As we see violent, entitled antisemites on college campuses attack Jewish students, endanger professors, destroy property, and take over buildings, all in the name of "justice," many people are looking for where to place the blame.
Two popular targets are: 1) Qatari investments in universities that have turned academics into pro-Islamist stooges; 2) radicalization via TikTok. But there's a bigger, more insidious force that has caused this disaster. You may know it as the "mainstream" media.
For decades, many news organizations have framed their coverage of the Middle East, either consciously or unconsciously, with an anti-Israel bias. Many even have rules to enforce this bias. I know because as a journalist at two of them (NPR and CNN), I saw these rules in action.
Some of the rules are written. Others are enshrined through practice—journalists see what pieces are published and aired, and they copy the messaging.
The examples are too numerous to list. But to begin with, take the term "occupation." As the CIA World Factbook explains, there are numerous "occupied" territories around the world. Meanwhile, Israel left Gaza in 2005. And in a document submitted to the United Nations last year about Jericho, the Palestinian Authority itself—the government that controls Palestinian sections of the West Bank—wrote that the "Israeli occupation" period ended in 1994.
Yet news organizations still describe Gaza and the West Bank as "the occupied territories." In that phrase, the word "the" is doing the heavy lifting. It indicates that there is one, and only one, "occupation" on Earth to be concerned about. It's a powerful sign of how certain large news organizations have ignored realities worldwide while putting a harsh spotlight only on the tiny dot of a Jewish state.
Or take use of the word "terror." For years, many news organizations have refused to call Palestinian terrorists what they are: terrorists. These news organizations freely use the term "terror" and its various permutations in reporting on similar attacks literally everywhere else in the world—from other parts of the Middle East to Europe to the United States. But when it comes to groups like Hamas that primarily attack Jews, the term is suddenly verboten.
When called out on this, news organizations including the Associated Press and the BBC have cited internal rules that allegedly limit use of the term. But a simple look at their stories shows that they use the term liberally in other contexts. Citing a "rule" only for coverage of Israel is selective enforcement, and just another way of establishing bias. (Try searching the words "terrorist group" at npr.org. You'll see the term used freely, but avoided like the proverbial plague when it comes to Israel.)
The list goes on. News agencies have spent decades accusing Israel of violating "international law." In doing so, they have violated a cardinal rule of journalism, which is to say that a person or entity is alleged to have violated a law, and to include the person or entity's response to the allegation in the report. The media have simply appointed themselves as experts on both land agreements over the West Bank and the nebulous network of rules that establish "international law."
They've also long been wrong about the U.S. position on this. Dozens of reports have insisted that, until the Trump administration, the United States consistently considered any and all settlements in the West Bank to be illegal under international law. But in making this claim, they ignored the fact that President Ronald Reagan said the exact opposite—and no presidential administration contradicted him for decades, until then-Secretary of State John Kerry made remarks at the end of 2016.
In recent months, news organizations have, all too often, parroted Hamas talking points by providing alleged "death tolls" from Gaza without informing their audiences that the source of those figures, the "Health Ministry," is part of Hamas, a vicious terrorist organization known to lie—or how many of the dead were terrorists, or that other recent wars (including in Ethiopia and Syria) have incomparably larger death tolls.
This is the kind of bias that today's young people were raised on. They have been inundated with anti-Israel messaging throughout their lives and have soaked it up while in college. As "mainstream" news outlets seek the sources of this dangerous, violent radicalization endangering our country, it's time for them to look inward.
Josh Levs is a journalist, author, and the host of the new podcast They Stand Corrected.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
