Unlike recent posts that have analyzed media performances, today I want to present some direct political criticism. Rather than “perform” our distinguished art of analysis, as we have recently been doing on this blog, I want to underscore the notion that powerful media set our agenda and our performing analyses are determined by what is given to us by media as bones to chew, often with quite negative results. Nothing original, but the topic and the circumstances are.
There is a fundamental difference between the way news is produced and read in the United States and Europe. Here, we have one or two authoritative print sources. Thus, much of the reflection presented at Deliberately Considered draws on reports from The New York Times. This is in sharp contrast to European practice. I miss my daily reading of at least two or three newspapers to tap into contrasting opinions or sources of information. The near monopoly in America is troublesome. Perhaps I exaggerate, but I worry that there can develop an unquestioned prevailing commonsense, with the media reiterating the obvious, instead of challenging dominant points of view and generating new areas of debate.
This struck me in the reports and commentary concerning the Hamas-Fatah reconciliation deal, announced two weeks ago. All of what has been written in the Times columns since the surprise reconciliation announcement in Cairo has re-hashed the usual storyline: Hamas is not a peace partner. Israel has good reason to feel threatened by a national unity government, and Congress should use aid as a threat to push moderates not to accept a deal with the Islamists. This Monday, an editorial summed up the argument.
The only good thing in this editorial was its subtitle, “Continued stalemate with Israel will only strengthen extremists,” but, ironically, this disappeared in the online version. Indeed, the remainder of the piece is just a series of peremptory remarks (“we have many concerns,” “the answer, to us, is clear…”) and hollow statements. Yet, intriguingly, the top ten most recommended replies to the online version were all critical of Israel, showing how people can resist the newspaper’s views.
Read more: Media and the Palestinians: “Continued Stalemate Will Only Strengthen Extremists”