Each presents their religious-political opinions as object fact. That has most recently been manifested by the way each paper has presented the judicial reform controversy. These two online news sources are of course not alone in reflecting their biases. They all do to ne extent or another. But to the best of my knowledge these two are more widely distributed among the Jewish people that most others papers.
Unfortunately an equally divided public will choose as their preferred media source the ones that has the same perspective. And see opposing media sources as biased in the extreme. The left will see Ha’aretz as gospel and the Jewish Press as extremist right wing babble. The right will say the same in reverse.
Rarely do people with strong opinions pay any attention to sources that have an opposite perspective. In the US the left sees CNN as objective, fair and balanced and Fox as a bastion of right wing extremist distortions. The right feels the same way about CNN and sees Fox as objective, fair and balanced.
If people consider valid a media that rubber stamps their views, the question then becomes: How is it possible to actually get a balanced view of world events?
Well, it isn’t only possible, but it is quite doable if one is willing to give the views of the the side fair hearing and actually try and understand that those views might have some legitimacy too.
That of course does not make one free of bias. Everyone brings their own bias to the table. So that reading an opposing opinion will often be approached with a lot of skepticism. Nevertheless, exposure to those views will penetrate an open mind to at least understand where they are coming from and to at least not vilify them.
I use both right wing sources to help form my own views.
It is with this in mind that I wish to present an argument made by by Rabbi Chaim Twerski, Rosh Yeshiva and Head of the Semicha Program at my alma mater, HTC, a brilliant Rav who tends to support the recent judicial reform. Even though I am torn between the two sides – seeing merit in both the pro and con arguments I think he makes a very valid point. Albeit with tongue firmly implanted in cheek. I am equally certain that attempts will be made to thoroughly refute it by those on the opposite side of the issue. Anyway this is what he said:
All my life I thought I was living in a democratic country, the United States of America. I just discovered that this country is not at all a democracy, not even a republic. It is rather a dictatorship. How so? The justice system does not allow a judge to dismiss a law due to it being unreasonable. Even the Supreme Court cannot do this. The only way it can nullify a law passed by congress is to find a clause in the constitution that the law is in conflict with and determine the law to be unconstitutional.
I also found that in the United Kingdom the same applies even more so. Their justices cannot cancel a law at all. There is no constitution. All laws are therefore reasonable since the Parliament passed the law. They can only interpret the law and apply it. England is therefore also a dictatorship.
In fact, all countries, even in the Western world are dicatatorships. The only country in the world that was not a dictatorship was Israel for the past twenty years when the Supreme Court of Israel decided that it could annul any law of the Knesset it deemed to be unreasonable, which made it the only democratic country in the world, and now it has fallen into the trap of all the other so-called democracies.
What a shame.
