From Arutz Shiva:
A former Israel Broadcasting Authority news editor admits: “We slanted the news towards a withdrawal from Lebanon – because we had sons there.”
Speaking at the Haifa Radio Conference on Monday, several former and current news broadcasters on Voice of Israel and Army Radio discussed the tremendous influence they nearly all agreed they had on Israel’s national agenda.
Dr. Chanan Naveh, who edited the Israel Broadcasting Authority radio’s news desk in late 1990’s and early 2000’s, was particularly bombastic about his pervasive reach: “The morning audience, stuck in traffic jams or at work, is simply captive—they’re ours.” He also mentioned, with no regrets, two examples in which he and his colleagues made a concerted effort to change public opinion:
“Three broadcasters - Carmela Menashe, Shelly Yechimovich [now a Labor party Knesset Member - ed.], and I—pushed in every way possible the withdrawal from Lebanon towards 2000. In our newsroom, three of the editors had sons in Lebanon, and we took it upon ourselves as a mission - possibly not stated - to get the IDF out of Lebanon… I have no doubt that we promoted an agenda of withdrawal that was a matter of public dispute.”
At this point, Army Radio broadcaster Golan Yochpaz interrupted, “In my opinion, that is just super-problematic—super-problematic.” Naveh did not miss a beat and said, “Correct, I’m admitting it, I’m not apologizing, I’m just saying this is what happened. It came from our guts because of the boys in Lebanon, this is what we did and I’m not sorry… I am very proud that we had a part in getting of our sons out of Lebanon.”
It is widely accepted that the withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000 under then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak and the lack of attention paid to the northern border since then led to the Second Lebanon War of last summer and its accompanying 160 military and civilian casualties.
Naveh’s boast came towards the end of the panel discussion and was not widely addressed. However, just seconds later, retired Supreme Court Justice Dalia Dorner, the president of the Israel Press Council, summed up and said that the journalists must show courage and not allow outside influences to affect their ability to influence public opinion:
“You determine the daily agenda and you have the power; the problem is that in your profession, it can’t be dealt with properly and ethically without civil courage… You have the power, so use it also to ensure that there is freedom of speech - of course, with the limitation that you must act ethically and not create hostile public opinion, because there is nothing that affects freedom of speech more than hostile public opinion.”
[my emphasis]
I’ve spilled thousands of words—hundreds of which were actually even necessary—on the media’s ability to control civic narratives by providing their framework and then reinforcing only those nodal points that help propel the narrative in the “correct” thematic direction. Which, I’ve long asserted, would not be so problematic were we living in a culture that didn’t promote the idea of an “objective” or “neutral” press while simultaneously asserting the impossibility of “objectivity”—an observation which is then used to rationalize the lazy relativism that passes for contemporary nuance.
But the fact is, we are a culture that has been taught to rely on an “objective” press. Which is why manipulation by the media—even when couched in the more self-righteous and self-satisfied language of “teaching the lesson” of the “story”—is so dangerously illiberal: it effectively creates a biased playing field for an electorate that is charged with weighing and assimilating information in order to make informed decisions with respect to public policy (and, by extension, the elected officials who will enact those policies).
Still—and though I’ve known it to be going on—it is astounding to hear journalists in a democracy admit to it.
It is the height of arrogance, and the reason we need to remain ever-diligent in our consideration of the press. Too, it is for precisely this reason that we need to be extra wary of those who would mock the very idea that journalists (well, the ones who don’t work for FOXNews, anyway) could be anything more than principled advocates of the BIG TRUTHS.
Because these apologists—those who give cover to advocacy journalism masquerading as objective reporting—are more dangerous than the journalists themselves, if only because they are more numerous, and because they lend credence to the narratives they wish to be true rather than to those that are more empirically grounded.
It is a form of tyranny of the majority—with the “majority” here replaced by “the most committed to willing their way to power.”
Of course, this admission took place in Israel—and so represents an assault on truth likely peculiar only to the scheming Jews.
Which, thank Christ for that!
(h/t CJ Burch)
I wonder when the press got this mantle of objectivity laid upon them. Way back, when everyone who had a printing press would crank out a paper of some sort, everyone knew that the press was slanted. My parents knew the local paper was slanted.
Somehow, we need to average person to start realizing that the news they hear on television, from any source, is probably biased. Ditto with newspapers.
Too bad this won’t happen. Most people just don’t care, and most of the time I can’t blame them. It takes a lot of energy to filter the wheat from the chaff these days.
Given the hell-in-a-handbasket trajectory of broadcast news and major newspapers, agenda journalism of their ilk will be a quaint relic before too long. Like, say, a tie-dyed t-shirt.
Enough on the serious stuff, already – aren’t you gonna have any cruel fun with the breakup of Laurie David’s marriage?
walked66 – as in, Larry and his money have walked.
When the elitists of the MSM place their own priorities above that of the people’s elected representatives – who are supposed to set policy – is it time to regulate the press to ensure that reporting is indeed fair?
