1. Hate-Indoctrination and Incitement Ignored
![Hate-Indoctrination and Incitement Ignored]()
No issue was more glaringly and indefensibly neglected by most of the media than the often grotesque demonizing of Israel and the Jewish people by the Palestinians and the wider Muslim/Arab world. Instead of reporting the hate-indoctrination prominently and continuously for what it is – a central driving force for violence and fundamental threat to peace – media outlets such as
The New York Times typically
ignored the phenomenon or characterized it as merely an
accusation by Israelis rather than an objective reality.
Few instances of such media malpractice were as blatant as
The Times' censoring of Secretary of State John Kerry's
strong denunciation of incitement as the cause of the massacre of Jews at prayer in Jerusalem's Har Nof synagogue. Kerry's emphatic statement was first included in an online version of the
New York Times story but later entirely excised by the time the printed account reached readers.
2. Gaza War Distortions
![Gaza War Distortions]()
Covering the Israel-Gaza conflict, the popular press promoted
numerous myths and CAMERA set the record straight with a
powerful ad campaign promoting the facts. In a devastating expose after the fighting, former AP reporter Matti Friedman astutely summarized the media's impact in
Tablet:
The lasting importance of this summer’s war, I believe, doesn't lie in the war itself. It lies instead in the way the war has been described and responded to abroad, and the way this has laid bare the resurgence of an old, twisted pattern of thought and its migration from the margins to the mainstream of Western discourse – namely hostile obsession with Jews. The key to understanding this resurgence is not to be found among jihadi webmasters, basement conspiracy theorist, or radical activists. It is instead to be found first among the educated and respectable people who populate the international news industry.
CAMERA notes, “Friedman touches on the serious distortions so often detailed by CAMERA, including hugely disproportionate focus on relatively modest faults of the Jewish state and at the same time journalistic neglect of the suffering of millions across the globe and of their tormentors. He makes the key point that, contrary to what might appear to be intense journalistic interest in the plight of the Palestinians, reporters actually do not have real curiosity about the breadth and depth of that community. Only as Palestinians intersect with Israel do they come into view – not for themselves.”
Former BBC correspondent Richard Miron
blogged his agreement, expanding on the ramifications of the botched coverage:
“The media must also account for itself and for its own conduct including apparent omissions and failures in the reporting of the conflict. It must question where reporting may have ended and emoting began, if it held Israel to a standard apart from all others, and why it allowed Hamas a free pass in controlling the flow of information. Its coverage had consequences in fuelling the passions (and hatred) of many on the streets of Paris, London and elsewhere towards Israel, and by extension towards Jews.”
3. Parroting Hamas’ Inflated Civilian Casualty Claims
One of the most pernicious fallacies hyped by news outlets regarding the summer conflict was the claim that “the vast majority” of casualties in Gaza were civilians. Such claims cropped up in the
BBC,
The Los Angeles Times,
CNN and countless others. The statistics were promoted by the Gaza Health Ministry and reported at face value by many journalists, despite the fact that this ministry is run by Hamas and has every incentive to inflate civilian casualty figures to garner world sympathy. Gaza residents were even instructed to
lie about civilian casualties to the press, a critical point almost entirely ignored by the media.
A
CAMERA study published by Time.com and subsequent
itemized Israeli studies showed roughly half the casualties in Gaza were combatants and this documentation helped blunt the rote parroting of Hamas claims. Yet the “vast majority” fallacy was repeated only ten days ago by
Reuters. Israeli tactics
limited civilian casualties to roughly a one-to-one civilian to combatant casualty rate, a remarkable ratio in urban fighting where fighters are entrenched, in bunkers and tunnels and using civilians as human shields.
Coverage of the October 2014 staging of the controversial opera “The Death of Klinghoffer” largely neglected any serious inspection of the libretto and the substantive concerns of many in the public about the cultural promoting of anti-Jewish stereotypes and the inversion of victim and terrorist in the work. Though persuaded to cancel the simulcast of the opera in the wake of a letter-writing campaign prompted by CAMERA, reducing the potential audience by hundreds of thousands, New York’s prestigious Metropolitan Opera nonetheless staged
the production. The editorial boards of the
New York Times and
Boston Globe decried the cancellation of the broadcast.
