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Bias in media a relative thing

Found at Lying Media Bastards:

FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting) recently commissioned a study by German media analysis firm Media Tenor called “Power Sources,” which looks into the makeup of interview subjects on the three main US networks. From FAIR’s press release:

A study of ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News in the year 2001 shows that 92 percent of all U.S. sources interviewed were white, 85 percent were male and, where party affiliation was identifiable, 75 percent were Republican.

Interestingly, while the study betrays the myth of the media’s liberal bias, it doesn’t necessarily confirm a conservative bias, but rather that the three networks take their lead from whatever party is in power. From the study:

Instead of a liberal bias, the study found, source selection favored the elite interests that the corporate owners of these shows depend on for advertising revenue, regulatory support and access to information. Network news demonstrated a clear tendency to showcase the opinions of the most powerful political and economic actors, while giving limited access to those voices that would be most likely to challenge them.

On the partisan level, the news programs provided a generous platform for sources from the Republican Party– the party in power in the White House for almost the entire year– while giving much less access to the opposition Democrats, and virtually no time to third party or independent politicians. Based on the criterion of who got to speak, the broadcast networks functioned much more as venues for the claims and opinions of the powerful than as democratic forums for public discussion or education.

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Is criticism of Israel de facto anti-semitism?

So asks Alexander Cockburn in his latest column (by way of Dr. Mabuse):

There are plenty of sound arguments that from the Palestinian point of view Israel is indeed a terrorist state, and anyway, even if it wasn’t, the description would not per se be evidence of anti-Semitism.[…] The rhetorical trick is to conflate “Israel” or “the State of Israel” with “Jews,” and argue that they are synonymous. Ergo, to criticize Israel is to be anti-Semitic.
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Backlash against Israeli icon

From the Associated Press (via Salon’s “From the wires”) comes this story filed out of Tel Aviv by one Celean Jacobson:

Israeli singer shunned for asking questions

For half a century, Yaffa Yarkoni’s songs glorified Israeli soldiers. So when the 76-year-old diva, a national symbol, drew parallels between the treatment of Jews by the Nazis and the army’s handling of Palestinians, she stunned other Israelis.

The article mentions that Yarkoni has received death threats for speaking out. What is not mentioned is that before the recent May 11th peace rally in Rabin Square, a group known as “Gilad-Shalhevet” threatened to assassinate her if she performed at the rally. (Despite this warning, Yarkoni did perform at the rally). This according to a story in Ha’aretz (scroll down the page).

Curious about this “Gilad-Shalhevet” group, I did a Google search and came upon the New Kach Movement, a group dedicated to “reviving the Kahanist dream” (“Kahanist” referring to slain Rabbi Meir Kahane). From their July 11, 2001 newsletter,

The “Gilad Shalhevet Brigades” took responsibility for a shooting attack carried out late last night against Palestinians near Ramallah.

[…]The Brigades are reportedly a Jewish underground organization named after 10-month-old Shalhevet Pass, killed by a “palestinian” sniper in Chevron on March 26, and Samaria Regional Council security head Gilad Zar, 40, of the Itamar community in Samaria, killed in a shooting attack on May 30.

[…]Finally some Jews have begun taking the oath of Never Again seriously. Finally Jews have put the nations future ahead of their own future. The only question that must be asked is why there is only a Gilad-Shalhevet Brigade. Where is the Binyamin Kahane Brigade where is the Yehuda Shoham Brigade?

The Arabs have hundreds of brigades each named after their dead, each one of these brigades go out day after day to kill Jews in an attempt to wipe us out. We must do the same, or face the sad facts that our deaths today are worth no more then the unanswered deaths of the 6 million Jews of the Holocaust?