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The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: A Failure by the Western Media
The reason the news is more frank in Israel is because the Zionized US and even British media don't want their populaces to question their governments' support of the Zionist state of Israel, which comes at a great cost, especially to the American people.
Role of the Media
"A failure by the Western media"
Interview, Palestine Report, 21 October 2004
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Palestine Report interviews Greg Philo, professor of sociology at the University of Glasgow, author of the recently released book, Bad News From Israel.
PR: Can you tell us a little about your book, Bad News From Israel? What did you attempt to show?
Philo: The book is based on a very long research study centered on public knowledge (from Europe and the US). We found that everybody in our sample had watched news on the conflict; they had memories of it, they could describe events they had seen. However, what we found was that, overwhelmingly, very few people understood the origins, the causes of the conflict. And that was one of our initial results. We found that young people, especially, who were social science students and at very good universities, knew almost nothing (about the history of the conflict). We asked, for instance, where the Palestinian refugees had come from, and we found that only a tiny minority had any idea whatsoever. In the course of discussion, within groups, when we spoke about Israel's recent creation, that it had been set-up in 1948, people were surprised. The majority thought that the state of Israel had been around since the time of the Bible.
PR: Who is to blame for this lack of understanding in the West?
Philo: There is no doubt that there has been a failure by the Western media. This has come about because of the closeness between Britain and the US, and their respective governments. Support for Israel in the US is extremely strong, and the American Congress tends to be very favorable to Israel, where they criticize the Palestinians and not the Israelis. And over here the UK, if you watch the news, American politicians who are often very committed to the cause of Israel are interviewed as neutral experts or just simply, politicians. This closeness then has the effect of giving access to American points of view and therefore Israeli points of view. We also found, for instance, that American politicians were interviewed twice as much as British politicians on this subject. So that has an impact and it affects the climate of Middle East journalism. The British media needs to look hard at what they are doing to inform the public, because without proper information, without a proper discussion, where you hear the points of view of both sides, you will never move towards a resolution.
PR: Are journalists in the UK under a lot of pressure to report a certain political line in the conflict?
Philo: Journalists in [the UK] are under a lot of pressure, and if they do something that is seen to criticize Israel, they are often subject to complaints and attacks. Journalist, John Pilger, for instance, after his documentary, Palestine is Still the Issue, received 4,000 emails - many of them critical. There was an inquiry into these complaints and Pilger was forced to write a 20,000-word defense of his own program. He then had to go through all these emails, which took six-weeks, and found that a large amount had come from America, where the program had not even been shown. So what you're looking at is an organized lobby that does create a lot of problems for journalists. And the basic rule, which all journalists know without needing to be told, is that if you say something critical about the Palestinians then nothing very much happens to you, but if you say something critical about the Israelis then all but the roof falls in. And that is an everyday constraint on what they [journalists] do.
PR: You also looked at the Israeli media in your book. What did you discover?
Philo: We looked at the Israeli media to establish what the range of possible view points were. And one of the things we discovered, which we mention in the book, is that there is a wider range of arguments in the Israeli media than there is on the BBC. And that was quite extraordinary really, as there seems to be more restrictions operating in this country than Israel. We also refer to the huge range of discussion in Israel concerning the nature of the conflict, and the very in-depth critical analysis of it that you really don't get on the BBC. You get it elsewhere, maybe The Guardian or The Independent [newspapers], but you don't find that kind of analysis on the BBC. However, I must be clear that when I mean the BBC, I mean the mainstream channels which the bulk of the UK population watch.
PR: You also referred to the failed Camp David talks between Barak and Arafat in 2000, and the subsequent outbreak of the second Intifada. In what way was this reported?
Philo: Certainly, in the news coming from London, there was a view that the whole thing was stirred up by Arafat, that he had turned his back on peace. As such, it became the orthodoxy that the Palestinians had turned down some kind of golden offer. Many people argued, like Edward Said, for instance, that the second Intifada was at least as much against Arafat as it was against the Israelis. That Arafat's policy of effectively allowing the settlements, of going along with the peace process which was effectively allowing the Israelis to consolidate and take over more land was actually behind the outbreak of the Intifada. But these arguments didn't surface until later. One reason is that Palestinians aren't very good at getting their case across, and another was that Arafat was himself quite deeply implicated in the peace process and its constituents.
