What part of the tragedy in the Holy Land do we see? Who is creating the innocent victims, Palestinians or Israelis?
If we see young people at a peaceful protest, and then in another story we see smash-and-grab shoplifting, can we tell the difference?
There is no avoiding "editorializing" no matter how fair-minded the media source. What one chooses to cover is a choice. People will call that choice "bias."
This morning the New York Times ran a story with this photo:
It depicts the damage the Israeli bombs are doing to civilians in Gaza. But what about the murders and kidnapping that Hamas did on October 7? The New York Times published stories and photos on it, too.
Is the coverage equal and fair? A harder question: Should it even be equal, if one side is right in the eyes of God and justice, and the other side wrong? Moral equivalence itself, if the balance of morality is not equivalent, is itself bias. And, of course, people disagree both about news choices and about God's will, some with passionate intensity.
The Jewish Anti-Defamation League complains about the Washington Post's coverage, saying it is biased against Israel. New York Times contributor Mona Chalabi used the occasion of winning a Pulitzer Prize to say she thought the Times' coverage was biased against Palestinians.
A different form of bias comes in the inevitable problem that news items get placed in an arrangement on the page or in the order they are presented on TV. They can be conflated by readers and viewers. College classmate Jane Collins brought that to my attention yesterday with an example from broadcast news on TV. Placement on a page or adjacency of TV stories can make a peaceful pro-Palestine protest look and feel like a crime scene.
There will always be bias. That doesn't make news "fake." It means that human choices and the practicalities of telling a story are baked into the very nature of storytelling.
Jane Collins interrupted her college years to spend a year in Israel, working on a kibbutz. She lives in Massachusetts. Earlier Guest Posts depicted her lighting a menorah with her granddaughters, standing in a garden, and holding a baby. She shares her thoughts and writing at https://alicet4.com
Guest Post by Jane Collins
The main story on NBC Nightly News on November 24 concerned the first hostage release in the Israel/Gaza war. About 10 minutes into the broadcast, they ran three stories, all involving heightened mall security on Black Friday. The first story was about a pro-Palestine protest in LA that briefly blocked traffic to a mall; the second was on a bomb threat in New Jersey; the third was on the continuing upsurge of “smash and grab” robberies nationwide. But the headline banner read “Black Friday Protests”, while all three images that ran over it were of the completely unrelated robberies. Viewers were left with the impression that the protesters were wearing black like Antifa, concealing their identities with masks, smashing store windows, and grabbing the goods.
I don’t think the network deliberately conflated the protest and robbery stories. Maybe Lester Holt and his staff were still digesting their Thanksgiving turkey. However, their carelessness revealed an unconscious bias. They painted with the blackest of brushes protests that were clearly motivated by moral outrage.
Anyone who has attended big political demonstrations knows that there are usually a few people on the fringe who are looking for a fight, or for a distraction to cover some criminal activity. Often, the major media will cover the few bad actors and ignore thousands of peaceful demonstrators.
This case was worse than usual. The news venue used images of criminal activity that it knew had no connection with a protest to smear that protest, and by extension, all pro-Palestinian protests. Millions of people watched this piece of fake news. And it wasn’t even on Fox.
Still hoping for peace and justice,Jane Collins
There are no innocent parties except for the unaware and trusting children. Adults can give or withdraw support for Hamas or Israeli government in a variety of ways. some passive others direct. That 80 to 90 percent don't does not make them an innocent victim. It makes the silent majority that for some reason prefer not to speak up or vote with their feet or money. As Abraham Lincoln said, and I am paraphrasing, nothing can be done without public support; all is possible with it.