Journalism as activism diminishes us all
'The conscious subverting of truth erodes our shared understanding of reality'
Friends of mine get very upset about the way the Gaza War is being reported. The angst about how fallacies are taken as truth is almost risible if it were not for the impact on public opinion and the threshold of hatred being accepted within our communities.
I hold the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the Australian Fairfax press – The Age, Sydney Morning Herald and Canberra Times – in particular contempt for their so-called journalism which is just activism pushing an anti-Israel narrative. Their “reporting” of the war parades a double standard and demonisation of Israel that is endless, sometimes vicious and designed I think to de-legitimise Israel itself.
The impact of this on public opinion is to lower the threshold of acceptable anti-Israel behaviour, and is so doing erode acceptance of, and behaviour toward the Jewish community.
Here we are nearly ten months after October 7, and the explosion of antisemitism in our streets and daily conversations sees no abating, no Parliamentary Inquiries to investigate it, and no police task forces to stop it. Fed by the activism of the fourth estate and spineless leadership to stamp such rubbish out, the threshold of acceptable hatred keeps on lowering.
I thought the mainstream US media was better. My mistake.
The once-venerable Washington Post ran a front-page story on the Hezbollah missile strike on Israel a few days ago that killed 12 children and wounded 14 others, with a photo of one of the children being buried but under a heading implying Israel killed the child!
I wonder if the editors/sub-editors who did this saw the image of Druze families crying and deliberately thought “Arab looking victims and a child’s death – quick, blame Israel”. Bigots.
It gets worse.
The Washington Post ran a tweet about the American parents of an American-Israeli being held hostage in Gaza by HamasISIS, speaking at the recent Republican Convention.
The tweet said, “Omer Neutra has been missing since the Oct 7 attack on Israel. When his parents speak publicly, they don’t talk about Israel’s assault on Gaza that has killed over 38,000 Palestinians, according to local officials. Experts have warned of looming famine.”
Missing? Not captured and held hostage.
38,000? Half of this number are HamasISIS fighters.
Looming famine? There was and is no famine in Gaza.
Blaming the parents? No words suffice.
But even without basic reporting, the fact that the Post allowed activist narratives to belittle, devalue and delegitimise the Israeli hostages and their families is nauseating. This once great institution, for decades richly adding to the currency of democracy – truthful information and balanced opinion – has now debased that currency in pursuit of a biased agenda that sanctifies activism and lies over minimal journalistic standards.
I am really afraid there is nothing Israel nor its supporters can do to change this any more.
This is very, very worrying. Not just for the obvious reason of standing with a country defending itself after its citizens were murdered, raped and burnt in an orgy of violent hatred. And for the additional reasons of supporting the only liberal democracy in the Middle East, the only Jewish State on the planet, and a bulwark against Islamist racist barbarism and nihilism.
But also because the conscious subverting of truth erodes our shared understanding of reality. This means we agree on nothing. This in turn destabilises the social and political foundations upon which liberal democratic societies operate and opens the door to demagoguery and then tyranny.
It is not too much of a stretch to say that journalism as activism diminishes us all by granting and promoting access to extremists who spew hatred the loudest, show no tolerance for truth, and seek to dismantle our freedoms and tolerance for each other, all so that they can impose their version of reality no matter how distorted on us all.
I believe our shared humanity and respect for each other demands we stop this descent into madness.
Adam Slonim is director of the Middle East Policy Forum is currently writing a book The Gaslighting of Israel.
comments