Tag: the media

For five long years, a media campaign swirled around the abduction and internment of Gilad Shalit, gaining momentum with every passing day. Without a doubt, it was the media that helped keep his story alive and contributed significantly to his release, creating public pressure in favor of the historic (though unsettling) exchange of over one thousand convicted terrorists for Gilad's freedom.

The main item on State Radio Channel 2's agenda recently was Channel 10's apology to Sheldon Adelson. Some background: A few months ago, Channel 2 News broadcasted a lengthy report accusing the billionaire founder of the pro-Netanyahu newspaper Yisrael Hayom, Sheldon Adelson, of illegally gaining rights to build a casino. The report turned out to be false and the station was forced to broadcast an apology. The media claimed that the Channel 10 stockholders, who feared financial repercussions by Adelson, coerced the staff to apologize. Karen Noibach also devoted precious airtime to performer Yehudah Pollicker. Israel Army Radio featured the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Afterwards, the two stations switched stories.

The main item on State Radio Channel 2's agenda recently was Channel 10's apology to Sheldon Adelson. Some background: A few months ago, Channel 2 News broadcasted a lengthy report accusing the billionaire founder of the pro-Netanyahu newspaper Yisrael Hayom, Sheldon Adelson, of illegally gaining rights to build a casino. The report turned out to be false and the station was forced to broadcast an apology. The media claimed that the Channel 10 stockholders, who feared financial repercussions by Adelson, coerced the staff to apologize. Karen Noibach also devoted precious airtime to performer Yehudah Pollicker. Israel Army Radio featured the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Afterwards, the two stations switched stories.

The main item on State Radio Channel 2's agenda recently was Channel 10's apology to Sheldon Adelson. Some background: A few months ago, Channel 2 News broadcasted a lengthy report accusing the billionaire founder of the pro-Netanyahu newspaper Yisrael Hayom, Sheldon Adelson, of illegally gaining rights to build a casino. The report turned out to be false and the station was forced to broadcast an apology. The media claimed that the Channel 10 stockholders, who feared financial repercussions by Adelson, coerced the staff to apologize. Karen Noibach also devoted precious airtime to performer Yehudah Pollicker. Israel Army Radio featured the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Afterwards, the two stations switched stories.

If Republicans in high elective office had urged the media not to report on the ideas of Democrats on contentious issues because such reporting would tend to legitimatize really absurd notions, the protests would be deafening, especially from the likes of The New York Times. Likewise if Republicans had taken to referring to Democratic legislators who outmaneuvered them in a losing political battle as "terrorists."

Larry King will host his last edition of "Larry King Live" on CNN next week, and the Monitor can only say Good Riddance. King built a reputation and made a fortune as the master of the soft toss interview, which was fine for doing Frank Sinatra retrospectives but made for cringe-inducing television whenever the subject at hand required a tad more seriousness.

The common wisdom is that CNN's Rick Sanchez was fired because he made anti-Semitic remarks. That's an understandable assumption, but it's also untrue. Sanchez was fired because he attacked a celebrity more liberal and more popular than he is. That he did it with racial overtones made it easy for CNN to pull the plug on him. But his real crime was that he had become an embarrassment, from a liberal perspective, and that's the only perspective in the media that counts.

Somebody in Israel should establish the Society for the Public's Right Not to Know.

Rabbi David Nesenoff has given Accuracy in Media the most detailed account yet of how his encounter with veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas caused him to reevaluate not only his view of the media, but of the White House and President Obama.

Like millions of people around the world, I had followed the tragedy in Haiti since the earthquake jolted that country just over a month ago. But while the media portrayed a great deal of the devastation visited on this poorest of Western nations, it wasn't until I traveled to Haiti on a relief mission that I truly understood just how severe the crisis really was.

Skepticism about the existence of Hashem reigns supreme in some circles and there is clearly no shortage of unabashed atheists circulating in the literary world, blogosphere, and the media. Tragically, it is the Jew that has been most affected by the deluge of misinformation spewed forth by those who question the veracity of G-d's existence while they fecklessly attempt to navigate the vicissitudes of life.

Skepticism about the existence of Hashem reigns supreme in some circles and there is clearly no shortage of unabashed atheists circulating in the literary world, blogosphere, and the media. Tragically, it is the Jew that has been most affected by the deluge of misinformation spewed forth by those who question the veracity of G-d's existence while they fecklessly attempt to navigate the vicissitudes of life.

