Tag: Media

Old Dog Thought- Dutton Demands the Labelling of Cucumbers be Changed

Fighting Fake News with REAL, 2/10/24, Media, Taliban Laws

Columnists quit Jewish Chronicle over Gaza stories based on ‘fabrications’


Columnists quit Jewish Chronicle over Gaza stories based on ‘fabrications’

How Corporate News Has Tried to Numb Americans to the Horrors in Gaza

How Corporate News Has Tried to Numb Americans to the Horrors in Gaza

4 Dead in Mass Shooting in Georgia dominated Media; 42 dead in Mass Bombardment in Gaza Ignored

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The ongoing carnage wrought on ordinary Americans by this country’s bizarrely permissive gun laws dominated the cable news networks for […]

4 Dead in Mass Shooting in Georgia dominated Media; 42 dead in Mass Bombardment in Gaza Ignored

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Juan Cole

Media feasts on Peter Dutton’s monotonous mumblings

Hands up if you’re tired of hearing what Peter Dutton has to say.

Media feasts on Peter Dutton’s monotonous mumblings

Zionist bullying distorts politics, media and education


In addition to physical or psychological abuse, bullies use power in relationships to pressure others to adopt their world views. The bullying may appear in letters, lobbying, radio and television interviews, secret meetings with politicians and business leaders and even in legal action against those who criticise the bullies’ points of view.

Zionist bullying distorts politics, media and education

Why Isn’t the Media Reporting on Trump’s Growing Dementia?

A few weeks ago, at a rally in Nevada, Trump told his followers that boat manufacturers are now required to use electric engines. He claimed that someone at a boat company in South Carolina told him, “It’s a problem, sir. They want us to make all-electric boats.” (There is no such requirement.)

Trump then said the South Carolinian warned him “the boat is so heavy it can’t float. Also, it can’t go fast because of the weight.”

Trump continued:

“So I said, ‘Let me ask you a question,’ and [the South Carolinian] said, ‘Nobody ever asked this question,’ and it must be because of MIT, my relationship to MIT — very smart. He goes, I say, ‘What would happen if the boat sank from its weight? And you’re in the boat and you have this tremendously powerful battery and the battery is now underwater and there’s a shark that’s approximately 10 yards over there?’

Why Isn’t the Media Reporting on Trump’s Growing Dementia? by Robert Reich | July 8, 2024 – 6:23am | permalink

» article continues…

— from Robert Reich’s Substack

Israel’s Most Powerful Supporter

Without a sympathetic media, Israel’s powerful military would be next to useless in its attempts to ethnically cleanse Gaza. It relies on crucial Western support…

Rupert Murdoch: Israel’s Most Powerful Supporter

July 6, 2024 Editor

What They’re Really Saying When They Talk About Trump! – » The Australian Independent Media Network

Donald Trump and Scott Morrison making thumbs up gestures

According to some sections of the media, when Labor are in power they are responsible for every bad thing that happens. But, of course, there is a consistency because when the Coalition is returned to power, Labor are still responsible for every bad thing that happens!

Source: What They’re Really Saying When They Talk About Trump! – » The Australian Independent Media Network

Tony Greenstein’s Blog-We are Living in an Orwellian Dystopia Where Lies are the Truth & the Truth is a Lie

    The cars burn out as a result of Israeli Apache missile strikes

Today we see this playing out in Israel’s war on the Palestinians. Genocide is called Israel’s ‘right to defend itself’ and ‘terrorism’ is the Palestinians’ resistance. If anyone is the terrorist it is the Israeli state whose military has destroyed every university, nearly every hospital and virtually all civil society infrastructure such as churches, mosques and schools.

