The CNN-NPR-NYT Middle East Conspiracy

Have you noticed that when people complain about bias in the media, it's always bias against their own point of view, and never bias in favor of their side?

When press accounts confirm your interpretation of events, they're fair, accurate and objective. When the upshot of a news story is that your team are the bad guys and the other team are the good guys, it's obvious that the reporter or paper or network or corporation is in the tank for the other side. And when articles and broadcasts balance ammo for your side with ammo for the other side, they're guilty of the fallacy of false equivalence, which turns righteous battles between right and wrong into vapid he-said/she-said standoffs.

Nowhere is this more true than in coverage of the Middle East.

Supporters of Israel are furious that when pictures of Palestinian casualties are shown, the causes and context of the war are left out -- Hamas's rocket attacks on southern Israel, which precipitated the attack on Gaza; its cynical use of civilians as human shields, which is a war crime; its stated intention to destroy Israel and Jewry, which amounts to genocide.

Supporters of Hamas are just as enraged about the inhumane living conditions in Gaza, which Israel has blockaded; and the Israeli refusal to allow the international press into the battle zone; and what they believe is the original sin of Zionism, the displacement of Arabs; and that when Israel is portrayed as a victim, the suffering of the Palestinian people is conveniently omitted.

And what if you're not a partisan of either side, but think of yourself instead as an independent advocate for human rights and peace? Then not only will you bring down on yourself the opprobrium of both sides for failing to take a stand at a moment that demands a choice; you will also find in the prevailing media narrative no hook to hang your conciliatory analysis on, no peg for your empyrean perspective, no patience for your it's-all-so-complicated heartsickness.

Any news story can be successfully picked apart from any vantage point. Why does the Los Angeles Times disparage the Israeli point of view as "set talking points"? Why does the New York Times undermine Red Cross accounts of the Israeli military's "shocking" failure to meet its humanitarian obligations with anonymous mitigating hearsay about a Hamas sniper? Why aren't the networks airing the bone-chilling YouTube footage of armed Palestinian terrorists kidnapping children to use as human shields against the IDF? Why does an NPR host leave unchallenged an Israeli scholar's assertion that Palestinian casualties aren't excessive because "so far well over three quarters have been armed gunmen, and that is a percentage which is very rarely attained in urban warfare"?

In fact, two reasons make it really hard to conclude (but not to claim) that a mainstream media outlet is biased -- on the Middle East, or on anything else. And a third reason makes the whole enterprise of watchdogging the press somewhat quixotic.

One is the sheer quantity of content. The stories and pictures you saw may be plenty to convince you, say, that the AP is unfair to Israel, but the plural of "anecdote" is not "data." The only way to determine anything defensible about bias in reporting is to analyze a scientific sample -- to examine a slice of stories that's large enough to be representative of all stories, and to choose that slice randomly, without knowing what's going to be in it. Some people may feel that they watch CNN so much or read the New York Times so regularly that they have plenty of data to base conclusions on. Not so. That's why pollsters are paid big bucks: the methods they use to construct the universe of people they survey are even more important than the questions they ask them.

Second is the difficulty of coming up with an objective measure of bias. One person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter. If you can show me a journalistic scoring system that Alan Dershowitz and Noam Chomsky can agree on, then I'd like to show you how to earn 12 percent a year in a very special investment fund.

But even if you had a scientific sample, even if you devised a neutral litmus test for bias, the strange truth is that media spin probably matters a lot less than we assume.

Yes, public opinion is an important element of public policy. Nations care what people think about them. But the audience for cable news is astonishingly small, maybe two million people on a good day; the daily readership of a prestige newspaper is hardly more than that; and the only way that public radio can claim north of 20 million listeners is to count all the people who listened to any of its programs during a week.

Sure, the Internet has surged as a source of news, but its audience is fragmented into niches. If you want to get really depressed, chew on this: for decades, Americans have said that their number one source for news is local television news. Not only is that audience scattered among a thousand stations in a couple of hundred media markets; the amount of attention those stations give to international news is a tiny fraction of the airtime they give to celebrities, freak accidents, and crime.