The recent release of yet another batch of Nixon tapes and transcripts inspired a new round of fulminations by Nixon-haters, most of whom are tellingly silent or remarkably forgiving when the misdeeds and indiscretions of other former presidents are revealed.

Cleaning out some old files last week, the Monitor was reminded how fickle the media can be in the matter of designating heroes and villains, and how a world leader can go from slug to statesman merely by falling into line with the media’s preconceived notions of right and wrong.

There is one question readers have asked the Monitor with far greater frequency than any other. It’s a simple one, and it goes basically like this: What is the most important thing you can say about the media after doing a column like this for ten years?

We've grown used to it: whenever anyone in the media takes note of the antics of Norman Finkelstein, a flood of disinformation is bound to follow.

The Monitor’s recent listing of worthwhile books on the media brought in a number of interesting responses, with many readers sharing their own favorites – several of which probably should have been included among the recommended titles and possibly will be in a future column on the subject.

Next week the Monitor will examine aspects of the media coverage of Israel’s war on Hizbullah. This week, we take a stroll down memory lane, revisiting an early Monitor column from October 1998 (yes, the Monitor’s been around for nearly eight years now). The piece was titled “The Times Reverts To Old Hab-its,” and its conclusions should be kept in mind as one reads the paper’s editorials on the current fighting:

Harry Truman reached out from the grave last week and exposed the media's double standard when it comes to judging Democrats and Republicans. A librarian at the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri, discovered a 1947 diary of Truman's that had been sitting unopened on a shelf for some four decades.

Cybercast News Service (CNSNews.com) reported this week that Peter Jennings actively shaped news coverage in the 1980's so that a communist dictatorship could be portrayed in a more flattering light.

Due to pressing post-holiday obligations, the Monitor yields this week to the Media Research Center's Brent Baker and Rich Noyes, who prepared the following summary of MRC's assessment of war coverage by American television:

The responses are finally slowing to a trickle, but the columns on Israel's friends in the media certainly elicited plenty of feedback from readers. Here's a sampling, followed by the Monitor's very own Media Friends Top Ten list (as distinguished from the earlier two lists which reflected the votes of readers).

The Monitor likes Bernard Goldberg, it really does. And the Monitor despises the smugly insular media types who've been lambasting the former CBS News correspondent for his bestselling (#1 on this week's New York Times list) expose of the liberal bias that pervades the nation's news media.

Bill Maher isn't exactly the Monitor's cup of tea. The host of ABC's "Politically Incorrect" is smarmy more often than smart, his jokes run the gamut from the juvenile to the jejune, and, contrary to what one might think from the name of his show, he's actually quite politically correct on a number of social and political issues.

It was too good to last. The news media, which by and large performed admirably for about a month after the events of Sept. 11, are showing clear signs of reverting to old habits. The sour cynicism directed at American officials, the credulous reporting of enemy claims, the shallowness and sensationalism that once were the province of cheesy local stations but have long since become a staple of the network news departments - all of these are slowly coming out of hiding and reasserting themselves as the driving forces of American journalism.

A startling population report has just been published by the American Jewish Committee debunking the myth of potent Muslim voting power.

One expects to see harrowing pictures of Palestinian civilians caught in the middle of the crossfire between Israeli forces and the Palestinian Authority terrorists chosen as illustrations for stories about the intifada. These instances certainly abound, especially since the Palestinian leaders cynically place their own people in harm's way to elicit sympathy in the world media. And the media, in any event, seem hell-bent to spin the story of Palestinian provocation and Israeli response in terms of the hardships visited on Palestinian civilians. Thus, although Israeli territory is far more open to journalists than Palestinian controlled areas, it is rare that pictures of Israeli civilians under fire ever accompany any of the stories. But last Thursday, The New York Times "picked a beaut" to illustrate a story about Jews under fire in Gilo.

The letters just keep coming in response to the Enemies List column and its follow-up. The responses by and large have been friendly in tone, with the majority of respondents agreeing on all or most of the names submitted by their fellow readers. And then there was this, from an e-mail submitted by some mammal identified as Rashid Monsour:

So many images keep crowding my mind. Images that do not allow me to rest or feel at peace.