New documentary takes Israeli-Palestinian conflict coverage to task

[corporatewhore]

New documentary takes Israeli-Palestinian conflict coverage to task

Maureen Clare Murphy, The Electronic Intifada, 26 March 2004

I'm sure newspaper editors everywhere fantasize the day when they don't receive a single letter charging their publication with "bias." This notion of bias is quite vague -- it can mean that a publication presents a story as too sympathetic with one side of an issue (be it abortion, affirmative action, or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) or that a news source doesn't present one side of the story at all. And because the word bias is thrown around so often, like the word "terrorism," the meaning of the term has been pretty much diluted due to over/misuse.

Thankfully, the new documentary Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land, from the Media Education Foundation, goes beyond charging the U.S. news media (particularly television news) of being biased in favor of the Israeli government. A series of filters is identified, describing how and why certain orthodoxies appear in the news media, and how these filters shape news coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Anyone who has read more than a handful of U.S. news reports on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict knows what these orthodoxies are. No historical context regarding the illegality of Israel's colonizing settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip is provided. Israel retaliates, while Palestinians provoke. Yasser Arafat inexplicably turned down Ehud Barak's unprecedented generous offer and incited the current intifada out of spite towards Israel. The United States is an impartial peace broker. Relative quiet exists when it's only Palestinians who are dying. What is missing from the coverage is what it means for Palestinians to endure checkpoints and curfews, as well as Israeli voices of dissent, and the billions of dollars the U.S. gives to Israel each year. But why are these conventions so pervasive in the media?




Source: http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article2545.shtml

[Jim Sagle]

1. Because they're true.

:boring:

[Violet_Crumble]

2. How do you come to the conclusion that those things are true?

Let's go through them one by one:

"No historical context regarding the illegality of Israel's colonizing settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip is provided."

Gotta agree that one's very true...


"Israel retaliates, while Palestinians provoke."

That's what the mainstream media would like us to believe. If Israel wasn't illegally occupying Palestinian territory, it might be easier to fool people into believing it was true, but that combined with other actions carried out by Israel make it a blatantly false line...

"Yasser Arafat inexplicably turned down Ehud Barak's unprecedented generous offer and incited the current intifada out of spite towards Israel."

Generous offer, my arse! Please read this and come back and explain how that was a generous offer.

http://www.gush-shalom.org/generous/generous.html

"The United States is an impartial peace broker."

How can you believe that's true when a Presidential candidate was given a shellacking for saying that the US should be even-handed when it deals with the conflict?

"Relative quiet exists when it's only Palestinians who are dying."

You really think that's true?? I sure hope not....


Violet...