During the Gaza war this summer, it became clear that one of the most
important aspects of the media-saturated conflict between Jews and Arabs
is also the least covered: the press itself. The Western press has
become less an observer of this conflict than an actor in it, a role
with consequences for the millions of people trying to comprehend
current events, including policymakers who depend on journalistic
accounts to understand a region where they consistently seek, and fail,
to productively intervene.
An essay I wrote for Tablet
on this topic in the aftermath of the war sparked intense interest. In
the article, based on my experiences between 2006 and 2011 as a reporter
and editor in the Jerusalem bureau of the Associated Press, one of the
world’s largest news organizations, I pointed out the existence of a
problem and discussed it in broad terms. Using staffing numbers, I
illustrated the disproportionate media attention devoted to this
conflict relative to other stories, and gave examples of editorial
decisions that appeared to be driven by ideological considerations
rather than journalistic ones. I suggested that the cumulative effect
has been to create a grossly oversimplified story—a kind of modern
morality play in which the Jews of Israel are displayed more than any
other people on earth as examples of moral failure. This is a thought
pattern with deep roots in Western civilization.
Read more http://m.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/11/how-the-media-makes-the-israel-story/383262/