Source: We are Living in an Orwellian Dystopia Where Lies are the Truth & the Truth is a Lie

Primetime genocide apologists and the annihilation of Gaza – The Shot

Yesterday, the Australian Senate voted 56-12 to condemn the use of the phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, because it allegedly “opposes Israel’s right to exist, and is frequently used by those who seek to intimidate Jewish Australians via acts of antisemitism”. And yet there was no similar motion condemning (or even adequately acknowledging) the ongoing slaughter that stands in opposition to Palestine’s right to exist. If your suss-O-meter isn’t firing yet, it is well and truly broken.

“If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing”. Today, you will not find a clearer example of the phenomenon Macolm X was referring to than Israel’s wholesale slaughter of Gaza and the mesmerising cover provided by truth-discordant imperial apologia we sometimes call “the news”. 

Reject it all. It is swallowing your humanity. 

Source: Primetime genocide apologists and the annihilation of Gaza – The Shot

Cable News Viewers Have a Skewed Attitude Toward Gaza War, Survey Finds

A man carries a large sign to the Palestinian rights protest in Washington on Saturday, November 4, 2023. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Asked if Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza, cable news viewers said no by a 34-32 margin. All other news consumers said Israel is committing genocide, including print (36-33), YouTube (41-31), and social media users, who agree with the statement by a 44 to 19 percent margin. People aged 18 to 29, meanwhile, have similar views (48-21 percent), while those over 65 say by a 47 to 21 percent plurality that Israel isn’t committing genocide.

Source: Cable News Viewers Have a Skewed Attitude Toward Gaza War, Survey Finds

Cable News Viewers Have a Skewed Attitude Toward Gaza War, Survey Finds

Only social media users said they’d be more likely to support a candidate who supported Palestinians (33-19 percent). Just 15 percent of cable news viewers said the same, even though 31 percent of cable viewers agreed that Israel was committing genocide against Palestinians.

Source: Cable News Viewers Have a Skewed Attitude Toward Gaza War, Survey Finds

Israeli media’s inevitable hysteria over U.S. campus protests

Journalists reports outside a protest encampment for Palestine at Columbia University, New York, April 23, 2024. (Pamela Drew/CC BY-NC 2.0 DEED)

It’s been a long time since we’ve seen news coverage as shallow as the Israeli media’s coverage of the pro-Palestine demonstrations on college campuses across the United States in recent days.

In a segment that aired on April 24, for example, Channel 12’s Yuna Leibzon showed footage of the protests outside Columbia University’s campus: viewers saw a handful of people chanting that Tel Aviv should be burned to the ground, and a lone masked protester holding a sign bearing an antisemitic statement. The implication was clear: these individuals are representative of all the protesters, and the entire pro-Palestine movement is illegitimate.

Neria Kraus, Channel 13’s correspondent in New York, also reported from Columbia’s campus. In her coverage, she used three terms interchangeably: “pro-Palestinian demonstrations,” “anti-Israel demonstrations,” and “antisemitic demonstrations.” The message, again, was clear: to be pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel is to be antisemitic.

smearing the student demonstrations on U.S. campuses as one big frenzy of antisemitism is unserious journalism. 

Serious journalism would provide the context, which the Israeli media has failed to do since October 7 — and, it must be said, a long time before that.

Source: Israeli media’s inevitable hysteria over U.S. campus protests

Why buying cocaine and sex workers for Australia’s highest profile rapist wasn’t a brilliant idea – The Shot

It is only through the meeting of detached cruelty and monumental ineptitude that Seven and NewsCorp defied such excellent odds and backed one of the one percent of rapists that didn’t get away with it. 

Source: Why buying cocaine and sex workers for Australia’s highest profile rapist wasn’t a brilliant idea – The Shot

World’s biggest democracy expels ABC journalist but little noise in Australia – Pearls and Irritations

A closeup of an Indian business visa vignette inside a passport. Image:iStock/xrrr

One wonders how the Australian mainstream media will react to the news that India, the so-called biggest democracy in the world, has thrown out ABC correspondent Avani Dias from the country.

Dias was denied a visa after her program Sikhs, Spies and Murder: Investigating India’s alleged hit on foreign soil was aired on the ABC ‘s weekly Foreign Correspondent slot.

