OPINION
By Reginald Johnson
The bias
being shown by right-wing media towards the college students protesting Israel's brutal war on Gaza is really extraordinary and quite
frankly, shameful.
Citing little
or no hard evidence to back up their characterizations, commentators on FOX and
Newsmax are labeling university protesters as “pro-Hamas sympathizers,” “anti-Semites,”
and even terrorists.
I heard Jesse Waters on FOX call the campus
protesters “Hamas lunatics” and “Jihadists.” Sean Hannity and other talk show hosts on FOX say
much the same thing.
Dick Morris, a pollster/commentator who years
ago worked for the Clintons and who I thought was a fairly critical thinker,
said on Newsmax recently that the campus protests were a burgeoning form of
“Naziism.” Really? Naziism?
Morris offered no video to back up his wild
claim --- showing, say, large numbers of students marching around shouting “Seig
Heil!” while waving swastikas or calling for Jews to be killed. No. Zero
proof. This is just incredibly irresponsible and I think defammatory.
It is true that a small minority of people in and
around the demonstrations, some wacky extremists, have said irresponsible
things. A few people have uttered anti-Semitic comments or said stupid things
like “Long-live Hamas!”
But from what
I’ve seen, the vast majority of the students are involved in legitimate and
constructive protest. They’re calling out the utter brutality and carnage that
is going on in Gaza perpetrated by the Israeli military and saying they don’t
want their schools to be in any way associated with helping the Israeli state.
They are saying they want a cease-fire in this terrible war and they want aid
to be sent in to help the people of Gaza. Again, this is the message from the vast
majority of demonstrators and I have not seen any evidence to show otherwise.
I saw FOX
News show a clip of one person shouting from the outside of a protest that the
slaughter of October 7 should be take place “again and again and again.” This
clip was shown repeatedly over a number of days but it was just one person --- there were no other people picking up the
chant. This person was either a sick extremist or possibly a provocateur sent
in by people who support Israel and are trying to discredit the student protest
movement.
The fact that
FOX would show this kind of a clip of just one person repeating a depraved chant
over several days and then acting as if it was somehow indicative of the way
many protesters feel is really the height of the irresponsibility. You have to
wonder sometimes whether that news organization is being paid by somebody to
carry out this kind of propaganda.
FOX talking
heads have also been claiming recently, without evidence, that protesters in
different places are shouting “Death to America!” But again no videos are
shown.
Another claim
from right-wing outlets is that Gaza War
protesters are advocating the “destruction
of Israel” because they are chanting “From the river to the sea Palestine shall
be free.” This is a complete smear. The meaning of the chant is that
Palestinians who are NOT free now in their homeland because they are under military
siege in Gaza and under a nearly 60-year Israeli military occupation in the West
Bank, should be set free. They’re saying
that the Palestinians should have their rights and freedoms just like Israelis
have in their country.
The false
accusation relating to the use of this slogan is particularly irresponsible given
the fact that it is the Israelis going back to the Zionist leaders who were
pushing for an Israeli state in the 1920s and 1930s who were using the same
line --- declaring that from the Meditteranean Sea to the Jordan River there
should be a Jewish homeland. Likud Party members wrote in their charter in 1970
that from ‘the river to the sea Israel should have sovereignty.’
As recently
as early October last year, prior to the October 7 attack, the foreign minister
of Israel was saying the same thing about Israel’s rights, restating that from
the sea to the river Israel should have dominion. So it is complete hypocrisy
by Israelis and their allies in the US media to be saying that the use of this
line by pro-Palestinian activists is ‘threatening’ and irresponsible. Israelis
are using it themselves.
Meanwhile, there has been little effort by FOX
or Newsmax, especially, to send reporters to the demonstrations and make a
concerted effort to find out what the protesters are thinking. The basic “Why?”
question of journalism is not being asked. Why are you here?
If they did ask
this, they’d find people deeply concerned about the slaughter going on in Gaza,
considered by international officials to be a genocide. They desperately want a
ceasefire in Gaza and an immediate delivery of massive amounts of food to the
area, to stave off a famine.
But
right-wing outlets don’t want to hear about genocide or war crimes or famine created by Israel blocking deliveries, because such truths hurt Israel, and they’re on Israel’s side.
Some of the
show hosts are very open about this. For instance, I heard Greg Kelly on
Newsmax say one night, “I’m rooting for
Israel.”
So shows on
FOX and Newsmax are not journalism, they’re propaganda for Israel. These stations
cannot call themselves “news” outlets anymore. They’re in public relations.
(By the way I have watched the conservative channels
in recent years, in addition to the others, simply get a more balanced
picture about American politics and also to hear discussions about important
issues that you don’t hear on the other channels such as the attack on civil
liberties including censorship and curbs on free speech. So they have had their moments in the
past but relating to the Gaza war and Israel these stations have been a
disaster.)
Coverage by the so-called moderate or liberal cable
news channels like CNN and MSNBC of the student protests and the Gaza war has been a little bit better.
Their coverage is not outright public relations like FOX and Newsmax. But then again,
the reporting is not very strong, either. MSNBC has been spending recent weeks
obsessively covering the Trump trials and devoting precious little time to this absolutely horrendous war going on in the Middle East. Reporting on the Trump circus day and night is really not very good journalism.
CNN, from what I can see, has not been covering the
war terribly well either, but there have been a few segments that I thought
were good.
The only TV/cable news outlets that have been doing
a good job on the protests and the Gaza war are of course, foreign-based, namely Euronews
and BBC. BBC in particular has been doing a nice job, making a real effort
to talk with people on the ground whether they are demonstrators in the US or Palestinians
themselves who are being directly impacted by the war. They’ve delved into the
issue of genocide, talking with officials of the UN and human rights
organizations. There’s also been interviews with leaders of the Palestinian Authority
and leaders of Arab countries.
The BBC has
also aired a number of interviews with Israeli officials to get their side. This
is the way it’s supposed to be done.
I've also heard a lot of good things about al-Jazeera coverage, but I can't get this on cable TV. I'll have to check it out on-line.
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