Palestinians Take Media Bias to a Whole New Level

Army Dogs Wage War on Illegal Palestinian Workers

The title of this article is almost as ridiculous as its content. Palestinians have been illegally crossing a fence which separates the West Bank from other parts of inner Israel in order to find work and are horrified to find that Israel is attempting to stop these illegal crossings by using dogs.

The Palestinians, referred to as "victims" in the article, claim that they are not terrorists, only laborers. Well while laborers may not be terrorists, aren't all terrorists laborers of some sort?

It seems to me the author forgot to state the statistics of people who do cross the fence illegally who are terrorists.

One Palestinian man's encounter (with my parenthetical additions):

"We were trying to cross into Israel at about 4:00 am when suddenly we saw a group of soldiers and dogs," said Munir Hushia, a 35-year-old father of six.

"They shouted at us to stop, (but we didn't so they sent the dogs to attack us and stop us from crossing illegally into their land) then the dogs attacked (because even though the IDF warned us, we didn't stop crossing in), injuring some of us while others managed to get away," he told AFP, saying he was bitten on the hand and on other parts of his body.

Another Palestinian's surprising shock: "At about 5:00 am I got to the border to try and get through a hole in the fence when all of a sudden a dog attacked me and tried to savage my hand. When I managed to get my hand away, it bit my backside," he said. After doctors operated on his hand, he went to the Israeli police station in Kiryat Arba settlement to file a complaint. But instead of helping, they arrested him on suspicion of illegally entering Israel, he says.

Why this man is surprised that the police arrested him is beyond me. It's as if he told police that someone stole his cocaine stash. He basically just turned himself in.

The Palestinians feel that crossing into Israel through "holes in the fence" is their only option because there is no work on their side of the Green Line and because "they are the breadwinners of the family, so what else can [they] do". Perhaps they should advocate for peace between Palestinians and Israelis so that they can get rid of the barrier altogether and find work throughout the country. Perhaps they should stop educating their children to hate Jews and stop worshiping Jihadists who take innocent lives everyday. 

I'm not speaking as a Zionist. Being impartial and looking only at the facts, the Palestinians have nothing in their favor. These measures, as extreme as they are, were forced on the Israeli's due to the years and years of Palestinians illegally crossing the border and blowing up buses. 

The Palestinians are asking for pity that they don't deserve. They brought these dogs on themselves, quite literally.

To Revisit an Old Question

I know this is an old question, but now that the pictures of Osama's death have begun to be released to select members of Congress, I wonder if they will "leak" into the press or be released into the mainstream press. 


I'm not sure which will happen and though I know some people feel that the backlash could be dangerous for Americans, other people are saying it wouldn't be. 


In the words of Sen. Inhofe "Since 9/11 there have been 32 attacks on America that we stopped through our intelligence. They would do anything they could to kill everyone of us who's watching right now if they could. But this isn't going to make them try anymore, they're trying right now anyway,"


Further Reading

Campaigning for Fun

The Week, a weekly magazine featuring a digest of editorials and columns along with global and regional news has announced that the theme for their weekly contest for the week of April 29, 2011 is to come up with a slogan for Mr. Trump's presidential campaign. Readers are encouraged to submit their ideas and the winner will receive a one year subscription free to the magazine.


To put it in perspective, I'll post last weeks question and winner:

Results: To help folks save money for retirement, scientists are developing avatars that show current-day wage earners what they’ll look like — and need — when they are old. We asked you what advice those elderly avatars should give their younger selves.

THE WINNER: An "I Love Justin Bieber" tattoo will not age well

The Week choosing to have this week's question related to Donald Trump and his campaign shows how ridiculous America views Trumps campaign for presidency in 2012. The Week, along with many other broadcast outlets, have and will continue to make light of Trumps campaign, which will can only hurt him. 

This contest is an example of how little the world thinks of Trump and how ludicrous Trumps campaign is.

Vacation Exploitation

It's interesting that the Obama's are planning a trip to Willamsburg, VA, a city rich in American history, for later this week. I'm thinking that the preplanned vacation and its juxtaposition to the announcement of the Obama 2012 campaign is more just a coincidence.

Media Matters

Media Matters, a liberal group has now declared a war on FOX news. The group, which normally keeps a close watch on various media outlets, searching for conservative biases and misrepresentations has decided to ditch their usual job of policing the media and instead focus on FOX news, declaring the network to be their number one priority.

The link to the Politico article is here but definitely check out the Media Matters website and watch as the "guerrilla warfare" unfolds. It promises to be interesting.

The irony is, that the same finger Media Matters is pointing at FOX can be pointed right back at Media Matters about FOX.

Quick Follow-up on Placement

Unlike the Itamar massacre, I was pleased to note that only 15 minutes after the bus bombing, which took place in Jerusalem this morning, Drudgereport.com and NYTimes.com posted articles on their websites in noticeable spots. Drudgereport.com even offered feature articles to go along with the news of the bus bombing including an article about recent attacks on Har HaZaysim and about rockets being fired from Gaza into Israel.