Source: World’s biggest democracy expels ABC journalist but little noise in Australia – Pearls and Irritations

Old Dog Thought- Has anyone read the 10 Commandments lately? Zionists, Capitalists, Racists & Religious Zealots certainly haven’t

Fighting Fake News with REAL, 22/4/24, Truth in Humor, Cruelty of Language, Media, Australia’s Shame,

Opinion | For Mainstream Media, the Extreme Gore in Gaza Isn’t ‘Brutal’ | Common Dreams

A parody of The New York Times is called "The New York War Crimes"

But with military campaigns waged by the U.S. and its allies, media’s humanitarian concerns tend to fade. The uneven deployment of “brutal” seems like a clear case of Western media not just shielding a U.S. ally from justifiable criticism, but actively inciting public hatreds of Palestinians by portraying their violence as exceptionally inhumane despite paling in comparison to that of their colonial oppressor.

Source: Opinion | For Mainstream Media, the Extreme Gore in Gaza Isn’t ‘Brutal’ | Common Dreams

New York Times Brass Moves to Staunch Leaks Over Gaza Coverage

gettyimages-1865892031-e1713393760641

Instead of issuing a correction, the Times simply updated its “Screams Without Words” with the bracketed revelation that an entire section of its article was incorrect.

Source: New York Times Brass Moves to Staunch Leaks Over Gaza Coverage

Chris Hedges: Requiem for The New York Times – ScheerPost

Source: Chris Hedges: Requiem for The New York Times – ScheerPost

Israel news being reported by unqualified journalists

In an era of misinformation and media bias, news from media sources about the war in the Middle East needs to be carefully scrutinised. Rosemary Sorensen reports.

Source: Israel news being reported by unqualified journalists

Israel’s Shadow Over Free Speech: The Truth Behind the TikTok Ban Bill – ScheerPost

The chief architect behind the TikTok bill is Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher, whose biggest donor is AIPAC

In December 2023, MintPress investigated The 10/7 Project, a new Zionist lobby entity founded by AIPAC, ADL, AJC, JFNA, and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. The outfit was initially intended to be a very public affair, promoting human interest stories and atrocity propaganda generated by Operation Al-Aqsa Flood in the media while elevating its eponymous date to 9/11 levels in the American public mind.

The 10/7 Project has, to say the least, failed in this mission not least because citizen activists and journalists have challenged Israeli propaganda and exposed the realities of the Gaza genocide, with such devastating effect, on platforms such as TikTok. As such, it is only to be expected that the same lobbying organizations behind this effort have redoubled their quest for narrative control. If the information war cannot be won fairly, the only option is to nobble all opposition via straight-up censorship.

Source: Israel’s Shadow Over Free Speech: The Truth Behind the TikTok Ban Bill – ScheerPost

Shielding the Nation Starving Gaza

This doesn’t typically happen as a result of any grand monolithic conspiracy; it’s mostly just the natural consequence of having all the major news platforms controlled by wealthy and powerful people who each have a vested interest in manufacturing consent for the status quo upon which their wealth and power are premised. 

The oligarchs control the media, and they hire the executives who run the media, and the executives hire the editors who write the headlines and guide the reporters to report a certain way, and this gives rise to a system where everyone working for the outlet conducts themselves in a way that just so happens to suit the powerful people on top.

Then before you know it you’ve got editors at The New York Times — a paper that’s been published by the same family for over a century — packaging a story about starvation caused by an Israeli siege to look like it’s a story about an innocent crop failure.

Odds are nobody told them to do that; they just learned over the years that that’s how you rise to the top in an outlet like The New York Times.

Source: Shielding the Nation Starving Gaza

Right-wing media have spent months disparaging liberal and anti-Zionist Jews to undercut support for Palestinians | Media Matters for America

Ari Fleischer on Fox News

Prominent right-wing media figures have spent months deploying antisemitic tropes and accusations to disparage liberal and anti-Zionist Jews who have questioned or opposed Israel’s military offensive in Gaza.