After the book came out a number of journalists complained to me, saying that the Palestinians didn't give them an alternative view. And I said that one of the problems was that they were only going to the established leadership, and it was perfectly obvious from the tiny amount of interviews done on the street that there was something else going on. That there were Palestinians who felt that Arafat was useless, and other strong opinions of this sort, which pointed to a popular people's uprising.
This article was originally published on October 20, 2004, by Palestine Report, found at http://www.palestinereport.org. Also in this week's edition: PR explores the phenomenon of early marriage and investigates a spitting incident in Jerusalem's Old City.
Related links:
* New book: Bad News from Israel, Greg Philo and Mike Berry (22 June 2004)
* Buy Bad News from Israel from Amazon.com
* EI BOOKSTORE: The Media
------------------------------------------------------------------------
© 2001-2004 electronicIntifada.net unless otherwise noted. Content may represent personal view of author. This page was printed from the Electronic Intifada website at electronicIntifada.net. You may freely e-mail, print out, copy, and redistribute this page for informational purposes on a non-commercial basis. To republish content credited to the Electronic Intifada in online or print publications, please get in touch via electronicIntifada.net/contact
"A failure by the Western media"
Interview, Palestine Report, 21 October 2004
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Palestine Report interviews Greg Philo, professor of sociology at the University of Glasgow, author of the recently released book, Bad News From Israel.
PR: Can you tell us a little about your book, Bad News From Israel? What did you attempt to show?
Philo: The book is based on a very long research study centered on public knowledge (from Europe and the US). We found that everybody in our sample had watched news on the conflict; they had memories of it, they could describe events they had seen. However, what we found was that, overwhelmingly, very few people understood the origins, the causes of the conflict. And that was one of our initial results. We found that young people, especially, who were social science students and at very good universities, knew almost nothing (about the history of the conflict). We asked, for instance, where the Palestinian refugees had come from, and we found that only a tiny minority had any idea whatsoever. In the course of discussion, within groups, when we spoke about Israel's recent creation, that it had been set-up in 1948, people were surprised. The majority thought that the state of Israel had been around since the time of the Bible.
PR: Who is to blame for this lack of understanding in the West?
Philo: There is no doubt that there has been a failure by the Western media. This has come about because of the closeness between Britain and the US, and their respective governments. Support for Israel in the US is extremely strong, and the American Congress tends to be very favorable to Israel, where they criticize the Palestinians and not the Israelis. And over here the UK, if you watch the news, American politicians who are often very committed to the cause of Israel are interviewed as neutral experts or just simply, politicians. This closeness then has the effect of giving access to American points of view and therefore Israeli points of view. We also found, for instance, that American politicians were interviewed twice as much as British politicians on this subject. So that has an impact and it affects the climate of Middle East journalism. The British media needs to look hard at what they are doing to inform the public, because without proper information, without a proper discussion, where you hear the points of view of both sides, you will never move towards a resolution.
PR: Are journalists in the UK under a lot of pressure to report a certain political line in the conflict?
Philo: Journalists in [the UK] are under a lot of pressure, and if they do something that is seen to criticize Israel, they are often subject to complaints and attacks. Journalist, John Pilger, for instance, after his documentary, Palestine is Still the Issue, received 4,000 emails - many of them critical. There was an inquiry into these complaints and Pilger was forced to write a 20,000-word defense of his own program. He then had to go through all these emails, which took six-weeks, and found that a large amount had come from America, where the program had not even been shown. So what you're looking at is an organized lobby that does create a lot of problems for journalists. And the basic rule, which all journalists know without needing to be told, is that if you say something critical about the Palestinians then nothing very much happens to you, but if you say something critical about the Israelis then all but the roof falls in. And that is an everyday constraint on what they [journalists] do.
PR: You also looked at the Israeli media in your book. What did you discover?
Philo: We looked at the Israeli media to establish what the range of possible view points were. And one of the things we discovered, which we mention in the book, is that there is a wider range of arguments in the Israeli media than there is on the BBC. And that was quite extraordinary really, as there seems to be more restrictions operating in this country than Israel. We also refer to the huge range of discussion in Israel concerning the nature of the conflict, and the very in-depth critical analysis of it that you really don't get on the BBC. You get it elsewhere, maybe The Guardian or The Independent [newspapers], but you don't find that kind of analysis on the BBC. However, I must be clear that when I mean the BBC, I mean the mainstream channels which the bulk of the UK population watch.