The Importance of Placement

By now the Glenn Beck clip on his reporting the Itamar Massacre has gone viral, especially among the American Jews. I know other blogs have posted the link and commented on his accurate word of "butcher," one that may seem to shape the media, but I happen to believe it is extremely accurate since throats being slashed with a knife to me sounds very similar to what our butchers do with chickens.

But he brought up a good point, which I had been thinking about for a while. The Itamar Massacre hasn't really been soaking up news space and it is very possible that it's because Japan (with the tsunami and now the radiation issues) is hogging all the limelight. 

But even still, I checked a couple news websites, including DrudgeReport this past Saturday night and I was kind of shocked to see that the link to the Israeli newspaper article on the recent attack was all the way in the right column near almost the end of all the headlines! Definitely not a place that eyes would quickly notice. 

I think it's important that we remember that biases can be done not only with words or coverage, but with placement as well. News stories which don't make the front lines often don't get noticed and layout editors know this little trick and never hesitate to use it.

Senator Carey?

Lately there has been talk of political activists attempting to recruit Drew Carey to run for the Ohio seat in the Senate. This would be another classic example of actors moving political, like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ronald Reagan.

Carey has made political comments in the past that have earned him support in the libertarians hearts, stating that he believes the laws must come from the people not Washington. He served in the Marine Corps for six years and was born in Ohio, though he isn't a current resident.

Carey would be running against the long time incumbent democrat Sherrod Brown and though the Price is Right host hasn't publicly stated anything, his fans have. Check out http://draftdrew.wordpress.com/ for the official site of the libertarian activists.

A Quoted Conundrum

Here is the link to an article posted on the english version of the Al-Jazeera website.

The title reads: Yemeni army 'fires on protestors'

After reading the article, I'm still kind of confused as to why the article has sporadic bursts of quoted phrases... later in the article a heading reading "smooth exit" is again in single quotes.

I'm not sure if this is merely a translation blunder or if Al-Jazeera is using quotes to actually portray a message, perhaps someone else knows better?

The Importance of the Positive Press

For the analytical report I chose to read "Managing the Press", a book which shows the significant role media can have on a president's public ratings, for the good and bad. 

Taft was notoriously known for not being a huge fan of the media and press corps and some historians say that the bad relationship played a huge role on Taft only serving a single term. 

Apparently, Obama is following in Taft's footsteps and limiting the press more than his predecessors did. At this point in the presidency (about half way in) Obama has done only 75 "Q&A" conferences with the press, while Bush had done over 200 at the same time and Clinton over 400. 

But Obama's press secretary isn't about to let him become the next Taft and so the president opts out of Q&A sessions, but instead holds longer and more intimate "sit-down sessions" with various reporters. 

Good thinking Mr. President.

For more information.

Actor --> Politician

We have been talking a lot about private eyes in public eyes and how the media tends to cross boundaries. But lately I've been thinking about instances in the past where non-political backgrounds tend to help politicians.
Take the two famous actors turned politicians- Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Both were successful actors, who often played the hero role in movies and who women often found to be charming and attractive. Did their movie career help them gain votes? Both were governors of California and I'd be interested to see if they were chosen not only for their political views, but because the voters of California felt a connection, meaning they liked voting in "one of their own" into office.

While I can't speak as much for the Reagan area, I do remember that Gov. Schwarzenegger quickly became the Governator for all media means, making sure his movie role as the tough annihilator who could annihilate the state's problems. It's interesting to think about this connection.

White House misspells "Libya"

Oh man, not again. You'd think the White House would use spellcheck more often

Howard Kurtz has struck again. He's always an interesting writer to me since he preaches objectivity, but seems to be one of the most subjective authors I read in the media. 

Writing things like 'Among those auditioning: acid-tongued congresswoman Michele Bachmann, bombastic billionaire Donald Trump, and pizza mogul Herman Cain. Jon Huntsman? Ron Paul? Rand Paul? Sure, take a number' and 'The GOP has always handed the nomination to the next old guy in line (John McCain, Bob Dole, Ronald Reagan); or the vice president (Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush); or a close relative (George W.)' I find it difficult to consider his writing to be unbiased. What kills me most is the hypocrisy of his work. He makes his buck from scrutinizing and accusing other people of reporting with bias and then goes home and does it himself.

ObamaCare

The media has a special ability to put itself in subjectively objective situations in order to guard their own back. Take the term "ObamaCare"- though it is true that the health care reform was President Obama's idea and his proposed bill, the media has labelled it derogatorily. ObamaCare now triggers a negative feeling for most people who believe Obama is trying to Socialize our democracy. Now as the bill is once again heading through congress, Democrats are requesting that the negative term be banned from the House floor.

Olbermann Attempts a Return

According to a New York Times Article in today's paper, Keith Olbermann is coming back  to TV and will be hosting a new show on Current TV, a channel co-founded by Al Gore and one which Olbermann serves an executive manager... interesting considering his statement about independent media

“Nothing is more vital to a free America than a free media, and nothing is more vital to my concept of a free media than news that is produced independently of corporate interference.”