There's no question that some elite media set the agenda much of the rest of the press. And some non-news programming, like talk radio hotheads, get demonstrably big listenerships. But it's next to impossible to prove a cause-and-effect relation between these bloviators and public opinion, and the same is true of the impact of the mainstream press on public attitudes and beliefs. In the end, why Americans think what they do about Israel and Hamas is as much a mystery as how they decide who to vote for or what toothpaste to buy.

I get just as steamed as anyone else when I see a Middle East news story that I think is wildly unfair. I'm just unwilling to ascribe it to a conspiracy, or to think it matters as much as the frustration and fury I feel.

(This is my column from The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. You can read more of my columns here, and e-mail me there if you'd like.)

Comments

[jeanrenoir]

Thank God for the Huffington Post and the Net in general. Finally, the truth will out. Just as Obama was able to use Net fundraising to crush the neocon money supporting both Hillary and McCain, and trying to stop Obama at all cost since it was obvious he was not going to be another presidential ventriloquist's dummy for Israel, the Net makes it impossible for Israel to control media coverage of Israel anymore. I admit that I was fool enough to actually support the Iraq War at first, partly because of Tom Friedman's propaganda for it in the Times. As the saying goes, never again.

[Karma7]

One of the media's major "Middle East experts," Jeffrey Goldberg, is a self-identified passionate Zionist and member of the Israeli military.

News outlets should identify him as such whenever he speaks or is cited in reports or analyses -- which is often.

Journalistic ethics and standard practice would require the media to state this clearly and frequently. It would also require that he, as a partisan, be balanced with an equally articulate commentator representing the other side.

It would be appropriate for others to ask this question every time Goldberg appears on screen or in print. People may wish to contact each news organization and point out that it appears that Goldberg is in the Israeli military. Ask whether this is the case, and, if so, why they have not disclosed this extremely important fact to their viewers/readers.

Being a member of a foreign military is a clear conflict of interest for a journalist whose job is to give unbiased information on the country he is serving and compromises his position as an analyst.

Even in the midst of a major financial crisis, American taxpayers give Israel $7 million per day " and sometimes considerably more. It is essential that we receive factual, unbiased information on Israel-Palestine. Misrepresenting officers in a foreign military as journalistic analysts damages the public's ability to understand this urgent, life-and-death issue.


WATCH VIDEOS
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/about_us/goldberg.html

[lainey]

Thank you for this rational article. We must do something radically different in solving this crisis and it is to replace emotion with reason and law. We must realize that no one can condone Hamas' terror or using human shields, and Israel must dismantle settlements. Let's do this differently and use the Irish Peace agreement as a model---going in steps, because extreme thinkers don't look into the future, they are more immediate gratification oriented.

[jeanrenoir]

Exactly right. George Mitchell would seem to be, if you'll pardon the expression, "Heaven sent" to achieve exactly this objective. All true friends of Israel had better pray that Obama, Hillary, and Mitchell succeed. They are the last best hope for a clearly sinking Israel.

[DuPageDem]

Yes, let's talk about false equivalency. How many US dollars, politicians, corporations and supporters are on Palestine's side of the ledger? How many victims have been killed or injured by Palestine's attacks?

[ran6110]

Personally, bias doesn't bother me much. Everyone in the world carries a certain level of bias on any subject.

I even think that some people don't realize they are showing a bias.

What does bother me is when someone knows they are biased and pretends they are not. Then they are not only biased, they are liars!

[Destin]

I think the best measure, is to measure the amount to which both sides are able to influence public opinion.

[Wozzeck]

James Zogby's analysis of the Israeli propaganda machine was buried in the HuffPo:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-zogby/how-israels-propaganda-ma_b_156767.html

[ssg13565]

Unfortunately there is at least a little bit of truth in all the various tellings of this story. None of this leads to a solution, however.

The two sides can go on pushing each other's buttons with no end in sight to the conflict.
Each side hopes the other will give up and go away. Each side thinks that if they just refuse to give in, the other side will have to cave first.

Eventually both sides can both to give up something that they each fundamentally believe is their right to have whether or not they have any hope of getting it.

There is probably no way that an outsider can decide for each participant what is worth fighting for and what is worth compromising. The best that can happen is that an outsider can get the sides to talk, get them to understand the stalemate they are in, and encourage them to come to their own compromise. It might help if the outsider can promise to help police whatever compromise they come up with.

[JacqueItch]

Zogby's analysis of the Israel propaganda machinery is spot on.
When the game has been set up to insure a lop-sided victory every time it's played . . . . I'd call that a major fix.

What is missing is what shows up most obviously----the gains the Israelis make from their cat & mouse game with the Palestinians: Israel gets to flex its military muscles, legitimize American gifts of weaponry, and by maintaining its false claim to victimhood hide the horrors of its abuse of the Palestinians while seeking funding from the US
. A more vicious, more cruel display of abuse is hard to find.

[Americafirst2008]

American Media is Occupied territory. Look at how our politicians trip over themselves to defend Israel, even if it's not in the interests of it's citizens.

When Georgia started a war with Russia (Israeli connection in terms of weapons and politicians) and got pummelled there were not cries of protest from American politicians about Georgian aggression. I. IWe shipped them $1 billion in aid. Fast forward to Gaza, the whole infrastructure is obliterated, and they stay silent, foreign aid non-existent.

Here's an idea, how about we re-allocate the $8 billion in aid to Israel and force them to pay for re-construction.

[Wozzeck]

CNN newsreaders have repeatedly framed Georgia's aggression as "Russia's attack on Georgia"
Wolf Blitzer is a former AIPAC spokesman. CNN's "Chief Political Correspondent", William Schneider, is a fellow of the AEI, also known as Neocon Central.

[RationalRadioJack]

Blitzer is the biggest cheerleader for Israel.
BBC is the best..

[jeanrenoir]

Look at how many people in Congress ARE Jewish. Jews are 3% of the American population, the exact same percentage as Indian Americans (from the sub-continent). Yet the Jews are represented in Congress hugely, and uniquely, out of all proportion to their numbers in our population. Sure, this is partly simply a reflection of Jewish educational attainments, especially in law, not to mention financial success. But it also seems a lot like a concerted AIPAC effort to pack the Congress with so many Jewish votes that there can never be any question of an even-handed American response to the Palestinian crisis. The irony of this is that "control of American politics" (before Obama) has added to the potentially self-destructive arrogant blindness of Israel to the true dangers it faces--in America, as well as the Middle East. If, for instance, Israel blithely bombs Iran's nuclear facilities, and gives Joe the Plumber $10 gas at the pump, and completely wrecks the American and world economies in the process, can anyone imagine the rage against Israel that the vast majority of Americans would feel? American support for Israel is hardly written in stone. Israel has the capacity to make itself highly unpopular with the vast majority of the American electorate. If it does, all bets are off: not just for Israel, but for Jewish American politicians as well.

[Americafirst2008]

American Media is Occupied territory. Look at how our politicians trip over themselves to defend Israel, even if it's not in the interests of it's citizens.

When Georgia started a war with Russia (Israeli connection in terms of weapons and politicians) and got pummelled there were not cries of protest from American politicians. Instead we shipped them $1 billion in aid. Fast forward to Gaza, the whole infrastructure is obliterated, and they stay silent, foreign aid non-existent.

Here's an idea, how about we re-allocate the $8 billion in aid to Israel and force them to pay for re-construction.

[TimSearl]

Foreign coverage by US media is little more than government propaganda and should be treated as such. From promoting and boostering the war on Iraq, they did it on old Europe and New Europe, the did it with the UIkrainian election, the Israeli attacks on Lebanon, Iran nuclear ambitions, the Russia/Georgian conflict and now with Gaza. I assume the "reporters" just 'phone up their contacts at the State department, or White House and those contacts dictate the story for them.

