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.

 

Comments are closed.