for political debate in America.  “Freedom of the press” was enshrined in America’s Constitution not for the benefit of the Fourth Estate but the people.

In American discussion about Israel, it’s allowed at this time for a writer to be for or against “the two-State solution.”  But what’s not allowed is debate about the terminology in which Israel debate is conducted.  Multiple writers have told me that calling Judea-Samaria “Judea-Samaria” is out-of-bounds, that the media insists on “West Bank,” an antonym, not a synonym of millennia-used “Judea-Samaria.”  When Israeli Minister Bennett objected to CNN’s use of “occupation,” Ammanpur told him “It’s an international term, Mr. Bennett,” and he rightly replied “I still object to it.”  But the media, even Fox News, uses it.  The 1949 ceasefire lines are still the 1949 ceasefire lines, not the “1967 lines” and most certainly not “the 1967 borders.”  Israel supporters submitting articles for publication must not be cowed into using Israel-disparaging loaded terms for fear of not being published.  The only assurance against content rules being imposed by a single-viewpoint media and social media is multiple publishers with multiple viewpoints.  Mark’s right.