The fact that it reinforced myths that essentially demonized or delegitimized Israelis and Jews while robbing Palestinians of any agency about their fate was more often a consequence of lazy journalism and a lack of detailed knowledge about the subject. Taken out of the context of history - and by that, I don’t mean just what happened in the 1920s or even in 1948 or 1967, but also the Palestinians’ repeated rejections of peace and an independent state in 2000, 20 because it would have meant accepting Israel’s permanence - what you often get is a caricature of reality that ignores anything beyond images of Palestinian victims. Instead of presenting their audiences with a coherent view of a complex century-long war against Zionism and an effort to destroy the one Jewish state on the planet, many in the press served up easy-to-understand stories about underdogs and bad guys. With respect to a great deal of the coverage of Israel, and especially about the conflict with the Palestinians, the problem was that the accounts were frequently based on a false narrative in which the Jews were oppressors of downtrodden Arabs. The trouble wasn’t just that the press was faced with a tough task in telling stories about events in which many people have a vested interest. Most consumers of journalism, regardless of the topic, tend to prefer outlets that confirm their pre-existing biases and opinions as opposed to that which challenges them or at least makes them examine their assumptions.īut that defense didn’t stand up to scrutiny. What they actually wanted, they responded, was coverage whose bias was for the Jewish state, rather than against it. Many in the press responded by saying that those who discerned unfair, ignorant or blatantly false information in their articles or broadcast segments weren’t advocating for fairness. For many years, those who performed this task were routinely met with denials by journalists who sought to turn the tables on those criticizing their work. (JNS) - For the last 40 years, many activists have worked hard to monitor press coverage of the Middle East and to call out anti-Israel bias masquerading as objective news.