Hundreds protested at Lincoln Center but
The New York Times continued to
justify the opera.
![AGAIN: The New York Times Dramatically Slants Op-Eds Against Israel]()
The New York Times is nearly seven times more likely to publish opinion columns primarily critical of Israel than those primarily critical of the Palestinians, continuing a pattern of bias previously documented at the newspaper, a
new CAMERA analysis has found. The newspaper is also twice as likely to publish opinion pieces that predominantly support the Palestinian narrative about which side deserves more sympathy or criticism than pieces that predominantly support the Israeli narrative.
New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief Jodi Rudoren does not bother to differentiate between objective reporting and pushing her viewpoint and her
editors seem to prefer advocacy over straightforward journalism.
The hate site Veterans News Now (VNN) has been promoted a number of times on the front page of Yahoo, one of the most visited sites on the internet. VNN is an extremist site whose output includes Holocaust denial and 9/11 conspiracy mongering and is run by Debbie Menon, a fanatical Jew-hater who has approvingly shared text that claims “Jews toy with the American public as a cat toys with a mouse” and that “It is a marvel that the American people do not rise up and drive every Jew out of this country.” James M. Wall, former editor of
The Christian Century, a magazine that caters to liberal (mainline) Protestants in the United States, is also helping to mainstream VNN by having his articles published on the site and by agreeing to serve as an “associate editor” for the publication.
On July 23rd, the medical journal
The Lancet published “
An open letter for the people in Gaza.” In so doing, the journal betrayed
what it calls its “prestigious heritage as one of the world's leading medical journals [which] continues to inspire our authors and editors today as they strive for medical excellence in all that they publish.” There was neither medical nor journalistic excellence in the piece. Instead, it was little more than an anti-Israel screed replete with mischaracterizations, important omissions, flat out falsehoods and unsubstantiated accusations. This is not surprising coming from
The Lancet which has a sad history of publishing anti-Israel pieces, some by the very same authors who wrote this one. CAMERA
has documented a number of these in the past. Richard Horton, the journal’s editor, has also displayed bias
in other publications. Horton dismissed as “irrelevant” the
anti-Israel and anti-Semitic views held by some of the open letter’s authors, some of whom promoted a video featuring a rant by [former KKK Grand Wizard] David Duke, in which he claims that “the Zionist Matrix of Power controls Media, Politics and Banking” and that “some of the Jewish elite practices racism and tribalism to advance their supremacist agenda”. Horton subsequently traveled to Israel and witnessed the close medical collaboration of Jews and Arabs. Seemingly impressed, he said he "deeply regretted" the polarization cause by the
Lancet letter but would not retract it.
8. Jon Stewart’s Unfunny Slant against Israel
![Jon Stewart’s Unfunny Slant against Israel]()
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart grossly mischaracterized the 2014 Gaza conflict. Stewart implied that Israel and Hamas are both happy to be engaged in conflict when, as David Horovitz wrote in the
Times of Israel analysis:
“Hamas is avowedly committed to the destruction of Israel and holds to a perverted interpretation of Islam that claims killing Jews, Christians and non-believing Muslims is your guaranteed path to paradise if you also die in the process. Israelis, by contrast, would much rather live and let live. He ignored the fact that Hamas is a terrorist organization engaged in suicide bombings, individual killings, kidnappings, and incessant rocket fire at Israel. (We left Gaza unilaterally in 2005, under international pressure, hoping that the security risk would be worth it, and that we’d be rewarded with tranquility rather than rocket fire, but I wouldn’t expect Stewart to go back that far.)
“To the extent that viewers – many of them young – rely on Stewart as a legitimate news source his know-nothing attempt at humor could have serious consequences.”
