Wednesday, June 15, 2005
On Media Bias
In a post titled "MSM's Asymmetrical Pessimism", Hugh Hewitt puts his finger on something I wish I'd noticed:
But isn't it obvious that the skepticism directed by many in MSM to the rebuilding of Iraq and the necessity of succeeding there is nowhere matched by a similar MSM skepticism of the "roadmap" process on the Israeli-Palestinian front? Or that skepticism of the Oslo accords was rarely heard within MSM, even as the second intifada lurched into being, and that few if any in MSM dared question the necessity of Israel trying again to reach peace with the Palestinian Authority even after suicide bomber after suicide bomber took hundreds of lives?His conclusion is simple: yes, Virginia, there is a predominant left-leaning bias in much of mainstream media in America today.
Does anyone want to argue that the new Iraqi government has less of a chance of stabilizing Iraq than the PA has of controlling Hamas and Hezbollah? If not, then how to explain the unrelenting skepticism directed at the reconstruction of Iraq --of which the above two articles are only the most recent high-profile examples-- with the near complete absence of analytical skepticism directed at the PA's future?
(Perhaps some other time I'll address the issue of why Iraqi nation-building does, in fact, seem to be going a lot better than the Palestinians are doing. Other than the obvious answers -- the Iraqis got a true fresh start, while the Palestinians got old wine in new bottles; the Iraqis have a chance to taste freedom while not under their home-grown oppressor's thumb, while the Palestinians do not -- there's some uncomfortable lessons to be learned for Israel in there, in re the virtues of grasping the nettle firmly. Israel has, to its detriment, long tried to walk a moderate line between what needed to be done and what people wished were all that was necessary. As a result, Israel is perceived as weak in her areas of greatest strength, and that perception costs her dearly. But that's a topic for another day.)
