'A Culture of Lying': Why the Media Is (Still) Getting Israel Ridiculously Wrong
"The news media created a charade that serves their own interests, but misleads the public."
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It’s 2014, one year after I moved from Los Angeles to Tel Aviv, and a mini-war breaks out between Israel and Gaza — the first time I experienced such an event.
As someone with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a professional media background, I quickly started paying close attention to how much time and effort the international press gives Israel, and the ways it portrays Jewish-Arab tussles to the world.
One article from The New Yorker described the events by dedicating one sentence each to the horrors in Nigeria and Ukraine, four sentences to the crazed génocidaires of ISIS, and the rest of the article — 30 sentences total — to Israel and Gaza.1
It became clear that one of the most important aspects of the media-saturated conflict between Jews and Arabs is the press themselves.
The media has become less a reporter of this conflict and more of a supporting 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,” wrote Matti Friedman, an Israeli journalist and author.2
But, before we get into all the wrinkles about why the media is (still) getting Israel ridiculously wrong, let’s take a look at some uncomfortable truths about the media themselves: