Sunday, October 13, 2024

Media Bias? You Bet!

The anti Israel bias of UN has never been more obvious than now. Nor has it been more blatant. I don’t see how any objective observer could see it otherwise. Except that the mainstream media actually does see it otherwise – having reported the latest Israeli attack against Hezbollah in Lebanon exactly the way the UN sees it – pretending they were reporting it objectively

Injuries were sustained by so-called UN  peacekeepers placed in Lebanon at its Northern border. They  were originally stationed there to prevent hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel.

Which of course Hezbollah never honored - firing rockets into Israel from time to time with impunity. . Since October 8th in an act of solidarity with the Nazis of the Middle East (Hamas) Hezbollah has been firing a barrage of rockets into Israel for over a year now. Only a complete idiot would say that the so-called peacekeepers are doing their job. The only job they were doing was letting Hezbollah do whatever they wanted.

Israel finally did something about that relentless attack for purposes of returning Israelis safely to  homes evacuated after October 8th.  After warning civilians in Northern Lebanon to evacuate, Israel started bombing Hezbollah strongholds - from which they were firing rockets. 

UN ‘peacekeepers’ stationed there were also advised to leave. The UN hierarchy refused to allow that with the ridiculous claim that they were still needed for their intended purpose (of preventing cross border attacks). So they stayed and some of them were injured. The UN condemned Israel claiming that Israel deliberately attacked them. The UN was joined in their condemnation of Israel  by bunch of European countries. (No surprise there.) The mainstream media has for the most part reported it from the UN perspective, too. (No surprise there either.)

Anyone who doesn’t see the obvious bias here is either ethically blind, stupid, or an antisemite.

Ta-Nehisi Coats and Tony Doukopil (mediaite)
And if that isn’t enough consider what happened to Tony Dukoupil - one of the 3 news anchors of CBS Mornings - as reported by JNS:

Dokoupil’s Sept. 30 interview with Coates on “CBS Mornings,” which Dokoupil co-hosts, prompted a backlash within the newsroom after he pressed (writer Ta-Nehisi) Coates on why the new book, The Message, presents a one-sided, pro-Palestinian - anti Israel view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

 Dokoupil asked Coates some hard questions about his one sided presentation. Like this one:

Why leave out that Israel deals with terror groups that want to eliminate it? Is it because you just don’t believe that Israel in any condition has a right to exist?”

And then this happened: 

Adrienne Roark, the head of newsgathering at CBS, said that “many” people in the newsroom had complained about Dokoupil’s interview with Coates.

“After a review of our coverage, including the interview, it’s clear there are times we have not met our editorial standards,” Roark said during the meeting, per a recording that the Free Press obtained. “I want to acknowledge and apologize that it’s taken this long to have this conversation.”

Editorial standards?! The only standards the mainstream media seems to have is one the aligns with the progressive left. Anything to the right of that is considered a violation of their journalistic standards - for which they need to apologize and reprimand the journalist deemed guilty of it. 

I wouldn’t even attempt to count the vast number of times a mainstream journalist challenged someone who had a pro Israel position. Not a word of reprimand. But when the reverse happens all hell brakes loose. 

In fact in this case the brass at CBS’s news division hired Donald Grant - a self described  DEI “strategist” and “trauma trainer” to address a staff meeting. But that was cancelled after the following: 

(The) network unearthed a social media post, in which Grant photoshopped Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), who is black, onto a cover of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and labeled him “Uncle Tim.”

Scott used a screenshot of Grant’s post in a fundraising appeal on the Republican Party’s WinRed platform.

It was gratifying to finally see some pushback by someone that CBS cannot ignore .Shari Redstone, the controlling shareholder of CBS’s parent company Paramount Global who said the following: 

“I frankly think Tony did a great job with that interview,” Redstone said at Advertising Week New York on Wednesday. “I think he handled himself and showed the world and modeled what civil discourse is.”

The same attitude was expressed by one of CBS’s more respected journalists, Jan Crawford: 

“I don’t understand how Tony’s interview or any of his comments that he’s made with anchors fail to meet our editorial standards,” Crawford said at the meeting. “When someone comes on our air with a one-sided account of a very complex situation, as Coates himself acknowledges that he has, it’s my understanding that as journalists, we are obligated to challenge that worldview, so that our viewers can have that access to the truth or a fuller account, a more balanced account.”

“To me, that is what Tony did,” Crawford said. 

It’s nice to know that there are some journalists at a major broadcast network news organization who are not ‘holier than thou’ progressives. Progressives whose ideology is  so deeply ingrained... so deeply believing they have the moral high ground - that anyone who disagrees must be reprimanded as a matter of conscience. And then call that objective journalism. What makes this particularly nefarious is that they do they actually believe they are being objective.

These two examples of media bias should convince anyone with even a half way open mind that the mainstream media is run by people that do not have a clue what it means to be objective. They may not be deliberately lying. But when extreme bias passes for objective journalism they may as well be.