Has network news, as many partisans charge, been taking sides in the Middle East? One thing is clear amid the carnage: Everyone involved is getting terrible press. Read more about Negatives Add Up in Mideast Coverage
The US papers continue to cover the crisis in the Middle East in great detail, with most featuring the latest developments on their front page. However, the overall tone appears to be fairly balanced with most papers going out of their way to give a detached view. Read more about What the US papers say
Israel’s cable TV companies announced Thursday that they would quit carrying CNN news broadcasts in November, saying they could not longer afford it. Read more about Israeli Cable Companies Drop CNN
Television functions as a continuation of the fight by other means - the organizers of the Palestinian uprising are directors of genius and manipulators of public opinion; the army chief of staff gives out video cameras to soldiers, Israel perceives itself as the victim of a media ambush. The question that keeps coming back to “our” television stations who have been drafted “for our side” is how is it that only “we” see the outrageous gap between the way things appear to be and the way they are, between semblance and essence. Read more about Craven images: Israel obsessed with its PR image – not with morality
THEMOST popular Israeli pop song in the 1970s was The World Is Against Us. It was hardly a masterpiece: the rather simplistic message was accompanied by an equally banal tune. These were the halcyon days of the PLO in the international arena and the 1975 General Assembly resolution which defined Zionism as a form of racism. Read more about "The world is against us"
The Government Press Office’s news and information section, which disseminates and translates information to foreign correspondents from a myriad of government sources, shut down for the whole of last week because its one remaining employee was on vacation. Read more about Ha'aretz: Foreign press angered by government media center cuts
RECENTEFFORTS by the Israeli government and America’s pro-Israel lobby have focused extensively on media coverage of the current crisis between Palestinians and Israelis. From demanding that CNN replace reporters of Palestinian descent with “pro-Israeli reporters” to hiring three additional PR firms to deal with the US media, Israel’s allies have ratcheted up the media war. Go to any pro-Israel organisation’s website and you can find a plethora of action alerts charging that the Western media has it in for Israel. But the truth is, of course, quite the opposite. Read more about The media war we are losing, but can win