Source: Right-wing media have spent months disparaging liberal and anti-Zionist Jews to undercut support for Palestinians | Media Matters for America

Old Dog Thought- Zionists were terrorists long before Israel. Lines on a map haven’t changed anything

Fighting Fake News with REAL 21/3/24, Australia Must, What Biden Must Do, Israel grabs 16%, Children Scarred, Reject Biden, Ethnic Cleansing, Trump, Asylum Seekers, The Shovel, Climate Records, Media,

A ‘no-go zone’ for Jews? The making of a moral panic in London

Jews march within a large rally for a ceasefire in Gaza in central London, November 11, 2023. (Alisdare Hickson/CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED)

“London’s antisemitism shame” was the headline splashed across the front page of the free commuter daily The Evening Standard on March 5, accompanied by a warning that “Jewish families plan to flee capital amid rising tide of hatred.” “London is now a no-go zone for Jews,” proclaimed the front page of the right-wing broadsheet The Daily Telegraph three days later. The liberal online news site The Independent went even further, asserting that British Jews are considering leaving the country altogether, because it “feels like Nazi Germany.”

Source: A ‘no-go zone’ for Jews? The making of a moral panic in London

Caitlin Johnstone: How the Imperial Media Report on an Israeli Massacre

One wonders if this war will continue in time for Israel to ceasefire at Trump’s request?

The only good thing about what’s happening in Gaza is that it’s waking westerners up to the fact that everything they’ve been told about their society, their media and their world is a lie. Cracks are appearing in the illusion, and those of us who care about truth, peace and justice need to help draw attention to them. From there, real change becomes a genuine possibility.

Source: Caitlin Johnstone: How the Imperial Media Report on an Israeli Massacre

Amanpour Confronts CNN Brass About “Double Standards” on Israel Coverage

Los Angeles Economy

Amanpour expressed “real distress” over Israel stories being changed, while other staffers described a climate that is hostile to Arab journalists

Source: Amanpour Confronts CNN Brass About “Double Standards” on Israel Coverage

BBC Hamas ‘Exposé’ Obscured Israel’s Genocide

Israel was put on trial for committing genocide in Gaza last month by the judges of the International Court of Justice.

So far Western governments have not only done nothing to intervene but are actively assisting in that slaughter. They have supplied arms and turned a blind eye to Israel’s denial of humanitarian aid.

The people of Gaza are slowly being starved to death.

But it was at this moment, as the world watches in horror, that the BBC’s chief news investigation programme, Panorama, chose not to scrutinise that massacre of tens of thousands of Palestinians but to hand the microphone over to the very military doing the killing.

 

Source: BBC Hamas ‘Exposé’ Obscured Israel’s Genocide

Humanising war victims: The media’s shameful coverage of the Gaza conflict – Pearls and Irritations

Silence is Complicity Graffiti on the concrete wall built by Israel

 

But guess what? Almost all these victims are Israeli, almost none are Palestinian, with The Australian running around 40 stories in the paper humanising Israeli victims and only three doing the same for Palestinian victims, even though 20 times as many Palestinians have been killed in the conflict. And even though almost two million are homeless and hungry.

We also approached News Corp for comment, along with several questions for the editor of The Australian, but we received no response.

We think their coverage has been shameful.

Source: Humanising war victims: The media’s shameful coverage of the Gaza conflict – Pearls and Irritations

Thomas Friedman and Journalism’s Red Lines on Israel–Palestine

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - NOVEMBER 06: Thomas L. Friedman, Author and Columnist, The New York Times leads a Task Force session during 2019 New York Times Dealbook on November 06, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Mike Cohen/Getty Images for The New York Times)

Many people are unhappy about some recent pensées from New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, headlined “Understanding the Middle East Through the Animal KingdomOpens in a new tab.” Friedman explains that “Iran is to geopolitics what a recently discovered species of parasitoid wasp is to nature.” He informs us that Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, and Iraq are like caterpillars in which this wasp lays its eggs, and those eggs are the “Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas and Kataib Hezbollah.”

