Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #653, 7/7/13

To: Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From: Jerry Verlin, Editor (jverlin1234@comcast.net)
Subj: Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #653, 7/7/13

WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: OK, it’s July 4th weekend, so let’s not confine ourselves to counting imbalances in mainstream media Israel coverage This Week In The Inq, but go on to speculate, in Arab-Israeli and broader contexts, what America’s Founding Fathers would say of the state today of the Press Freedom they enshrined into America’s Constitution.

I see three reasons America’s Founding Fathers would be very disturbed, indeed appalled, and you can see them all in mainstream media misreporting on Israel. There’s a gang mentality, double standards, and in some contexts a single purveyor of news.

[1] A Gang Mentality in Reporting on Israel

[a] “Seized By Israel in 1967”: Twice in an Israel article just last week (“Palestinian Criticizes Israel Over Construction,” 6/27/13), the New York Times referred to Israel having “seized” land from Arabs – “territory seized in the 1967 war” and “territory seized by Israel in 1967.” In Lee’s and my anti-Israel media bias book, we cite many examples of “seized” going back many years. We make two points respecting it. The first is to show how far from the historical facts that sneering term “seized” goes:

Diaspora Jews old enough to remember May 1967 cannot forget the chilling, encompassing fear that we felt – and could only imagine how Israelis felt – as Arab armies massed on Israel’s narrow boundaries, Jordan signed a military pact with Egypt, Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran, the U.N. folded its tents, and Nasser issued blood-curdling cries for Israel’s annihilation: “We intend to open a general assault. This will be total war. Our basic aim is the destruction of Israel.” And then, as a second Holocaust loomed, tiny Israel, hopelessly outclassed in every war-waging criterion – land, population, armaments – lashed out and, it seemed to us, miraculously overcame those impossible odds. The M.S.M. has repeatedly mocked Israel’s gains in that defensive war for survival as lands Israel “seized” in 1967.

Second, based on the news clippings we quote, we show how widespread that sneering “seized” mentality is:

Reflect on the scope of this “Seized By Israel” club’s membership: the Washington Post, N.Y Times, L.A. Times, A.P., NPR, CNN, Knight-Ridder [RIP], Inquirer staff-writers.

[b] “Millions of Palestinian Refugees and Their Descendants”: Among journalism history’s more mammoth mathematical misstatements is the mainstream media’s repeated misreporting for years of “millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants” from “Israel’s creation,” or from “the war that followed Israel’s creation.” Lee’s and my book cites the actions of CAMERA and others, including this media watch, to get this corrected, which was eventually accomplished. But then we say this:

The breathtaking scope of this multi-magnitude misstatement of “millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants” by the pillars of American journalism (the N.Y. Times, the Washington Post, the A.P., the L.A. Times, NPR) inevitably affected public perception in a fashion that could only have been extremely devastating to Israel.

[c] Nuclear Traitor as “Whistle-Blower”: Webster defines “whistle-blower” as “one who informs on a wrongdoer.” Reuters, and the AP and Inquirer on its own again and again, bestowed that mantle of do-good on Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli who betrayed his countrymen by revealing his country’s nuclear secrets. See the instances in Lee’s and my book. Within a week of printing one Vanunu “whistle-blower” instance, the Inq headlined “Hamas Executes Two Suspected Informers” [emphasis added]. Ask yourself who’s the “whistle-blower,” the betrayer of his country’s defense of his endlessly threatened and besieged fellow citizens, or those who warn of impending terrorist acts against civilian men, women and kids.

“Seized … seized … seized … millions … millions … millions … whistle-blower …. whistle-blower … whistle-blower” from multiple media sources. A gang mentality in spicing and slanting reporting on Israel?

[2] Double Standards in Reporting on Israel

[a] Whose Fault Is It that Peace Talks are Stalled? The Inq’s AP article Monday (Inq, Mon, 7/1/13, A4, AP, “Kerry Ends Talks Without Breakthrough”) cited just one reason why “negotiations have been stalled since 2008,” to wit, “in large part due to Israeli settlement policies in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.” What about Abbas demanding a Just-Jews building halt in disputed Judea, Samaria and heart of Jerusalem, and (forget 242) that Israel accept the 1949 ceasefire lines as the basis for borders, both huge substantive demands, just to come back to talks, while Israel calls for talks with no preconditions?

