Please consider supporting our mission to help everyone better understand and become smarter about the Jewish world. A gift of any amount helps keep our platform free of advertising and accessible to all.
This is a guest essay written by Nachum Kaplan of the newsletter, “Moral Clarity.”
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
The mainstream media’s refusal to change coverage when faced with criticism proves its anti-Israel bias, and that journalistic standards have plunged so far that we are still yet to hear them hit the ground.
Since the Israel-Hamas war began on October 7, 2023, news outlets have reported as though it is a conflict between two comparable sides.
In the name of “balance” — a mysterious thing reporters chase, but never seem to find — they have reported as though the democratic State of Israel and the jihadist terror group Hamas are equivalent. Only someone who has had a giant octopus suck out their brain’s moral center (the orbital and ventromedial prefrontal cortices) could think they are equivalent.
Foreign journalists could just be oafs who have no idea about what they are writing. I do not think this is the case but, having spent a career in international journalism, including as a foreign correspondent, I do not dismiss it either.
However, it is something worse. “Woke” whackos are sitting in newsrooms and keeping real journalists out of jobs. Modern “Woke” culture requires not liking Jews and Israel — and it seems to come easy to them. These reporters are responsible for grossly misinforming people around the world about the war, the history, what is going on, what it means, and who is responsible.
Foreign media’s treating of Hamas as credible, which is as absurd as it sounds, is why Hamas has been so effective in spreading its propaganda, lies, fake data, and jihadism. “Progressive” news outlets, in particular, have been so anti-Israel that they cannot abide a narrative in which the so-called “Palestinians” have done wrong, and Israel and Jews are the victims. Yet, in this war, the facts show this to be exactly the case.
Many people, me included, have been screaming about this since the October 7th attacks, but editors-in-chief have noted our concerns and made no changes. They continue to flood the world’s broadband cables with nonsense. Tellingly, they have made no effort to revamp their staff training, hone their reporting, improve their skills, update their style guides, or rethink their coverage — despite the benefit of 15 months of feedback and suggestions that would improve their stories.
This is because they have no interest in improving or reporting accurately; they want to write anti-Israel stories, and they are doing an excellent job of it. Legacy media then has the temerity to wonder why public trust in it is at record lows, as if they have not earned it with every lie they have reported. This is not bad journalism; it is malice.
“Progressives” are overrepresented among journalists and tend to come out of university liberal arts programs, the faculties of which are scandalously racist, antisemitic, pro-terror, and proud of it.
These journalists know perfectly well the difference between civilian hostages and mass-murdering terrorists. They know that if they reported just the facts, Hamas would look like the monster it is, and Israelis would look like their victims. They avoid this because their aim is to undermine Israel’s legitimacy and smear the Jewish state because it is, well, Jewish.
It is simple to understand, even though it is hard to accept that antisemitism is common and acceptable again.
Examples of appalling false equivalence abound in coverage of the hostage-ceasefire deal. Consider: Hostages are prisoners and not equivalent. Some media claimed that the ceasefire involved a “prisoner exchange.” It did not. Hamas is releasing civilians it abducted as hostages in the October 7th pogrom, while Israel is releasing convicted terrorists (not detainees), including mass murders, who are all but certain to murder more Jews in terror acts.
Being unable to distinguish between civilians and terrorists is hardly a mark of genius or moral clarity. False equivalence has infected coverage since the war began on October 7, 2023, when news outlets had paroxysms over whether they should call terrorists “terrorists” in case telling the truth prejudiced coverage and hurt the terrorists’ feelings. Everyone knows that, in many of today’s newsrooms, feelings matter more than facts.
It is not about prejudice or ideology. It is about facts, and the antiquated idea that words have meanings. Terror is a tactic, not an ideology, and it is indisputable that Hamas uses terror as a tactic, so they are terrorists. This is a fact whether one agrees with their ideology or not.
Here is a radical suggestion: How about anyone who does not want to be called a terrorist not engage in terror? In the meantime, the rest of us will continue to call a spade a f*cking shovel.
Leadership teams in many newsrooms have been so worried about their reporting being “balanced” that they have done all kinds of metal contortionism to pretend that Hamas terrorists attacking Israel and uniformed Israeli soldiers defending Israel are equivalent.
This often gets written up as “fighting broke out” — as though wars are like inexplicable acts of spontaneous combustion. Factual reporting, which older folks may remember, should state which party started it, which party responded, and verify the information.
If Israel was the aggressor, the media would present this with more bells and whistles than the latest Tesla. It is only because Hamas is the aggressor, and boastfully so, that we must endure this false equivalence and irritating reporting in the passive voice.
Reporter, editors, and producers who cannot get something this fundamental correct should consider an alternative career, perhaps as sappers.
Also not equivalent are civilians killed purposely and accidentally. Hamas targets Israeli civilians, while Israel tries to kill only terrorists but does sometimes kill civilians accidentally, which is inevitable because Hamas has used its own people as human shields to ensure high casualty numbers and thus international pressure on Israel. Hamas, it seems, is the only army in history that wants to kill its own people.
Personally, when I encounter someone who cannot make this desperately simple distinction — and declares these deaths as “the same thing” or “all the same” — I flee. I do not talk to muttonheads or bad-faith actors who have no right to be in the conversation.
Another favorite false equivalence trick concerns the way reporters quote religious and political extremists from both sides in the name of balance. This is deceitful. There are extremists on both sides, but the Jewish extremists are fringe voices, while the entire Hamas movement is extreme, and by its own definitions no less.
It seems journalistic fundamentals have been lost. The starting point for good reporting should not be balance, but facts. Facts and truth have no political allegiance. There is an old journalistic saying: “If one person says it is raining and another person says it is dry, it’s the journalist’s job to look out the window and find out which is true.”
Most people would define balanced reporting as not taking sides, and presenting both, or all sides, of a story. Yet, it is far more complicated than that. What if both sides are not equally credible? What if one side has a history of lying? What if one side is wrong? Should flat-earthers be quoted in the name of balance? What if both sides are extreme? Would quoting former Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin on the Left and former Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler on the Right constitute a balanced story?
Is Hamas, an unaccountable terror group, really as credible as Israel’s democratically elected government, which must answer to the Israeli electorate and the Middle East’s only free press? Hamas has an incentive to lie; that is its strategy. Israel has no such incentive because it would be held accountable.
Good reporting quotes credible data and people from different sides, but they do not treat them as equivalent when they are patently not.
Noting whether a news story draws false equivalencies is a quick way to assess the reporter and/or media outlet’s biases, so you can decide quickly whether you want to lose 10 minutes consuming drivel and getting dumber, or go outside and enjoy the day.
When the use of the word “terrorist” was banned by the Obama administration, and that terrorist shot up his co-workers, Obama insisted it be called “workplace violence” For years, the word, “militants” have been used to replace “terrorists”, another lie used nonstop.
In 1984 by George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair), jobs at the Ministry of Truth include:
-rewriting history
-generating propaganda
-working with media and entertainment.
The Ministry's primary goal is to keep the public obedient and Big Brother in power.