This is imperialistic blather straight out of the 19th century, except horribly written — imagine Rudyard Kipling after an anvil fell on his head. But the column is useful because it reconnects us to a 1982 incident that illustrates how, when it comes to the Middle East and Israel, the management of the Times has sometimes been to the right of Friedman.

The same thing is true for the Times itself. Somehow it is simultaneously the worst and best newspaper on earth. On the one hand, it runs crimes against human cognition about the insects living in the Middle East. On the other hand, it also regularly produces brilliant investigative reporting, sometimes even about IsraelOpens in a new tab

This complexity is extremely cold comfort for the people who are brutalized by the U.S. and its allies. Nonetheless, it’s important to comprehend if we’re trying to understand reality — something we should want to do, no matter how difficult and frustrating it can be.

 

Source: Thomas Friedman and Journalism’s Red Lines on Israel–Palestine

Toxic effects of censorship on Gaza – Pearls and Irritations

Bandaged mouth of a man with the word censored in English

They are being killed arrested and targeted in any IDF’s radius of operation.

Doctors, Teachers, Journalists, Academics are being disciplined, hauled before disciplinary bodies and even sacked for criticising the slaughter in Gaza and, most heinous sin of all, for mentioning genocide. Arrayed against those professionals is a lobby promoting the notion that criticism of Israeli government policies is anti-Semitic, hence the need to censor commentary about the massacres in Gaza.

Source: Toxic effects of censorship on Gaza – Pearls and Irritations

UNRWA claims: UK halts aid to UN agency over allegation staff helped Hamas attack – BBC News

Trucks carrying humanitarian aid for Palestinians that entered Gaza through Rafah border crossing on the Egyptian border arrive at the UNRWA warehouse, in Deir al Balah,

British Justice applied to “he said, she said” allegations by Israel who’d been severely chastised by the ICJ for blocking aid to Gaza and told to stop. So it seems to have put pressure on their Western allies to cut aid rather than help increase it as the ICJ directed. Israel is making fools of governments and using them to assist in Gazan’s suffering. In the meantime, Doctors, Medical Professionals, UN Aid agencies, Reporters, Academics, and teachers have all had their turn being called Hamas operatives, antisemites, Jew-haters, and rapists and targeted for elimination. Meanwhile, Israel trains conscripts and brainwashes its children claiming they are being maligned for protecting Israelis dining in restaurants from genocide.

“One million displaced people are currently taking refuge in and around UNRWA buildings. They are the ones who will suffer as a result of this decision,” said Mr Gunness, adding: “The curtailing of UNRWA services will also destabilise the region at a time when Western governments are trying to contain a regional conflagration.”

“The UK is appalled by allegations that UNRWA staff were involved in the 7 October attack against Israel, a heinous act of terrorism that the UK Government has repeatedly condemned,” the UK Foreign Office said in a statement.

“The UK is temporarily pausing any future funding of UNWRA whilst we review these concerning allegations,” it added.

Source: UNRWA claims: UK halts aid to UN agency over allegation staff helped Hamas attack – BBC News

Israel’s Victory in Gaza turns Pyrrhic as a Majority of Youths and Democrats brand it Genocidal

ITV and Sky TV are playing catch up, however. TikTok, run by a Chinese company, freely allows video from Gaza to be shared and to go viral, and Americans thirty and under have therefore seen the war unfold before their eyes. Old people glued to CNN or Fox might not even know that a war is going on, and they certainly would have no sense of the magnitude of Israel’s atrocities. Not so for the under-30 population, which is why 55% of them have decided this is a genocide.

