American media's new pro-Israel bias: the same party line at the wrong time
Evolving conversations on the ground demand probing questions on-air. So why does TV news look like a Netanyahu ad?
Chris McGreal
theguardian.com, Friday 1 August 2014 03.45 AEST
Here are a few questions you won’t hear asked of the parade of Israeli officials crossing US television screens during the current crisis in Gaza:
- What would you do if a foreign country was occupying your land?
- What does it mean that Israeli cabinet ministers deny Palestine’s right to exist?
- What should we make of a prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, who as opposition leader in the 1990s was found addressing rallies under a banner reading “Death to Arabs”?
These are contentious questions, to be sure, and with complicated answers. But they are relevant to understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict today. They also parallel the issues routinely raised by American journalists with Palestinian officials, pressing to consider how the US would react if it were under rocket fire from Mexico, to explain why Hamas won’t recognise Israel and to repudiate Palestinian anti-Semitism.
But it’s a feature of much mainstream journalism in the US, not just an issue of coverage during the last three weeks of the Gaza crisis, that while one set of questions gets asked all the time, the other is heard hardly at all.
...
Take Netanyahu’s appearance on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday. The host, Bob Schieffer, permitted the Israeli leader to make a lengthy case for the his military’s ground attack, guiding him along with one sympathetic question after another. Finally, after describing Netanyahu’s position as “very understandable”, Schieffer asked about dead Palestinian civilians – but only to wonder if they presented a public relations problem in “the battle for world opinion”.
... [bias]
At one extreme is Fox News, where last week Sean Hannity shouted down a Palestinian guest, Yousef Munayyer, because he would not condemn Hamas as a terrorist organisation, then proceeded to terminate the interview.
Munayyer, director of the Jerusalem Fund in Washington, has appeared repeatedly on CNN where he is treated more respectfully. But he told me he is frequently brought on to answer accusations from the Israeli side, rather than explain the Palestinian perspective in the way that Israeli officials and commentators are allowed to lay out their case.
...
There is evidence of a shift in public opinion, mostly generational: a Pew poll this month showed falling support for Israel among younger Americans.
Over 65s backed the Jewish state by 60% to just 9% support for the
Palestinians. Among young adults, aged 18-29, just 44% were behind
Israel with backing for the Palestinians rising to 22%.
As opinion shifts, it will be harder to go on presenting just one side of the story.
Rest of article @ source
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/31/american-media-israel-bias-netanyahu
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Article started off strong and held my interest.
The media sounds laughable in the US.
Fox News is appalling. The guy that did the shouting gets flack online.
Pew Poll put me right off the article.
Pew means bull to me.
