RICHARD BAEHR: AMERICA’S NEW TOXIC BREW
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=9677
Two of the biggest news stories of the summer — the war between Israel and Hamas, and now the shooting death of a young black man in Ferguson, Missouri and the chaotic aftermath (protests, police in full battle mode, looting, riots and mob violence by many from outside the area ) — have revealed a few truths about how the American media quickly fix on a story line, and are loath to shift from it. With four 24-hour all-news cable channels (Fox News, MSNBC, CNN and CNN Headline News), not to mention Al Jazeera America (which purchased the network from Al Gore and his partners, and apparently stiffed them on payment), these kinds of long run stories are the closest thing to manna from the skies for the news stations, other than maybe hurricanes and tornadoes.
In the case of the Israel-Hamas confrontation, there was precedent for how the battle lines were to be laid out by the media. Israel had gone through this drill in the 2006 summer war with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, and again in the conflicts with Hamas in Gaza in 2009 and 2012. Israel was the big dog, with a powerful military. And it suffered less than its enemy in each confrontation. Since the country sustained few civilian casualties in the latest fighting (three dead, plus the three murdered teens who had been kidnapped), and the Iron Dome system destroyed many of the rockets fired at Israel’s population centers, Israel’s principal casualties were soldiers, who were buried quickly and never seen on television. Hamas fighters were rarely seen, and their leaders only appeared outside the country. But there were plenty of dead, wounded and bedraggled Gazan civilians all over the screen and in all major newspaper photographs.
The newspaper industry is in a state of near collapse in America, as both advertising and circulation numbers disintegrate, with advertising revenue migrating rapidly to websites and mobile devices. Younger Americans, for the most part, seem to prefer to tweet and post photos on Facebook, rather than read newspapers, and those who are conscious of the news, often get their minimal daily dose from comedians (in reality, left-wing cynics) like Jon Stewart, who played the part of Hamas cheerleader during the current fighting.
There are few papers that continue to staff foreign bureaus, and those papers which continue to have correspondents and cameramen overseas, have increased their influence, no paper more so than The New York Times. The cable news stations and National Public Radio often seem to parrot during the day what they read in the morning in that day’s New York Times, which effectively sets the agenda (or as the paper self-promotes itself: “where the conversation begins.”) When it comes to Israel, The Times has been hostile for years, and the paper is now almost indistinguishable from Britain’s left-wing mainstay, The Guardian, a longtime leader in fomenting anti-Israel propaganda, and now one whose columnists recommend more Jew killing.
The story line for the Israel-Hamas conflict focused on the disproportionate casualty numbers for each side (Palestinians in Gaza much higher, of course), and on the high percentage of civilian casualties among the Palestinian dead. Funerals for little children were shown, never for Hamas fighters. If Hamas claimed that a certain number of dead were civilians, this was believed to be accurate, even if the male to female death count was 5 to 1, an impossibility if the casualties were actually civilian (hence random). Every bombing of any school, hospital, mosque, or shelter area where there were civilian casualties, was of course highlighted as the biggest event of the day, and comments from the State Department would confirm “their horror and disgust” that Israel could not be more careful. It would be impossible to find any other conflict between any two parties, where there has been a daily scorecard of casualties, divided into fighters and civilians, and where the condemnation for the errant behavior of one party was more pronounced. Of course, millions of Muslims have been killed by fellow Muslims in recent decades, often in incredibly ruthless and barbaric fashion, with almost no media attention or international protests of any kind. But Jews killing Muslims, in whatever numbers, is unacceptable.
The New York Times scorecard was, of course, not accidental. It was designed to put pressure on Israel to stop its attacks, by shaming the country for the carnage it caused. Whatever Israel’s grievances, or whatever the truth of Hamas using civilians as human shields, Israel should not be killing “innocent children”. The media campaign was designed to put pressure on America, Israel’s supposed ally, to lean on Israel to stop its siege of Gaza, in order to end this cruel imbalance among the dead. The New York Times was demanding Israel stop and abide by a cease-fire of any kind through its messaging to the rest of the media, and calls for the Administration to produce a cease-fires. The Times, of course, has an agenda- including that Israel should not be allowed to win this mini-war decisively. If it did, then it might feel free for a while not to have to engage with John Kerry in useless discussions over a two state solution the Palestinians have never sought.
Of course, the same images and body counts repeated ad nauseam in America, were also broadcast in Europe and seen in their newspapers. In these countries, the Muslim percentage of the population is far higher, and less assimilated than it is in the United States (5-10 percent or more, as opposed to 1 percent in the U.S.). Sympathy for Israel among non-immigrants has also been declining for a long time — in part out of fear of provoking their angry Muslim populations, but these countries are also thoroughly intoxicated with a long history of Jew hatred. The messages seen in anti-Israel demonstrations got much uglier this time around, and the threats and actual violence against Jews reached new and more vicious levels the past few weeks in Europe, particularly Britain and France, but in the United States as well.
None of this should be a surprise, when Israel (and by extension, Jews around the world) are portrayed as heartless baby killers or their supporters. Jake Tapper, one of the more enlightened mainstream journalists, was appalled that more Gazan children died than Israeli soldiers in its recent conflicts, as if somehow, there was some ideal ratio to shoot for that Israel should have achieved with more surgical precision.
The other major story, the shooting death of 18 year old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, also bore a predictable story line, as if Americans need to be marinated through another Trayvon Martin-type storyline every few years. From the outset, the major media had the facts set, though there was no video of the shooting, and the police version differed from that of Brown’s friend who was with him. In short, the dead man had his hands up and was unarmed when he was shot. He was ready to start college ( a good student, solid citizen). He was shot while walking away from the police (in the back presumably). The police force in Ferguson was racist — 95 percent white in a town 2/3 black. White police are routinely killing innocent young black males, since they are on edge, and thus trigger happy.
Of course, about 8,000 blacks are murdered in the United States each year, almost always by other blacks. Relatively few blacks are killed by police under questionable circumstances. If blacks have to fear walking out in the streets of their neighborhoods, it is not because the police are looking to find them and to gun them down, the kind of nonsense that is being flung around by people considered thoughtful black intellectuals by the liberal press.
It now appears that Michael Brown robbed a store (with his eyewitness by his side), and physically attacked a store owner, but minutes before his altercation with the police. And it appears he was drugged when the shooting went down. And it seems that there are witnesses that support the police story that Brown attacked the officer and was a threat to his life. The police officer seems to have suffered serious injuries from Brown attacking him before he was shot. And Brown was not shot in the back. Other than that, the media got the story right.
But the city of Ferguson has, as a result of the deliberately misleading reporting (the media love racial conflict almost as much as hurricanes), become a dangerous center attracting black nationalists, out of town thugs and looters, communists and anarchists, in addition to any legitimate protesters in the community. And the enemy for blacks in Ferguson and elsewhere — that too is clear — cops, especially white cops, and whites in general (as even very left-wing journalists are assaulted.
Not surprisingly, the hard Left has found a way to merge their hate for Israel, the cops and Wall Street, or in short “the man,” seen perhaps best by the protests to shut down the docks in Oakland to prevent a partially Israeli vessel from unloading its cargo, and protests by the same groups over the Ferguson shooting.
When the news makes it easy to choose sides, and find someone to hate, inevitably trouble and usually violence, follows. We may only be scratching the surface, but there are signs that civil society is unraveling a bit, in Europe and the United States. The media have been doing plenty to make the situation more dangerous. Those who feel marginalized are given ammunition (messaging) to fight the powers that be, the evil ones. The West’s multicultural moment of integration and eternal bliss may not have arrived, and may never arrive.
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