A nice column by Moustafa Bayoumi in The Guardian takes a swipe at deconstructing the journalistic legerdemain employed by American news outlets like the New York Times when describing the bloody frictions in Gaza these days.
Judging by some stories, it’s almost as if bullets just hang in the air, waiting for Palestinians to walk deliberately into them
Language is a wily cuss without any help from outsiders. To employ it as a means of shading the horror or the truth is not journalism -- it is public relations at best and agitation-propaganda at worst. Bayoumi points some good fingers.
There is, I believe, an underlying problem. To me it is extremely disturbing problem. Criticism of almost anything Israel does produces vehement reactions from too many in the Jewish communities.
ReplyDeleteOn the day of the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital, the NYT communiticated the latest horror visually rather than verbally: a photo of the killing of Palestinians was above the “fold” the picture of Ivanka Trump speaking and Jared Kushner smiling was below the fold. The visual message was quite obvious, the wording did communicate a certain deference. The way the article was written probably would cause a naive reader to ask why apparently unarmed protesters were slaughtered.
The Guardian criticizes the NYT without mentioning the real underlying problem or mentioning that the NYT was given a chance to explain. In fact it leads the reader to believe the NYT is implicitly supporting Israel.