PR: You also referred to the failed Camp David talks between Barak and Arafat in 2000, and the subsequent outbreak of the second Intifada. In what way was this reported?
Philo: Certainly, in the news coming from London, there was a view that the whole thing was stirred up by Arafat, that he had turned his back on peace. As such, it became the orthodoxy that the Palestinians had turned down some kind of golden offer. Many people argued, like Edward Said, for instance, that the second Intifada was at least as much against Arafat as it was against the Israelis. That Arafat's policy of effectively allowing the settlements, of going along with the peace process which was effectively allowing the Israelis to consolidate and take over more land was actually behind the outbreak of the Intifada. But these arguments didn't surface until later. One reason is that Palestinians aren't very good at getting their case across, and another was that Arafat was himself quite deeply implicated in the peace process and its constituents.
After the book came out a number of journalists complained to me, saying that the Palestinians didn't give them an alternative view. And I said that one of the problems was that they were only going to the established leadership, and it was perfectly obvious from the tiny amount of interviews done on the street that there was something else going on. That there were Palestinians who felt that Arafat was useless, and other strong opinions of this sort, which pointed to a popular people's uprising.
This article was originally published on October 20, 2004, by Palestine Report, found at http://www.palestinereport.org. Also in this week's edition: PR explores the phenomenon of early marriage and investigates a spitting incident in Jerusalem's Old City.
Related links:
* New book: Bad News from Israel, Greg Philo and Mike Berry (22 June 2004)
* Buy Bad News from Israel from Amazon.com
* EI BOOKSTORE: The Media
------------------------------------------------------------------------
© 2001-2004 electronicIntifada.net unless otherwise noted. Content may represent personal view of author. This page was printed from the Electronic Intifada website at electronicIntifada.net. You may freely e-mail, print out, copy, and redistribute this page for informational purposes on a non-commercial basis. To republish content credited to the Electronic Intifada in online or print publications, please get in touch via electronicIntifada.net/contact
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Electronic Intifada is pretty good about avoiding any languge that could even suggest antiSemitism. Who knows what you meant by "Zionized" US media but adding terms like that to an E.I. report almost seems like you are trying to discredit them. The US media is biased in its support for Israel but using terms like Zionism and Zionist to describe the media is way to similar to ZOG talk on the far right. I would guess your intentions were not bad but words have connotations aside from their literal meanings and when supporters of Palestinians use the Z word many readers will stop reading assuming things about the speaker that is probably not true.
You may feel that connotations dont matter since people shold care only about literal meanings but it seems a little underhanded to use a tone like you do in a lead-in to a piece by a group that is trying to get the world to care about the plight of Palestinians and is engaged in a major struggle against groups that try to tar and feather every proPalestinians group as antiSemitic.
support Palistine Freedom Wall program;
by building the freedom wall Palistine gains the opprotunity to
expand trade and exchange with it's neighboring arab friends
building new friendships and working for a better Palistine. they also get to start making repayments of all the aid money that was given to it for the last four decades
It's Lefties like you who are holding down the peace movement and pro-Palestinian rights movement by trying to hide the influence of Zionst Jews in the media and our government.
If people are in the dark about the root cause of the "war on terror", which is Zionism, then they can't address the problem and find a solution.
The solution is to expose Zionism, educate Americans about how it is a racist, ethnocentric, imperialist ideology that is dominating US media and US government, particularly with regards to US foreign policy in the Middle East. Once Zionism is thus exposed, it will be marginalized and delegitimized as was Nazism and White Supremacism. Zionism is actually Jewish White Supremacism.
There should be no "special priviledges" for Zionist Jews ( or even non-Zionist Jews) or Israel, but at the current time, there are plenty.
Equal rights for all means equal rights for all.
You're never capable of responding intelligently to reasoned and rational comments if they cause you the slightest dismay. It's safe to bet you've never met the person you're admonishing, so who are you to determine s/he's Zionist based on your conjecture resting on benighted racist foundations. You're pathetic