Media Lens 7

January 04, 2011 Guest Media Alert - Tilting Towards Israel Journalist Jonathan Cook Reveals The Bias In 'Balance' On Israel-Palestine Towards the end of last year, we sent out two media alerts - Put The Palestinians On A Diet and Too Toxic To Handle? - about the corporate media’s failure to report the release of documents detailing Israel’s deliberate policy of near-starvation for Gaza. “The idea”, explained a senior Israeli official, “is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.” The human rights group Gisha published explicit Israeli formulas for the amount of food, animal feed and poultry to be allowed into Gaza, and the cold calculation of “breathing space”: the number of days before these essential supplies would run out. We exposed the near-uniform silence of the media to these shocking revelations, as well as the media’s failure to respond to many impassioned and articulate emails from the public. A rare exception, triggered by Media Lens’ revelations, was provided by Mehdi Hasan in the small-circulation New Statesman last week. This whole episode is yet another example of the supposed truth seekers of the fourth estate being both supine to power and dismissive of the public. For a better understanding of why this might happen in the case of Israel-Palestine, we are fortunate to be able to turn to the authentic insight and bravery of a journalist like Jonathan Cook. He is rare indeed: someone with inside knowledge of how the media operates who is prepared to speak out. A recent Cook article gives a superb account of his experiences in trying to report honestly on the Middle East, first for the Guardian, and later as an independent journalist based in Nazareth (full unabridged version). His article will be painfully awkward reading for corporate editors and journalists; not least for those at his former employers, the Guardian. But also for the BBC whose managers and editors constantly proclaim the “impartiality” of their reporting from the Middle East. For the rest of us, Cook’s analysis is a welcome blast of sunlight illuminating many dark corners of the media propaganda system. Jonathan Cook very kindly provided Media Lens with an edited version of his article for this guest media alert. He begins by explaining why he was attracted to journalism in the first place. Read More This Alert is Archived here: Guest Media Alert - Tilting Towards Israel Follow us on Twitter, on Youtube and on Facebook The second Media Lens book, 'NEWSPEAK in the 21st Century' by David Edwards and David Cromwell, was published in 2009 by Pluto Press. John Pilger writes of the book: "Not since Orwell and Chomsky has perceived reality been so skilfully revealed in the cause of truth." Find it in the Media Lens Bookshop

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