Richard Landes: on own-goal and lethal war journalism
For many years Richard Landes has done a great deal of thinking and writing on how news propaganda has influenced the Palestinian/Israel conflict. I’ve written about Landes’ work many times before (disclosure: he’s also a friend of mine).
Here’s a recent article by Landes demonstrating his usual clarity and insight. It’s long but I recommend it.
An excerpt:
…[There are] three types of unethical forms of “war journalism.” Patriotic war journalism: reporting as news your own side’s war propaganda; Lethal war journalism: reporting as news a foreign belligerent’s war propaganda; Own Goal war journalism: reporting your enemy’s war propaganda as news…
From 2000-2002, a wave of the most ferocious and provocative lethal journalism in the history of modern, professional journalism came from Western journalists who ran the most dishonest Palestinian claims about Israeli evil-doing (targeting kids, massacring civilians) and ran them as news. When disproven, as they all were, these news outlets did nothing to correct their errors. …
Since then, western media have continued to practice this lethal and own-goal war journalism where Israel is concerned and beyond (e.g. the dismissal/banning of the Chinese Lab “conspiracy theory” origin to Covid). Here in the Middle East, it runs like this: run Palestinian (Hamas) propaganda – lethal narratives about evil Israel – as news; treat Israeli denials as propaganda; when proven wrong, move onto the next lethal narrative. This seemingly unbreakable pattern of press behavior in the 21st century, has given birth to one of the most grotesque (and profoundly inhumane) war strategies in the history of asymmetrical war: provoke the enemy to attack so as to maximize your own civilian casualties, exploiting the compassion of outsiders to get outsiders to hate your enemy as badly as you do.
This cannibalistic strategy of inflicting damage on your own people to win a propaganda war against your enemy can only work if the outside media tell the story as you want it told: highlight your suffering, use your statistics, blame the enemy for disproportionate response, accuse them of war crimes and ethnic cleansing…
And so, inexorably, we are drawn to our own destruction: Western and global institutions built by civil society, based on demotic principles of equality, dignity, and fairness – courts, international assemblies, academia, journalism, our public sphere – all corrupted by the colonizing meme, all, in widening gyres of dysfunctionality.
We have our own brand of lethal journalism, of course. The moral inversion of those who consider themselves virtuous is one of the worst things about it.
And the real sad news is that so many Americans just believe the lies and propaganda spewed out by the “news” outlets.
A large percentage of Americans, if they had lived in 1930’s Germany or Stalin’s Russia, would have totally believed what the govt. – via the news media – told them.
Progressive (i.e. monotonic) liberalism (i.e. divergence).
Religion (i.e. behavioral protocol), including: universal morality, its relativistic sibling ethics, its politically congruent (e.g. consensus, “=”) cousin law.
Pro-Choice selective, opportunistic, relativistic, nominally “secular” religion. Let us bray. #HateLovesAbortion
The worst (concerning Israel) are The New York Times and The Washington Post. In Britain it it is the BBC, Sky News, The Guardian, and The Independent.
It’s interesting — an Arab journalist write about how American journalists were screwing up their own (the Arab journalist’s own) country by constantly going on and on and on and on and on about how evil America is, the Arab street thinks how bad can the Arab country be, in that case.
It was an interesting read.
They learned in “Jounalism School” that gathering facts and data is dull, hard work and often dangerous. It is much easier to grab a prepared propaganda narrative, and then go have a drink with all the other “smart” people. According to Leftists and the lazy, there are no “facts” and the story is whatever text you can peddle to the guy with the cash. “Presstitute” summarizes that mob quite well.
Propagandists draped in journalistic camouflage,
declared enemies of truth,
too blinded by ideological fanaticism to see,
that they walk upon,
The Road to Perdition…
“BBC journo hounded in the streets by pissed-off Londoners… Watch him run away in fear…”
https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/bbc-journo-hounded-in-the-streets-by-pissed-off-londoners/
Propagandists draped in journalistic camouflage,
declared enemies of truth,
too blinded by ideological fanaticism to see,
that they walk upon,
The Road to Perdition…
Geoffrey Britain:
That’s practically a verse from Dylan’s “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding).” Compare and contrast:
________________________________
Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Made everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It’s easy to see without looking too far
That not much is really sacred
–Bob Dylan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CJHbfkROow
Believe it or not, my first attempt at poetry.
Reasoned discourse seemed inadequate to describe the depth and despicableness of journalist’s betrayal of ethical reportage.
But never doubt, the liar knows what they do…
Geoffrey Britain:
Not bad! Keep it up, if you should desire. Poetry exists for inadequacies of discourse. Bob Dylan knew that … in spades.
You don’t strike me as a Dylan-kinda-guy. Nonetheless, you might give his “wild mercury sound” albums — from “Bringing It All Back Home” to “Blonde on Blonde” a listen. Those albums have never been equaled for significance and changed American music and world music forever.
I have my cavils with the Nobel Prize committee for giving a songwriter the ultimate Literature accolade. But given the weakness of Lit for the past 20-30 years, they could have done worse and have.
I hate getting stuck in a widening gyre of disfunctionality.