#769 Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert

To:       Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From:   Jerry Verlin, Editor  (jverlin1234@verizon.net)
Subj:    Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #769, 9/27/15

WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: One subject I’ve studiously shied away from, these 769 weeks of Brith Sholom Media Watch, is partisan politics.  I beseech you liberals who, to my deep appreciation, put up with me weekly that this #769 is not an exception.

 I talk this week about an opinionated mischaracterization of Republicans that appeared in a front-page news article headline this week in the Philadelphia Inquirer (Inq).  I cite this as illustrative of the unwholesomeness to American democracy that a city the size of Philadelphia has essentially just one daily newspaper providing residents driveway-delivered hardcopy national and international news.

This hurts us all, just as does our hometown paper’s imbalanced take on the long Palestine conflict between Arabs and Jews.  E.g., whether you believe Israel should go back to the 1949 Israel-Jordan ceasefire lines with “mutually-agreed” swaps, you have an interest, a stake, in your hometown newspaper calling them that, not “Israel’s 1967 borders,” in its calling Judea-Samaria “Judea-Samaria,” not “the Israeli-occupied Palestinian West Bank,”, etc.

Perhaps headlines like Saturday’s “Boehner To Exit; Far Right Wins as Pragmatism Loses” will induce forces broader than us to create a competitor home-delivered national and international news source.  If so, and if it acts as an antidote, not as an amplifier, all Philadelphians will benefit, not least those of us who’ve long seen our Inq as hopelessly imbalanced on Israel.

This Week In The Inq:  Seeds For Some Help From Outside?

Here’s how I began BSMW #440 of 6/7/09:

A calamity befell all Philadelphians this week, though I fear too few will see it as such.  The Bulletin, our region’s daily broadsheet alternative to the Inq, abruptly ceased publication. . . .

Now, here’s how our hometown Philadelphia Inquirer (Inq) headlined its front-page Inquirer Staff Writers news article (not labeled “opinion,” not labeled “analysis”) yesterday (Inq, Sat, 9/26/15, A1) on U.S. House Speaker John Boehner announcing his resignation:

Boehner To Exit; Far Right Wins as Pragmatism Loses

Those of us accustomed to seeing our Inq blast Bibi as “hard-line” while labeling Abbas – most recently of “We cannot allow the filthy feet of the Jews to desecrate Al-Aqsa” (translation by Israel’s Ambassador to the U.N. last Thursday) – as “moderate” are perhaps not surprised by this same Inq’s characterization of the substantial majority of Republicans dissatisfied not with Speaker Boehner’s political positions but with his leadership record of results as “anti-pragmatic” and “far right.”

In any case, labeling the majority of Republicans who see the McConnell-Boehner Congressional leadership as having been ineffective as “far right” and “anti-pragmatic” is unequivocally “analysis,” if not “opinion,” which the Inquirer should have headlined as such, and not straight “news,” on page one.

Republicans should see this as a harbinger of what to expect from the Inq in the looming presidential election campaign which, unopposed, will exacerbate the Democratic landslide in Philadelphia, critically impacting GOP chances of taking the state.

The relevance – right now – of all this to a pro-Israel media watch?  Hamas and Hezbollah, deeply embedded among their civilian populations, are arming themselves to the teeth with powerful weapons, supercharged by the Iran deal.  When the next round against Israel comes, there is zero reason to expect that news agencies and papers like the AP and Inq will cover it with any more balance than they covered the last round in 2014.  What would help would be alternative news agencies and newspapers out there.

Regards,
Jerry