During Operation Protective Edge, CNN’s coverage was, at best, mixed. Some of the lowlights include:
1) In a July 25
interview with Wolf Blitzer, senior Palestinian official Nabil Shaath insisted that one thousand Palestinians in Gaza had been killed at the time, and that “700 of them are women, children and elderly civilians.” Shaath’s number was egregiously off the mark but, as CNN anchors did in many similar interviews, Blitzer passively allowed extreme, baseless charges against Israel to pass without even the slightest challenge.
2) On July 29, “CNN Tonight” broadcast a segment showing a film clip of Hamas terrorists emerging from a tunnel inside Israel. This footage was put out by Hamas, aired on Al Aqsa TV, and showed the terrorists attacking Israeli soldiers. Host Don Lemon questioned correspondent Martin Savidge about the tunnels, asking “Does this [video] make Israel’s point about the danger it faces?”
Savidge replies that “the attacks were on soldiers, which could be considered legitimate targets. So in some ways, this is very compelling in supporting Hamas’ argument that, no, these tunnels are being used to wage a war, not to go after civilians.” In truth, the IDF thwarted an attempted infiltration by Hamas terrorists
into Kibbutz Sufa and
provided footage of the attempted infiltration. The Israeli
Shin Bet exposed a Hamas plot for a massive attack on civilians via the Gaza tunnels to be carried out on the Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.
3) On the CNN Web site, an “informational”
piece stated, “The tunnels have, for some time, also been used as vital supply lines to Gaza, through which food and other necessities have been transported.” CNN must surely know – and must inform viewers – that the tunnels used to smuggle supplies were located on the Egypt‑Gaza border while the tunnels used by terrorists to attack Israel have been dug under the Israel‑Gaza border.
More recently, in coverage of the bloody slaughter of four rabbis during morning prayers by cleaver-wielding Palestinian terrorists, CNN headlines and clips erased Palestinian culpability. Original online headlines and on-screen captions equated the victims with the killers:
- “4 Israelis, 2 Palestinians killed in synagogue attack, Israeli police say”
- “4 Israelis, 2 Palestinians dead in Jerusalem”
In another gaffe, a CNN ticker referred to the attack as a “
deadly attack on Jerusalem mosque.”
![NPR Backsliding into Old Anti-Israel Habits?]()
In a July segment of
On The Media, host Brooke Gladstone concealed essential background about her guest speaker, Philip Weiss, instead presenting him as a mainstream, credible expert with
no substantive challenge whatsoever given to his statements. Gladstone introduced Weiss without any indication of his fringe views, calling him simply the “co-editor of Mondoweiss.net,” failing to inform listeners that Weiss is an avowed anti-Zionist who supports the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign to weaken and dismantle the Jewish state and whose blog feverishly lambasts the Jewish state with one-sided and frequently inaccurate charges. Across the network’s schedule, NPR hosts repeatedly fail to challenge the false claims of anti-Israel guests. Not infrequently, NPR shows
lack a balanced approach,
distort and obscure the facts and
conceal essential information.
Can we expect 2015 to be a better year for Israel and media coverage? While CAMERA is gratified at the many instances of responsible action by members of the media, it’s also obvious there will be numerous challenges!
That’s why CAMERA is dedicated every day to setting the record straight on Israel and Middle East realities.
Click here to visit Camera.org
81 Comments
No issue was more glaringly and indefensibly neglected by most of the media than the often grotesque demonizing of Israel and the Jewish people by the Palestinians and the wider Muslim/Arab world. Instead of reporting the hate-indoctrination prominently and continuously for what it is – a central driving force for violence and fundamental threat to peace – media outlets such as 
Covering the Israel-Gaza conflict, the popular press promoted 
The New York Times is nearly seven times more likely to publish opinion columns primarily critical of Israel than those primarily critical of the Palestinians, continuing a pattern of bias previously documented at the newspaper, a 
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart grossly mischaracterized the 2014 Gaza conflict. Stewart implied that Israel and Hamas are both happy to be engaged in conflict when, as David Horovitz wrote in the 
In a July segment of On The Media, host Brooke Gladstone concealed essential background about her guest speaker, Philip Weiss, instead presenting him as a mainstream, credible expert with 
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Trackbacks/Pings
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http://wattsupwiththat.com/
Former Inhofe staffer Marc Morano:
http://www.climatedepot.com/
Tony Heller:
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/
Steve McIntyre (one of the first to demonstrate that the infamous hockey stick was statistical hogwash):
http://climateaudit.org/
Dr. Roy Spencer, one of the fathers of satellite temperature monitoring networks:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/
http://judithcurry.com/
http://web.archive.org/web/20130621075830/http://www.sciencenews.org/view/download/id/37739/name/CHILLING_POSSIBILITIES
Vol. 173 no. 3992 pp. 138-141
DOI: 10.1126/science.173.3992.13
Author: By Victor Cohn; Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, Nov. 13, 1972
Science: Another Ice Age?