Source: Israel’s Victory in Gaza turns Pyrrhic as a Majority of Youths and Democrats brand it Genocidal

Gaza hostage relatives burst into Israeli parliament

Relatives and supporters of Israeli hostages in Gaza called for their release outside the Knesset.

Hamas has clearly stated 60 hostages are dead Daily News says only 27 are. We saw Israel kill 4-5  of them. Hamas has reported that Israeli bombing has killed far more. Given Israel’s history of trying to forever fake numbers, why doesn’t Australia’s media pay greater attention to the numbers being delivered by the Palestinian medical professionals who are counting only verified real numbers rather than the Israeli army who seems to be making them up?

The fate of the hostages – 27 of whom Israel says have died in Gaza – has riveted the country, but relatives fear that war fatigue could soften that focus.

Source: Gaza hostage relatives burst into Israeli parliament

Guardian’s ‘Hamas Mass Rape’ Story Doesn’t Add Up

Western Corp Media is increasingly becoming what seems like an Israeli weapon rather than a News Agency. Social Media is much the same  and being flooded with videos and slick graphics making it seem professionals have taken on the Gobbellian role previously given to lesser professionals

The biggest problem with these stories isn’t just the continuing absence of any meaningful evidence for “systematic” rape; or Israel’s long track record of lying to justify state terrorism; or Israel’s refusal to cooperate with independent investigators; or the racist, anti-Arab tropes that pass for sophisticated analysis in western circles.

It is simply the outrageous improbability of so many of the evidence-poor rape stories being advanced.

Source: Guardian’s ‘Hamas Mass Rape’ Story Doesn’t Add Up

New York Times and Other Major Newspapers Skew Pro-Israel

Activists Protest Israel's War In Gaza At New York's Grand Central Terminal

A quantitative analysis shows major newspapers skewed their coverage toward Israeli narratives in the first six weeks of the assault on Gaza.

Source: New York Times and Other Major Newspapers Skew Pro-Israel

Journalists killed while reporting in Gaza

Freelance reporters Hamza al-Dahdouh and Mustafa Thuraya have been killed in an air strike.

Israel claims that the killing of over 100 journalists and photographers, and over 150 UN workers all proportionately higher in number than the killing of Palestinians is an unintended IDF act. But it will continue as long as their vetted reporting isn’t given total priority.

The Israel Defence Forces did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the strike or on the TV network’s allegation that the two journalists had been deliberately targeted.

In a statement on December 16, in response to the death of another al-Jazeera journalist in Gaza, the Israeli army said “the IDF has never, and will never, deliberately target journalists”.

Source: Journalists killed while reporting in Gaza

Australian journalist John Pilger dies aged 84

Celebrated Australian investigative journalist and documentary-maker John Pilger has died aged 84.

He new when to close a story and have the last word on any subject. John Pilger died 30/12/2023 it was publicly announced the next and last day of December 2023. Vale- John Pilger.

Australian investigative journalist John Pilger has died aged 84, his family has announced.

Source: Australian journalist John Pilger dies aged 84

How alleged paedophile Alan Jones has been protected by the old media for decadesKangaroo Court of Australia

Alan Jones

He’s been walking free in Dutton’s and Cash’s world for years. They never said a word

Former radio host Alan Jones has been accused by The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH), in an article written by journalist Kate McClymont titled “‘He’d go the grope’: Alan Jones accused of indecently assaulting young men”, of sexual assaulting 4 males which includes staff at radio station 2gb and other men.

Source: How alleged paedophile Alan Jones has been protected by the old media for decadesKangaroo Court of Australia

These are things that women go through: The Lehrmann trial

Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation case against Network Ten has seen the alleged victim, Brittany Higgins, again subjected to relentless cross-examination and accusations. Michelle Pini reports.

