writes:
If you ever needed confirmation that the media has a clear editorial policy regarding what they want you to focus on and what they want you to ignore, check out today’s Israel news. Last night, BBC News had a full report on the Hague hearing regarding the legality of the separation barrier, but did not even mention that 8 people had been killed and 60 wounded in a Jerusalem suicide bombing that very day. One can only imagine the connections and commentary that would be made were 8 Palestinians killed and 60 wounded on the day before they presented evidence at the Hague against Israel. And certainly one would think that it would be germane to connect the bombing story to the barrier story, since the former is Israel’s stated reason for the latter. Yet, as you will see on their website, there is nary a word about the bombing, although four separate stories discuss the barrier proceedings.
Thanks for the inspiration.
when enemies of Israel or lazy journalists criticize Israel, they tend to throw in an “even the Jews say Israel’s bad” comment, and Haaretz is the prime source for these people fishing for an anti-Israel quote.
I did a search at the BBC site for Haaretz and got back 438 hits.
Haaretz’s readership is somewhere between 50,000 & 100,000 in Israel. Why do they publish their negative views on an english site? Is the goal to tarnish Israel’s name?
I’m wondering if they mentioned the wreckage of one of the bombed buses that Israel sent to be displayed at the Hague.
I’m sure the beeb couldn’t have missed that…or could they?
Ascribing common and coordinated purpose to “the media” is chasing a chimera of conspiracy. While many media practitioners share common assumptions and biases and lack the professionalism needed to keep those opinions out of their journalism, or the wit to do anything but play follow the leader, it is self-defeating to imagine that decisions on spin and slant are made by a cabal of media overlords.
We know, for instance, that the BBC ignored yesterday’s bombing because we learned about it in reports in other news sources.
Raising these unsubstantiated conspiracy bogeyman notions damages the impact that honest coverage of media bias can have on the media and the public.
Off topic
I came across this headline/photo combination on the BBC World Edition page_http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/3472013.stm
Are they trying to show that babies are being inconvenienced by the wall, so it is unjustified? Or, oh my God can it be true, have the evil Israelis actually cemented the baby’s arm into the wall?
The picture is clearly meant to be biased towards the Palestinians. Why not a picture of an Israeli or an Israeli explosion site? It would be too pro Israel.
Not a picture of the wall plain and simple. Nor, heaven forbid, two pictures, or a split picture, showing on one side the reason the Israelis want to build the wall (a suicide bomb site, for example) and a Palestinian hardship picture on the other (such as this poor Palestinian baby that can’t get to the candy). Biased, oh yeah!
OFF TOPIC
Radio 4 “Today” carried comment on the report produced for the Tories (which the Tories already regret) into the future structure & financing of the BBC.
The “Today” interviewer was anxious that changes to the BBC would not produce a great deterioriation in the standard of UK broadcasting – it could sink to the level of (you guessed it) the USA.
Now US TV may well be rubbish, but why must it be the immediate exemplar for BBC staffers? How smug they are in thinking their output to be so superior. Do they try watching their own programmes?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/listenagain/ram/today3_bbc_20040224.ram
OFF TOPIC
Radio 5 “Up all night” played extracts from yesterday’s speech by President Bush. They chose to punctuate the speech with a funny klaxon each time he mentioned “terror”.
Could you imagine such an insult being applied to the speech of any other head of state or leading politician?
Is the BBC message (amplified in a following interview with a man from “The Onion”) that there is really no threat from those nice Islamic fanatics?
On the Today programme this morning (Wednesday), a representative of Oxfam appears to tell us that we are not doing enough to stop arms, or potential arms components, that are produced in the UK from reaching dodgy regimes.
And which regime did the Oxfam rep single out for particular criticism?
Struggling to thinkl of the answer? Well, here’s a couple of clues: it is the Middle East’s only democracy and is subject to daily terrorist attacks.
Of course, the fact that said country requires arms to prevent it from being wiped off the face of the earth, did not occur to Oxfam man, nor the presenter.
That’s allright – this morning I learned on the BBC WS that black people couldn’t vote in the US until the 60’s. Hmm… in the next two minutes I heard a huge number of outright lies and unckecked facts… Did you know that Martin Luther King was a trade unionist? Astonishingly stupid given that we never had “trade unionism” in the form and dynamics that they had in Britain, and never used that term…