Weblogs and Mainstream Media on the Israel/Lebanon War

For much of the Israeli war against Lebanon, mainstream media painstakingly avoided laying blame where it so squarely lay: at Israel’s door. In fact, many organizations pointed out discrepancies in their (the media’s) insistence that the conflict was sparked by Hezbollah, when in fact, the Israel Occupation Forces had violated the Blue Line over 11,000 times since their “withdrawal” from Lebanon, while Katyusha rockets landed less than 150 times across the border. The reality of the war was best found on personal blogs: from both sides, Israel and Lebanon. More and more, in fact, a whole generation of people from across the globe are eschewing traditional newsprint and TV sources for the Internet: the world’s only true democracy.

Reasons for this shift are many, but an overriding reason is the perception that mainstream traditional media is more and more skewed towards one particular point of view: American. Even though the presence of such biased channels as Fox News make CNN and BBC seem positively neutral in comparison, none of these channels discuss historical contexts, nor do they bring to light material that might be seen as exposés. “Breaking News” is no longer exclusive, and networks fight for precious seconds to get their version on air. The same information, however, is available on any of the multitude of channels – exclusivity is a remote dream.

As the war with Lebanon escalated, I spent the first few days jumping between CNN and BBC (Fox occasionally, to see how they put their spin on the blatant disregard for civilian lives by the Israelis. Their solution was to largely ignore that aspect of the invasion). After day 3, I began posting comments on the BBC “Have Your Say” website – an exercise in frustration as the moderated panel never posted a single comment from me. The Guardian, on the other hand, was fantastic, not least because of the powerful, well-researched comments. My comments on the Guardian were largely endorsements of existing comments, but this valuable blog led me onwards to a host of other blogs and websites with amazing amounts of information on Israel’s Occupation of Palestine. Perhaps the most telling of these was a site titled If Americans Knew (http://www.ifamericansknew.com). WeBlogs exposed a simple truth for me: even the most ‘neutral’ of mainstream media is carefully articulated to avoid the full, unvarnished truth.

If Americans Knew is the brainchild of freelance American journalist Alison Weir. Ms. Weir spent some time in Palestine, back in 2000, which prompted the creation of this organization. Ms. Weir and her team present a bias-free look at the 60-year conflict. She is neither muslim nor jew, and has no affiliation to either region. She offers very real statistical information, and analyzes the role of American Media in the active disinformation of the conflict to the American public. Her sources include her own team of analysts and data-miners, and a substantial amount of information from B’Tselem – an Israeli Human Rights organization (http://www.btselem.org). She analyzes the most heart-wrenching statistics offered by the American Media (including giants such as the New York Times and the Washington Post); her research is almost exclusively on the reports of the killing of children in both Israel and Palestine.

One of her staggering statistics include the fact that at any given day, while the American Media will report 150% of Israeli deaths (where in actuality, there may have been 8 Israeli deaths, the paper may repeat stories on a few and leave the impression of more deaths), they will only report around 20% of Palestinian deaths (suggesting fewer, or a parity of the death toll, where in reality there will be an average of 7-10 Palestinian deaths for every Israeli death).

Based on the incredible number of WeBlogs, and the evolution from personal diary to news source, it may be safe to assume that more people now surf the net for information, and find many sources there to be far more credible than traditional media. Many newspapers and TV channels have already incorporated blogs onto their sites, in fact, BBC’s Have Your Say merits an hour-long show on Sundays dedicated to viewer opinion.

Regardless of this, the Internet, independent of mainstream news sources, remains the more open, credible source of information for the serious surfer. Considering this trend, it would interesting to note if the pressure of keeping up with the Blogs will finally coerce mainstream media towards a more neutral and fair stand on global conflicts, or will there inevitably be a downward spiral into Fox-like tabloid media that panders exclusively to “what people want”, not “what they should know”.