The herd impulse among members of the media, the aversion to deviating from views of other journalists, is especially pernicious in coverage of Israel where the guiding thesis today is a simple one: "Hardline" Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has disrupted, if not wrecked, an otherwise promising peace process in the Middle East.
If the New York Times botches its coverage of Israel, tipping reality upside down, making lesser occurrences into major stories and slighting deadly-serious events, what are the repercussions? Do senior editors carefully weigh substantive questions raised by concerned readers – or do they deflect criticism with evasions and insults?
If it had only happened once that National Geographic published a photo-laden article on the Middle East espousing anti-Israel themes, its ten million subscribers could assume the piece was a regrettable aberration. But the venerable magazine has clearly fallen into a nasty pattern.
CNN's July 28th special, "Acts of Terror," presented in collaboration with Time magazine, should be studied in journalism schools. It is a guide to the ills of the profession, but above all to the menace of anti-Israel bias.
In a period of deep national trauma that included assassination of its prime minister, unprecedented terrorism on the streets of its cities, and wrenching internal debate over issues of national survival, the Israeli public went to the polls in orderly form and voted for a new government.
Television footage, photo images and news reports in recent years have relentlessly embellished a simple–and false–message: Israel ruthlessly demolishes the dwellings of Arabs, denying them needed housing, while vast, concrete Jewish apartment developments rise on every hillside...
Statistics bare stark truths. What they reveal about media coverage of atrocities committed against Israelis is a relentless lack of interest–despite, at the same time, intense journalistic focus on other events in Israel.
Jewish students on American campuses today enjoy a unique and unenviable distinction–they are members of the only group targeted by high-profile hate-mongers, including Khalid Muhammed, Tony Martin, Louis Farrakhan, Israel Shahak, Noam Chomsky, Ralph Schoenman and innumerable other lesser-known figures.