Scary, yes. Possible? Probably not. Advisable? Definitely not. But it’s headed that way, anyway; when the enemies of liberty aid and abet enemies for personal agenda, they are founding the next context in which the enemies have become the bosses.
Oh, well. Syria will attack Israel this summer, I’ve read (although Newsmax is always questionable). If that happens, all these considerations will become luxuries.
Ever since the media slipped up and allowed their viewpoints on election choices to be polled (and general newsroom political preferences, at that) and showed how tilted leftward the playing field was, they’ve been cursing their candor and clamming up ever since, refusing to comment on their own personal political views on the record. Hugh Hewitt has interviewed a bunch of these guys, and they’re just refusing to even discuss the subject anymore and give up their cloak of objectivity that they think disguises them.
Jeff,
A ranching perspective from out West: as you describe them, media controls on “civic narratives” seem to work a lot like the fence-posts of a cow-pen.
(Shoot! This whole post-modern deconstruction-ist enterprise is beginning to reek like an animal husbandry experiment gone terribly wrong
The main “nodes,” or supra-narratives, are emphasized and repeated to proscribe a discursive confine (ex. Illegitimate president,” “Bush Lied,” “Illegal War,” “America=Torturer,” “No connection between Saddam and AQ”).
Then the space between the posts is crosslaced with corroborrating meta-narratives which, like barbed-wire, use negative reinforcements (usually derogatory labels or covert intra-patronage harrassments) to jab, or coerce, the beast to accept the terms of its enclosure.
It helps, too, if the beast is already habituated to discursive confines, as most union members, public secondary and high-school students, members of academic humanities-deparments and drug addicts usually are. For these pre-institutionalized subjects only the supra-narratives, properly repeated, are required to fence them in.
The end game, it seems, is to yolk this captive herd to perform works that the manipulating media want done, like, um…creating “One-World Government,” granting voting-rights to transgender hamsters, or [fill in any editorialist’s special pet-interests here].
The results are getting bizarre, kinda like that kid’s 7-legged piglet at the Clallam County Fair back in ‘82. The 4-H guy said the kid fed it’s mother nothing but horse-manure its whole life!
Garbage in. Garbage out. Seems about right.
It’s always an interesting neighborhood. Here’s the latest twist:
It reminds me of this old quote from a scumball, may he rest in pieces:
That was 4 years ago, and things are getting worse, not better. I’m calling Quagmire.
Regulation of speech, in any form, should always be completely unacceptable (this doesn’t mean no consequence for libel or yelling fire in a crowded hall when there is none).
I’ve long thought that there should be a federal TV channel that must be carried by all cable/satelite broadcasters at cost (not free)and broadcast in major metropolitan areas.
The main charter is to deliver the news, as balanced as possible and to be independent of the current administration. It should be fairly easy to challenge anything reported to some sort of omsbudsman’s office. Pay bonuses should be tied to a LOW number of successful challenges to unbiased reporting.
I know it all sounds way to impossible to work the kinks out of it, but it would be nice to have a truely neutral news agency. Something like this has the advantage that it doesn’t regulate anyone else’s speech. People with biases and agendas can shout it down, but at least it’s out there. Yeah, call me naive, I still haven’t ENTIRELY given up hope that it’s not too late to save the American experiment.
I won’t call you naive, I just hope you are right.
Of course, being a geezer, I sound very much like the geezers I knew growing up. Then, however, we didn’t have Islamism as it is today.
Regards.
I read a book a few years back called “Bias” by some guy named Bernie….Goldstien I believe. I might have the name wrong. He worked for the MSM… Dan Rather if I remember correctly. Well, one of the network talking heads, I get them confused as they all look the same. (Is it racist to say that?)
Anyway, it breaks down the media bias and the reasons for it. Basically, that not all people in the newsrooms deliberatly try and slant the news, though it does happen. They unknowingly do it by filtering everything through their liberal or politically correct filter. I agree with that to some extent. Since Bush got into office they are filtering everything through thier BDS filter as well. I have stared to wonder if it getting more deliberate these days with the MSM.
But now this;
They are proud? How many lives did they sacrifice to save their own sons? Where is the honor in that? Pathetic! And the arrogance is as thick as Rosie O’Donnells belly. I am blown away by that.
Jeff, I know lately you have struggled with the future of PW. I have tried to come up with encouraging things to say, mostly fluff along the lines of,”your the best and funny too”. This, right here, is why you need to keep going. People need to get the striaght poop. They are not going to get it from Keith Olberman and his ilk.
I think what bothers me the most about this is the willingness to trade the long-term security of many for the short-term comfort of few. Not too different than what we see here.
Pablo,
I raise ya with a “Bush’s Mess-in-Palestine,” two “No Plan For Success’,” and a whopping “Discern the intent of the voter.”
Top that!
I’d throw in a “Squandered Palestinian goodwill after 9/11,” but I’m all out.
Hell, didn’t we used to have a troll who wanted to know what was our plan for failure?