SCIENTISTS AGREE WORLD IS COLDER; But Climate Experts Meeting Here Fail to Agree on Reasons for Change
By WALTER SULLIVAN ();
January 30, 1961
By: Alan Anderson Jr.
Links to each provided through his site linked above.
1970 – Is Mankind Manufacturing a New Ice Age for Itself? (L.A. Times, January 15, 1970)
1970 – New Ice Age May Descend On Man (Sumter Daily Item, January 26, 1970)
1970 – Pollution Prospect A Chilling One (Owosso Argus-Press, January 26, 1970)
1970 – Pollution’s 2-way ‘Freeze’ On Society (Middlesboro Daily News, January 28, 1970)
1970 – Cold Facts About Pollution (The Southeast Missourian, January 29, 1970)
1970 – Pollution Could Cause Ice Age, Agency Reports (St. Petersburg Times, March 4, 1970)
1970 – Pollution Called Ice Age Threat (St. Petersburg Times, June 26, 1970)
1970 – Dirt Will .Bring New Ice Age (The Sydney Morning Herald, October 19, 1970)
1971 – Ice Age Refugee Dies Underground (The Montreal Gazette, Febuary 17, 1971)
1971 – U.S. Scientist Sees New Ice Age Coming (The Washington Post, July 9, 1971)
1971 – Ice Age Around the Corner (Chicago Tribune, July 10, 1971)
1971 – New Ice Age Coming – It’s Already Getting Colder (L.A. Times, October 24, 1971)
1971 – Another Ice Age? Pollution Blocking Sunlight (The Day, November 1, 1971)
1971 – Air Pollution Could Bring An Ice Age (Harlan Daily Enterprise, November 4, 1971)
1972 – Air pollution may cause ice age (Free-Lance Star, February 3, 1972)
1972 – Scientist Says New ice Age Coming (The Ledger, February 13, 1972)
1972 – Scientist predicts new ice age (Free-Lance Star, September 11, 1972)
1972 – British expert on Climate Change says Says New Ice Age Creeping Over Northern Hemisphere (Lewiston Evening Journal, September 11, 1972)
1972 – Climate Seen Cooling For Return Of Ice Age (Portsmouth Times, September 11, 1972)
1972 – New Ice Age Slipping Over North (Press-Courier, September 11, 1972)
1972 – Ice Age Begins A New Assault In North (The Age, September 12, 1972)
1972 – Weather To Get Colder (Montreal Gazette, September 12, 1972)
1972 – British climate expert predicts new Ice Age (The Christian Science Monitor, September 23, 1972)
1972 – Scientist Sees Chilling Signs of New Ice Age (L.A. Times, September 24, 1972)
1972 – Science: Another Ice Age? (Time Magazine, November 13, 1972)
1973 – The Ice Age Cometh (The Saturday Review, March 24, 1973)
1973 – Weather-watchers think another ice age may be on the way (The Christian Science Monitor, December 11, 1973)
1974 – New evidence indicates ice age here (Eugene Register-Guard, May 29, 1974)
1974 – Another Ice Age? (Time Magazine, June 24, 1974)
1974 – 2 Scientists Think ‘Little’ Ice Age Near (The Hartford Courant, August 11, 1974)
1974 – Ice Age, worse food crisis seen (The Chicago Tribune, October 30, 1974)
1974 – Believes Pollution Could Bring On Ice Age (Ludington Daily News, December 4, 1974)
1974 – Pollution Could Spur Ice Age, Nasa Says (Beaver Country Times, December 4, 1974)
1974 – Air Pollution May Trigger Ice Age, Scientists Feel (The Telegraph, December 5, 1974)
