Friday, November 10, 2023

The Nonexistent Ethics and Morality of the Mainstream Media

Hamas leader and mastermind of the massacre - with Hassan Eslaiah (HR)
It’s about time the mainstream media was exposed as the ethically and morally challenged news outlets they are.  And by ‘challenged’ I am being kind. 

For quite some time now, it has been obvious to me that some of the most respected news outlets in the world, like The New York Times, are so biased against Israel, that you would have to be blind, deaf, and dumb not to see it. It’s practically written on the proverbial faces. Their denials to the contrary not withstanding. 

And yet they are treated like paragons of virtue whose journalistic integrity is never questioned. They are considered irreproachable. Their narrative about Israel is that they are always considered guilty unless proven innocent.

Well now they have been exposed for the moral and ethical hypocrites they  are. In what I believe is the most grievous incidence ever discovered of that Honest Reporting reports the following: 

On October 7, Hamas terrorists were not the only ones who documented the war crimes they had committed during their deadly rampage across southern Israel. Some of their atrocities were captured by Gaza-based photojournalists working for the Associated Press and Reuters news agencies whose early morning presence at the breached border area raises serious ethical questions.

What were they doing there so early on what would ordinarily have been a quiet Saturday morning? Was it coordinated with Hamas? Did the respectable wire services, which published their photos, approve of their presence inside enemy territory, together with the terrorist infiltrators? Did the photojournalists who freelance for other media, like CNN and The New York Times, notify these outlets? Judging from the pictures of lynching, kidnapping and storming of an Israeli kibbutz, it seems like the border has been breached not only physically, but also journalistically.

Four names appear on AP’s photo credits from the Israel-Gaza border area on October 7: Hassan Eslaiah, Yousef Masoud, Ali Mahmud, and Hatem Ali.

Eslaiah, a freelancer who also works for CNN, crossed into Israel, took photos of a burning Israeli tank, and then captured infiltrators entering Kibbutz Kfar Azza.

HonestReporting has obtained screenshots of Eslaiah’s now-removed tweets on X in which he documented himself standing in front of the Israeli tank. He did not wear a press vest or a helmet, and the Arabic caption of his tweet read: “Live from inside the Gaza Strip settlements.” 

Anyone with the slightest bit of objectivity that has been watching the nightly news with Palestinian ‘journalists’  reporting about the devastation in Gaza can see anti Israel bias oozing form their lips as they report on Palestinian suffering.

But the mainstream news media treats them as though they are as honest as the day is long. And that they simply reporting unbiased facts. Now that 4 ‘photojournalists’ have been exposed to not only be biased but supportive of Hamas – if not outright colluding with them, it demonstrates the serious malaise that exists within the mainstream media. Which they refuse to own up to. From JTA

International news outlets denied that they had advance knowledge of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, after a report suggested without hard evidence that their photographers may have coordinated with the terror group ahead of the invasion.

But the Associated Press and CNN have said they will no longer work with one of the photographers named in the report, Hassan Eslaiah. The other publications named in the report are Reuters and The New York Times. 

The report… said freelance photographers working with the four publications were at the scene in the early hours of the Hamas attack, saying their presence raised “ethical questions.”

Ethical questions?! I think we are beyond the ‘questions’ stage. I do not find credible any denials that they didn’t know that Palestinian ‘photojournalists’ were biased against Israel.  

It’s nice that at least the Associated Press and CNN are no longer working with one of those ‘photojournalists’. But what about Reuters and the New York Times?  And what about the rest of those ‘photojournalists’? I guess they don’t care how biased their sources are. As long as they make Israel look bad.  

So much for the ethics and morality of the mainstream media. I wish I could say that this kind of yellow journalism will now end after this exposure. But I doubt it. These news outlets have a long history of preferring sensationalism over the truth. Especially when it reflects badly on Israel.