[b] “Settlements” vs “Neighborhoods,” Jews as Jerusalem “Settlers”: Our book cites repeated instances of the media contrasting Arab “neighborhoods, towns and villages” in contested Judea, Samaria and heart of Jerusalem against “Jewish settlements,” including an instance of “settlers” trying to re-establish what had been a Jewish Jerusalem neighborhood before Jews were evicted by Arabs in the 1920’s and ‘30’s. Just last week we criticized the AP contrasting the “contentious east Jerusalem settlement” of Har Homa with Arab Jerusalem “neighborhoods.” In a classic statement, a major news service (the late Knight-Ridder) expressed its balance this way: “Arab East Jerusalem, which both Palestinians and Israelis claim as their own” (emphasis added, but only a little)

[c] Israel was “Created” and “Founded,” While Pakistan, Lebanon and Syria “Won Their Independence”: The same mainstream media that insistently characterizes Israel as having been “created” and “founded” in 1948 refers to Lebanon and Syria, and Pakistan, as having “won their independence.” See pp. 24-25 of our book: “Imagine the impression readers would have gleaned from the media insistently attributing displacement of 10 million people and 200,000-to-one-million killed to ‘Pakistan’s creation’ or ‘the war that followed.’”

[3] Too Often a Single Source’s Perspective in Israel [and other] Reporting

Newspapers purvey perspectives on news stories.

Just last week I criticized the Inquirer for headlining across three columns “Israel OKs Settlements” for Israel’s advancement of plans to add 69 homes in one across-the-1949-ceasefire-lines Jerusalem neighborhood on land that had been mostly purchased by Jews after the First World War. There are about 6,000 Jewish homes in that neighborhood of a city that’s had a Jewish majority since 19th century times. That slightly exaggerated 3-column “Israel OKs Settlements” headline for that 1% increase in one place mostly owned by Jews since WW I sheds light on the Inq’s intensity of scrutiny and minuteness of focus on Israel.

Lee and I dedicate “H” in our media bias “from A to Z” book to “Headlines – Not Always What Happened.” There we summarize 15 instances in which Inquirer Israel news article headlines portrayed Israel unfairly. We devote a section of “V,” “Violence – Israeli Responses are Not ‘Offensives’ and ‘Retaliation,’” to how the Inquirer headlined Israel going into Gaza in March 2008 to stop escalated rocket fire newly targeting Ashkelon. Those Inq headlines, which focused on Abbas [sanctimoniously] suspending peace talks over “Israel’s Incursion Into Gaza,” mentioned “Hamas,” “Escalation to Grad Rockets” and “Ashkelon” not at all. We cited Ashkelon residents crying “We’re just like Sderot” and the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs explaining:

“The 122 mm. Grad rockets (also known as Katyushas) fired from Hamas-controlled Gaza against the Israeli city of Ashkelon are a standard military artillery weapon, equipped with a weapons-grade high explosive fragmentation warhead. The range of the rockets fired against Ashkelon is over 20 km., an upgraded capability [headline worthy?] which places about a quarter of a million Israeli civilians in constant danger of Hamas attack.” (emphasis added)

What would trouble our nation’s Founders, I think, is not that American newspapers and their news sources purvey less than pristinely perfectly balanced perspectives to readers. They had newspapers in their own day. What would astonish and appall them is that in many American cities, including the one in which they inserted Press Freedom into America’s Constitution, there is today, in our Information Age, essentially only one newspaper, and that that newspaper gets its national and international news essentially from one news service and from a couple bigger like-minded papers.

When a second paper, reviving the name of an earlier second local paper, appeared on our scene not that long ago, BSMW pleaded to not just us Jews that “In Philadelphia Nearly Everybody Needs The Bulletin.” When it folded, BSMW mourned that “a calamity befell Philadelphians this week, but I fear too few will view it as such.” Our Founding Fathers, I think, would have viewed that second paper’s folding as such. So should some third-party force, perhaps Republicans intent on garnering some votes in Philly, cause to come about a second paper in Philly again, Jews, and not just Jews, should subscribe.

Regards,
Jerry

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