1974 – More Air Pollution Could Trigger Ice Age Disaster (Daily Sentinel – December 5, 1974)
1974 – Scientists Fear Smog Could Cause Ice Age (Milwaukee Journal, December 5, 1974)
1975 – Climate Changes Called Ominous (The New York Times, January 19, 1975)
1975 – Climate Change: Chilling Possibilities (Science News, March 1, 1975)
1975 – B-r-r-r-r: New Ice Age on way soon? (The Chicago Tribune, March 2, 1975)
1975 – Cooling Trends Arouse Fear That New Ice Age Coming (Eugene Register-Guard, March 2, 1975)
1975 – Is Another Ice Age Due? Arctic Ice Expands In Last Decade (Youngstown Vindicator – March 2, 1975)
1975 – Is Earth Headed For Another Ice Age? (Reading Eagle, March 2, 1975)
1975 – New Ice Age Dawning? Significant Shift In Climate Seen (Times Daily, March 2, 1975)
1975 – There’s Troublesome Weather Ahead (Tri City Herald, March 2, 1975)
1975 – Is Earth Doomed To Live Through Another Ice Age? (The Robesonian, March 3, 1975)
1975 – The Ice Age cometh: the system that controls our climate (The Chicago Tribune, April 13, 1975)
1975 – The Cooling World (Newsweek, April 28, 1975)
1975 – Scientists Ask Why World Climate Is Changing; Major Cooling May Be Ahead (PDF) (The New York Times, May 21, 1975)
1975 – In the Grip of a New Ice Age? (International Wildlife, July-August, 1975)
1975 – Oil Spill Could Cause New Ice Age (Milwaukee Journal, December 11, 1975)
1976 – The Cooling: Has the Next Ice Age Already Begun? [Book] (Lowell Ponte, 1976)
1977 – Blizzard – What Happens if it Doesn’t Stop? [Book] (George Stone, 1977)
1977 – The Weather Conspiracy: The Coming of the New Ice Age [Book] (The Impact Team, 1977)
1976 – Worrisome CIA Report; Even U.S. Farms May be Hit by Cooling Trend (U.S. News & World Report, May 31, 1976)
1977 – The Big Freeze (Time Magazine, January 31, 1977)
1977 – We Will Freeze in the Dark (Capital Cities Communications Documentary, Host: Nancy Dickerson, April 12, 1977)
1978 – The New Ice Age [Book] (Henry Gilfond, 1978)
1978 – Little Ice Age: Severe winters and cool summers ahead (Calgary Herald, January 10, 1978)
1978 – Winters Will Get Colder, ‘we’re Entering Little Ice Age’ (Ellensburg Daily Record, January 10, 1978)
1978 – Geologist Says Winters Getting Colder (Middlesboro Daily News, January 16, 1978)
1978 – It’s Going To Get Colder (Boca Raton News, January 17, 1978)
1978 – Believe new ice age is coming (The Bryan Times, March 31, 1978)
1978 – The Coming Ice Age (In Search Of TV Show, Season 2, Episode 23, Host: Leonard Nimoy, May 1978)
1978 – An Ice Age Is Coming Weather Expert Fears (Milwaukee Sentinel, November 17, 1978)
1979 – A Choice of Catastrophes – The Disasters That Threaten Our World [Book] (Isaac Asimov, 1979)
1979 – Get Ready to Freeze (Spokane Daily Chronicle, October 12, 1979)
1979 – New ice age almost upon us? (The Christian Science Monitor, November 14, 1979)
Plant Timelapse CO2 Carbon Dioxide Concentration Global Warming Experiment
http://wattsupwiththat.com/climate-fail-files/list-of-excuses-for-the-pause-in-global-warming/
The science is settled!
http://www.c3headlines.com/fabricating-fake-temperatures.html
Thanks!