FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

I’ve been suspecting this for a long time, but now someone has come along and proven it:

The New York Times, LA Times (may its name be erased), and Washington Post’s op-ed sections are heavily biased against Israel:

A 19-month CAMERA study, from January 2006 through July 2007, of guest Op-Eds about the Arab-Israeli conflict found that in these three papers pro-Arab Op-Eds and/or those critical of Israel overwhelmingly outnumbered pro-Israel Op-Eds and/or those critical of Arabs. Even more telling is the striking fact that during the 19-month period, none of the newspapers ran even a single Op-Ed by an Israeli official. In contrast, each of the three papers ran four Op-Eds by Arab officials, including multiple pieces by Hamas leaders…

It should be noted that many of the Op-Eds generally supportive of Israel also contained criticism of the Jewish state. In contrast, virtually none of the Op-Eds expressing a pro-Arab point of view contained criticism of the Arab side.

While CAMERA inexplicably left our local paper, the McClatchy-owned Fresno Bee, out of the study, I have no doubt that it falls into the same category. Notable are periodic unsigned editorials which supposedly represent the opinion of the editorial board, although they are not written locally. And from time to time there is a particularly objectionable reader submission. Two weeks ago the Bee gave a prominent place to a poorly-written 700-word piece by a local pastor, a rehash of every libel and slander made against Israel, including accusations of murder, atrocities, ethnic cleansing, racism, apartheid, persecution (of Christians yet), etc.

I’m not the first one to note that journalists at media outlets great and not-so-great all do their best to get people to read their papers. And the op-ed page is, after all, the place where opinions are expressed, and strong opinions are interesting.

Nevertheless we know that the Timeses, the Post, or the Fresno Bee would not print an article which defames a racial or ethnic group. The editors would rightly judge this to be irresponsible.

So why is it acceptable to print hateful material that defames a nation?

Technorati Tags: Newspapers, Israel, NY Times, LA Times, Washington Post, Fresno Bee

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 23rd, 2008 at 10:09 pm and is filed under Local interest, Media, My favorite posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.