Source: These are things that women go through: The Lehrmann trial

Hamas/Isis dropped no longer a tenable for either the US or Israel

open.substack.com/pub/normanfinkelstein/p/mouin-rabbani-the-hamas-isis-line

Michael West Report- Media and Politics

PATRICK LAWRENCE: Media’s Fatal Compromises

Why has Israel killed so many journalists and UN employees well over 230. Why have they so tightly embedded the Corporate Mainstream Western media to report only the Israeli side of this war? Why is the IDF feeding and vetting all reports being made? Even Israelis aren’t witnessing the carnage being handed out to Gaza in their name? We are about to witness a blitz of horror stories about how badly hostages were treated by Hamas despite witnessing people actually waving goodbye to their Hamas captors. Stories telling us how well-behaved the invading IDF is. However, the truth always gets out just look and it’s there in alternate media sources who are calling out “We are Julian Assange”

Using U.S.-made bombs that weigh 2,000 pounds “that can flatten [apartment towers],” Israel has killed “roughly 10,000 women and children” according to the Times. Women and children make up almost 70 percent of all deaths reported in Gaza.

 “In past clashes between Israel and Hamas, for example, about 60 percent of the reported deaths in Gaza were men,” according to the Times.

Further, “U.S. military officials often believed that the most common American aerial bomb — a 500-pound weapon — was far too large for most targets when battling the Islamic State in urban areas like Mosul, Iraq, and Raqqa, Syria,” according to the Times. As the Times reported:

“‘It’s beyond anything that I’ve seen in my career,’ said Marc Garlasco, a military adviser for the Dutch organization PAX and a former senior intelligence analyst at the Pentagon. To find a historical comparison for so many large bombs in such a small area, he said, we may ‘have to go back to Vietnam, or the Second World War.’”

It is an invitation to drown in blur and induced confusion. I put this down in part — in large part — to the derelictions of those reporting what is called — incorrectly, a case in point — the Israel–Gaza war. 

I have watched recently a goodly number of videos recorded in Gaza and seen many photographs taken on the ground there. Here is a video of Gazans fleeing for their lives, published two weeks into the bombing by Al Jazeera. Here are some photographs shot by Mohammed Zaanoun, a Palestinian photographer, and published on Nov. 23 by The New Humanitarian, which was founded at the U.N. in the mid–1990s. 

This kind of material, produced by professional journalists, various kinds of nongovernmental organizations, relief agencies and the like, is readily available. How differently would people think, how much clearer would their understanding and conclusions be, were our major media to make it available. 

It is no longer enough to tether correspondents to the perspective of the military from whose side they report. We appear to be on the way to having wars fought — huge, bloody, consequential wars — without any witnesses.  By Patrick Lawrence Special to Consortium News  The practice of “em

Source: PATRICK LAWRENCE: Media’s Fatal Compromises

A sinister, quiet, silencing of dissent – Pearls and Irritations

Israeli and Palestinian flags on a brick wall with blood splatters.

While the Western world is subjected to Israeli paid-for propaganda to be sold on our MSM in decibels. Reality leaks to the surface via alternative media sources. Any news of hostages being treated well by Hamas will be obliterated and news of how Israelis treat women and children blocked. However, the truth always finds a way out.https://twitter.com/i/status/1729660701700993424

This brief temporary ceasefire has given people in Gaza a small reprieve from the ferocious carpet bombing, murdering and destruction unleashed by Israel since Oct 7th. But in spite of the millions and millions of people taking to the streets across the world in protest at Israel’s war crimes, the killing of women and children in horrific numbers, the sinister quiet silencing of dissent both in Israel and across the world has not ceased.

Source: A sinister, quiet, silencing of dissent – Pearls and Irritations

What We’re Not Hearing About Oct 7

Any journalist who wishes to avoid colluding in the genocide unfolding in Gaza ought to be wary of repeating the Israeli claims about what happened during the initial Hamas assault, writes Jonathan Cook.

The “savages” narrative is being weaponised by Israel to justify its mounting campaign of atrocities in Gaza. Which is why it is so important that journalists don’t simply allow themselves to be spoon-fed. Far too much is at stake.

