How Israel's media manipulate the public
One of the things that took a lot of getting used to when I came on aliya was the fact that the 'news' pages here often read like the opinion pages. The same is true in the broadcast media as well: As Caroline Glick points out, 'Questions' are really arguments. Last Monday Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz gave an interview to Channel 2's news anchor Yonit Levy during the prime-time news broadcast. Levy began the interview with a revealing "question."
Oozing professional probity, Levy said, "I assume you came here armed with wonderful data about the drop in unemployment and rising economic growth, but I want to ask you, Mr. Steinitz if for all your data you've forgotten the people, you've forgotten an entire class of working people who can't live?"
Not that she has an opinion.
People tell me that in Europe the news pages also read like opinion pages and that it is also becoming increasingly so in the United States. Well, maybe. But the difference here is the licensing process. It's It's not like the Netanyahu government can easily change this situation. If they try to give licenses to others, they will be faced with a hostile broadcast media that will protect itself with everything in its power. Especially the airwaves. Here are some of their past 'accomplishments' (from the first link).
The media's manipulation of the public in the service of their political agenda is nothing new. For the past two decades every disastrous strategic initiative Israel has adopted was the product of massive media campaigns.Indeed, the media protected both Ehud Olmert and his predecessor Ariel Sharon (thanks to the Gaza expulsion) like the ethrog used on the holiday of Succoth.
In 1993 the media rallied unanimously behind the Rabin-Peres government's decision to embrace the PLO and give Yasser Arafat and his terrorist armies land, political legitimacy, guns, and money. The more than one million Israelis who actively participated in demonstrations against this disastrous decision in subsequent years were demonized as the Israeli equivalent of Arab terrorists and potential assassins.
In 1997, when a handful of European Union financed activists formed the Four Mothers organization calling for the IDF to surrender southern Lebanon to Hezbollah, the media heralded the group as a "true grassroots movement."
The media blocked out all voices - including IDF commanders - that warned an IDF withdrawal would serve as a springboard for a Hezbollah takeover of Lebanon and lead to war. They demonized opponents of surrender as warmongers with the blood of IDF soldiers on their hands.
Had it not been for the media, the Four Mothers' campaign would have ended before it began. But due to media manipulation, within three years, a majority of Israelis became convinced that it made sense to surrender to Hezbollah.
In the lead-up to Israel's 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, the media again demonized the more than one million Israelis who actively opposed the plan. Voices warning of the dire strategic consequences of surrendering Gaza were silenced. Politicians who opposed the plan were attacked as warmongers. The media gave voice to those calling for open warfare against opponents of the withdrawal, and violence against the plan's opponents was openly encouraged by the media.
Since the Lebanon withdrawal, the media have repeatedly led campaigns demanding that Israel bow to Hezbollah and Hamas demands and release of hundreds of terrorists in exchange for live and dead Israeli hostages. Opponents of such releases are demonized as heartless extremists.
In the aftermath of the Second Lebanon War, reservists released from service began marching to Jerusalem demanding the resignations of then prime minister Ehud Olmert, then defense minister Amir Peretz and then IDF chief of general staff Dan Halutz for their failed leadership of the war. The media scuttled the reservists' protest by demonizing them as closet right wingers.
So what are they hiding from you? Here's what you won't find out without reading the blogs. This is from the first link again.
For instance, Maariv bloggers Uri Redler and Rotem Sela researched the affiliation of all the speakers at the July 23rd rally in Tel Aviv. They found that out of 27 speakers, 21 are known leftist activists affiliated with Hadash, the communist party, with Meretz, with the New Israel Fund, with the Nationalist Left proto-party, and with the anarchists.Read the whole thing.
Redler and Sela also exposed that several "grassroots," leaders are in fact professional political operatives affiliated with communist politicians and radical pressure groups. For instance, an activist named Tzika Bashour announced on Facebook that he would begin a general strike on August 1. Yediot Ahronot and Ynet covered his move as an authentic call of distress by an Average Joe.
The papers failed to mention that Bashour is a public relations executive who ran communist MK Dov Hanin's campaign for the Tel Aviv mayoralty.
By the way. for those of you with children, the hardest part is teaching them to read critically and not to take everything they see in the newspapers here as Torah from Heaven. It's not.
Labels: Caroline Glick, housing crisis, Israeli economy, Israeli taxes, mainstream media, Yonit Levy
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:33 AM
3 Comments:
So much of what she wrote reminds me of how the media here in the U.S. are. Not only do you need to look at the media companies, but also the schools that are churning out these types of "reporters/journalists"
The good news is with the rise of the Internet, leftist-dominated print, radio and TV channels are losing their monopoly and are in steep decline. They no longer command near the audience they once did and they are no longer the news "gatekeepers." Blogs like this one didn't even exist a decade ago.
And the kids need to read older stuff. So, for example, Winston Churchill's River War about Sudan in 1898 will inoculate them from the leftist media (or schools?) trying to convince them (among many misleading assertions) that Jews are the cause of all the world's problems and that suicidal politics are the way to make amends. There were no Jews in Churchill's description of Sudan. The Brits had even pulled out and the Egyptians and Ottomans (Turks) had re-started the slave trade, the local imam types slaughtered people... nothing to do with Jews; nothing to do with Israel (modern Israel still 50 yrs away). I was amazed when I read it... and that was after so many years of the leftist brainwash. They are such liars.
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