Sad to say, with all those stories you would have found much more balance, on the other side of the Atlantic.

[AmeriGus]

I echo the authors' insight regarding network TV as America's biggest public awareness failure. Articles of Impeachment were filed against Bush/Cheney for 45 crimes and misdemeanors in Congress and it didn't make the 6'o clock news. ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX have routinely ignored reporting on actionable scandals from torture to wiretapping to rampant fraud. At the same time, CBS and NBC are accused of being "in the tank" for the left!

It is my hope real people and the netroots will pressure the Obama administration to investigate Bush crimes (have you called Eric Holder yet?). If enough people signal concern, Obama and the media might decide to take their blinders off.

[jackie2]

On January 5th, Jon Stewart addressed the issue of media bias around the Israel/Gaza conflict on the Daily Show-If you want to watch the clip or read the transcript it's at www.thankyoujonstewart.com/-He's getting a lot of hate mail because of that segment, so this site also provides a little thank you email to sign if you like to sorta' balance it out a bit-Please check it out-It's both relevant & funny-Thanks-

[ssg13565]

Whenever I see Hamas engage in these seemingly hopeless retaliations
against the much stronger forces of Israel, I have a mental exercise
that I find thought provoking, yet it has not led me to see a
solution.

I imagine the Jews of Europe during World War II when ever they tried
to resist what was happening to them. Their hopeless efforts also
provoked a disproportionate response from their oppressor. The mental
exercise is to make a list of the differences and similarities between
the Gazans of today and the Jews back then. The other part of the
exercise is to also make lists comparing the similarities and
differences between Israelis of today with the Nazis of the World War
II era.

[cheforacle]

There is no comparison. Since the time of the failure of the Camp David Peace meetings in 2000, a period of time longer than WWII, a few thousand Gazans have been killed frequently after rocket attacks against Israel. While Israel still controls its borders, air space and continguous waters, they did withdraw from Gaza enabling Hamas to take over there after an election. Hamas violently kicked Fatah out of the Gaza after the election not because of the election. (It was they who had a putsch.)

By contrast, in a shorter period of time, the Nazis systematically rounded up Jews, first made them live in ghettos and then sent them to concentration camps that would make the horrible conditions in Gaza seem festive (that is not hyperbole, my friend) and exterminated 6 million of them. The Jews were not violently killing Germans before or during or denying the right of Germany to exist.

I deplore Israel's action in Gaza. But to try to equate the current actions of Israelis with what the Nazis did is such a gross distortion of history, I felt compelled to revisit the facts.

[maddie0001]

Gaza vs Warsaw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrK90LvqbRk

differences:
there was no real-time reporting of what was going on

same:
small group of armed peasants fighting a vastly superior military
German apologists used their media contacts
the victims fought back and were decimated

The Israelis are nowhere near as bad as the Nazis. They just want to expel the Palestinians, they not about to set up extermination camps. I'd say they're more like the Apartheid South Africans so maybe we can compare Gaza to Soweto.

[Ronju01]

Most people are not as stupid as the pundits think them to be. They can figure out.

[Agathena]

"Supporters of Hamas" ???

Surely you mean supporters of the Palestinian civilians. I could not get by that propaganda insertion to read the rest.

Showing images of wounded and dead children (almost 300 Palestinian children so far) is not supporting Hamas. It is in support of HUMAN RIGHTS, it is in support of civilians caught in the crossfire.

In your blind support of Israel's military policies, you do not object to the deaths of these children, you object to the IMAGES of their deaths.

[Manchurian]

My thoughts exactly, Agathena.

Marty, if you want to write an article upon which all parties can constructively comment, leave out your own bias against those who have empathy for the plight of the Palestinians. Hamas is a symptom of the occupation; everyone would be better off without it (except the Gazans who have nowhere else to turn for help).