Hamas committed war crimes on Oct. 7 on a scale that is unprecedented for any Palestinian group. But there is little more than Israeli narrative spin so far to suggest that there was an unparalleled depravity to Hamas’ actions. Certainly from what we know, it is hard to see that anything Hamas did that day was worse, or more savage, than what Israel has been doing daily in Gaza for weeks.

And Israel’s actions — from bombing Palestinian families to starving them of food and water – has the blessing of every major Western politician.

Source: What We’re Not Hearing About Oct 7

Expose and dismiss the dominating Israeli narrative – Pearls and Irritations

The letters of the word Paelstine made up by the word Israel

For decades, the western world has been fed Israeli/Zionist narratives about their country being exceptional, Palestinians not existing or being less than human. False Israeli accounts have been swallowed by a compliant media and by politicians scared of being accused of being even slightly anti-Semitic.

A narrative polished and promoted for decades has reached its inhumane crescendo in a refusal to admit cruelty as policy – Palestinians as animals indistinct from Hamas, the thousands of children in Gaza blown to bits, unending dispossession and murder on the West Bank, hundreds of children and thousands of Palestinian adults imprisoned in Israeli jails without charge.

Given western governments seventy five years long responsibility for the carnage in Israel and genocide in Gaza, their leaders have stayed largely silent or have tasted and swallowed the Israeli narrative whose major objective is to impose a world rule which says no one should criticise Israel.

For too long, at the expense of the Palestinian people, this toxic narrative has contributed to confusion, untruths, murder and mayhem.

After the Gazan genocide, the chance of small steps being taken to foster peace with justice will depend on truths emerging, on diplomatic posturing and arrogance being discouraged, on this narrative being derided and dismissed.

Expose and dismiss the dominating Israeli narrative

Artforum’s Editor Just Got Axed After Printing a Letter Opposing Israel’s Assault on Gaza

Do You know who your sponsors are?

Last night Artforum fired its editor after he published a letter from artists calling for a cease-fire in Gaza. It’s just the latest instance of the magazine’s corporate owner, Penske Media, quashing editorial independence and siding with the rich.

Penske axed Velasco, who has worked at Artforum for eighteen years, after the editor published a letter signed by thousands of artists calling for a cease-fire in the face of Israel’s onslaught against the Gaza Strip. Apparently publishing artists’ concerns about violence against civilians — what one might describe as an airing of those concerns in some sort of “forum” — was not actually Velasco’s job.

Artforum’s publishers wrote a statement last night saying that Velasco violated the magazine’s standard editorial process, but reporting shows that the ouster followed campaigning by advertisers and art collectors who objected to the letter. As the Intercept writes, shortly after Artforum put up the letter, “Martin Eisenberg, a high-profile collector and inheritor of the now-bankrupt Bed Bath & Beyond fortune, began contacting famous art world figures on the list whose work he had championed to express his objections.” He was aided by influential gallery owners, whose response Artforum published, as well as by another letter, which fails to mention Palestinian deaths and garnered thousands of signatures, including from tear-gas salesman and art world figure Warren Kanders. At least one Artforum staff member resigned today in response to Velasco’s firing.

Source: Artforum’s Editor Just Got Axed After Printing a Letter Opposing Israel’s Assault on Gaza

Western reporters’ shameful cover-up of Israel’s hospital massacre: A postscript – Pearls and Irritations

Palestinian and Israel flags.

As a postscript to Caitlin Johnstone’s piece in yesterday’s P&I, I wish to comment further on who is responsible for the attack on al-Ahli Arab Hospital on the 17th October.

Source: Western reporters’ shameful cover-up of Israel’s hospital massacre: A postscript – Pearls and Irritations

Atrocity Propaganda

Israel and its supporters in the West are helping to provide psychological cover for an ongoing massacre of Palestinian civilians, writes Elizabeth Vos.

Source: Atrocity Propaganda