- Steve Salaita on media coverage of Israel/Palestine Archived Message
Posted by johnhol
on July 6, 2019, 12:36 am
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https://stevesalaita.com/ripping-the-headlines/ His conclusions: My trip through the headlines confirmed a few perceptions: that corporate media portray Palestinians as the aggressor, ignore the actual basis of the “conflict” (land theft, structural racism, illegal settlement), and misread Palestinian political sensibilities. The fact that corporate media sporadically offer a decent headline in situations of abject horror is no reason to be satisfied. Palestinians are also supposed to be grateful for shitty peace initiatives that concede most of their homeland to the usurper. The upshot of these problems is normalization of Israel. Corporate media treat the state as if it’s an innocent, almost befuddled, organism of timeless provenance rather than a recent imposition violently accumulating the spoils of colonization. To encounter resistance, then, warrants an onslaught of technocratic force, naturally conceptualized as self-defense. Some headlines offer useful information, but they rarely convey social or historical context. Hamas is pulling the strings. Palestinians resist and protest for…reasons (none of them admirable). The headlines convey little sense of independent mass movements in Palestine, by now over a century old. Instead, action occurs through shady hierarchies. The goal is to inflict suffering on Israelis because of atavistic hatred. What can be done? Nothing, really. As long as they’re solvent, corporate media will continue dissembling and obfuscating on behalf of their ruling class sponsors. I’d suggest reading past the headlines, but doing so only exacerbates the problem. |
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