It appals me the way the crisis in the middle east has gone on for 60 years and the most annoying thing is the media reporting of it and the language used. When hamas fire a rocket its reported as " a rocket" but when the other side reply it referred to as a "strike" no mention that it is a usa top of the range jet, usa bombs etc. Then ABC NEWS will report " a rocket killed one Israeli citizen" but then it will go on say " under the the right to defend itself Israel bombed gazza" but conveniently omits the number of casualties.
What I am trying to get over is Who do they think they are fooling? usa/israel want a platform in the middle east and the article today by robert fisk sums it up nicely. I just wish they would accept in this day and age that the people can live together and create a state israel/palestine and then they could call it a real democracy.
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/c...ars-of-other-middle-east-cliches-3297149.html
I agree, but with one caveat. Depending on which side you come down on in this debate, and I'm somewhere in the middle, favouring a two-state solution, people claim media bias.
I've seen the left complain about the media being biassed to Israel and I've seen the right complain it is biassed to Palestine. I think they're right in both cases, it just depends on which one you watch.
To me it is more a marker of how the media's obsession with taking a side and speaking to a "demographic" is harmful. It's also a marker that their obsession with only portraying the two extreme views on any topic in order to pretend they are giving fair coverage isn't just harmful to a reasoned discussion but to actual people.
It simply isn't true that everyone in Israel supports the hardlined stance of its government (in the same way we don't) or that everyone from Palestine is on the verge of being a suicide bomber intent on the destruction of Israel. Yet the media only allows the extreme voices to be heard just to appease, not the viewers, readers, etc, but their funders and advertisers.
If we learned one thing from the recent US Election, it's that this Christian Right Conservative the Republican party and its supporting media thought existed in great numbers actually didn't. But we also learned that the liberal medai helped fuel this impression of a whole country full of these dangerous extreme views. Turns out, most voters were moderate and reasonable and many held criticism of Obama, but weren't happy with the extreme view that was the alternative.
I know I digressed a bit, but I don't feel any media source actually portrays what is the view and opinion of the majority, it just wants viewers or readers and extreme views get this.
Sadly, until someone can explain to those who unconditionally support Israel that this really isn't the view of the majority, it will always be allowed (and yes I do agree a state has the righ to defend itself) to fight fire with the thermonuclear option. And until the left accepts the role of the likes of Hammas in holding back the people of Palestine for its own agenda through terrorism, they'll always be affected.