Objective Journalism, Does it Exist?

I used to be a real newshound, addicted to listening to the news, reading whatever newspapers I could find, watching news shows. Yes, the whole works. And I loved the dynamics of politics ever since I was a teen. Now, as you may have noticed from the blog posts here, I'm disgusted and horrified.

There is nothing that even vaguely resembles objective news reporting. Not only do they all have their agendas, but there's no such thing as fact checking. It's beyond ignorance. There's an innocence in ignorance, but nowadays a don't see that at all. There are vicious attacks, like a modern version of the auto-da-fé.

An auto-da-fé or auto-de-fé (from Portuguese auto da fé [ˈaw.tu dɐ ˈfɛ], meaning "act of faith") was the ritual of public penance of condemned heretics and apostates that took place when the Spanish Inquisition, Portuguese Inquisition or the Mexican Inquisition had decided their punishment, followed by the execution by the civil authorities of the sentences imposed.
The most extreme punishment imposed on those convicted was execution by burning. In popular usage, the term auto-da-fé, the act of public penance, came to mean the burning at the stake. Wikipedia

Media interviews are more like either vicious interrogations or the fawning style seen in simplistic fan magazines of old.

At first I was very excited to discover that we could watch BBC News on our television, since I had happily listened to the radio version for decades. Then I had considered it, except for news on Israel*, pretty objective. But as the last American Presidential Campaign began to heat up, their support for Hillary and the Democrats so distorted their reports I could no longer trust their objectivity about anything. And not only hasn't it gotten better, it has gotten much worse. We don't have cable, just a simple "dish," and recently we don't even get the Israeli stations. CNN was never known for its objectivity.

Then  I discovered the English French TV News Channel, and I had great hopes for it, since it's not that interested in American news. I began watching it, but then they began a feature about the Israel-Arab "conflict." It begins with:

"In 1967  Israel invaded..." 

Grrr... That's what people all over the world think, and what is taught in universities even in the USA. And I have this nasty, frightening feeling that even some Israelis are oblivious to the facts, the Arab aggression that led up to the 1967 Six Days War. In order to survive, Israel had no choice other than shoot first.

About thirty 30 years ago, in the days when we hosted many journalists of an amazing selection of international media, I had a talk with a top editor of an American newspaper. I asked him what training, education he looked for when hiring someone starting in the profession. He said that he does not like to hire those with degrees in journalism, since they don't know anything other than how to write. He looks for those who majored in History, Economics, Science etc.

"Any knowledgeable university graduate can be taught how to write a good article, but I can't teach a Journalism graduate facts."

Things have changed drastically in the international media. I no longer have objective sources to learn current events and get an accurate idea of what's really happening in politics. I just know what's happening on the ground here in Israel, but not from the media. Today fake news is all over, and when trying to check accuracy, you really need to be an expert. This is both dangerous and sad. People are making decisions based on lies, fantasies, fake news and worse.

I can't see how it will get better. I am pessimistic for the future.

Here's a picture of a program from the French news channel.

*During the Intifada Part 1, I was horrified to hear an excited BBC radio reporter telling that he was with Arabs throwing rocks on Jews and how they tried to protect their eyes from the teargas the Israeli soldiers aimed at them to stop them. And in those days BBC even came to our house to film us and ask us questions.

Yes, Sherri Mandell, For Journalists, We are Just Pawns

Koby Mandell

My story isn't as horrific as the one that Sherri Mandell tells:

How Brian Williams (and Tom Brokaw) betrayed my family
Read more: How Brian Williams (and Tom Brokaw) betrayed my family | Sherri Mandell | The Blogs | The Times of Israel http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/how-brian-williams-and-tom-brokaw-betrayed-my-family/#ixzz3RHVEAygE Follow us: @timesofisrael on Twitter | How Brian Williams (and Tom Brokaw) Betrayed My Family

Just in case you've forgotten or just don't know who Sherri Mandell is, she is the mother of Koby Mandell, HaY"ad, who was brutally murdered, along with a friend, by Arab terrorists one day when they were hiking near their homes in Tekoa.

There's a line in her article that hit me like a deja vu hammer. Brian Williams asked Mandell and her husband if they had a gun. When they answered in the affirmative, Williams requested that they bring the gun so he could photograph them with it.

About thirty years ago, one day, someone, actually a handful of people knocked on our door. I was home with four out of our five children.

"Hello, we're from time ink."
"Time ink? I thought to myself. What's that."
I must have looked rather confused, because they quickly said:
"TIME Magazine."

Then I understood.

They came in to the small crowded house we lived in at the time. And they asked me questions. After three years in Shiloh I was pretty experienced in handling journalists, though I looked more like a harried housewife amateur.

Among the benign ordinary questions they asked, suddenly they asked if we had a gun.

"Yes," I answered.
"Can you show it to us?"

I had visions of a photograph of me with a gun and a baby on the cover of TIME Magazine. I may have an ego, but I also have common sense. Such a photo would not be good at all in terms of Hasbara, Israel's and more specifically Jews of YESHA's information campaign.

"I don't know where it is," was my reply.

A couple of weeks later I saw the article in the magazine. I wasn't mentioned at all. I consider it a draw. They couldn't find any way to make me look bad, so they left me out of their article.

Appalling Ignorance of World Leaders, Media and So-Called "Experts"

Sarah Honig, one of my favorite Jerusalem Post writers has an article in this Friday's edition that could be comic if the subject wasn't actually factual and serious, Another Tack: The Kay and Tim Show.

For some background information on myself, I used to be one of the most popular "settlers" for the international media and all sorts of groups to visit. My kids grew up with reporters and television crews who visited us more often than our relatives. Many times they'd have dinner with us and even sleep over. Not only was I a target to be questioned, but sometimes I'd have some very interesting conversations with the journalists, writers and editors of some of the largest most prestigious networks and newspapers in the world. One newspaper editor confided that he didn't hire Journalism graduates, because "they know no facts, only how to write. I prefer to hire those with degrees in History, Economics etc since they understand what is happening and have strong factual backgrounds."

This is something I haven't forgotten and certainly explains the total ignorance and incompetence that Honig describes in her article.

Kay and Tim
Maybe best called
Tweedledee and Tweedledum 

...There was a lot of back-and-forth about what language we speak. Tim referred to the distress call Gil-Ad made to the police. Deadpan, sounding very well-versed in the minutiae of esoteric Israel, Tim shared his wisdom: “I assume he was talking in Hebrew… Both his parents have Israeli Hebrew names.” Deep!Later on Tim also assumed, with equal erudition, that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu would address the mourners in Hebrew, “although many people in Israel speak English.” Really deep!
These profound linguistic insights were accompanied by abundant mispronunciations of everything from victim Gil-Ad’s name (he became Jilad some of the time) to Tim’s lack of familiarity with the name Etzion (which came out something like Zion). It was defined as an illegal settlement deep in the Palestinian heartland, which the boys had visited…
Okay, so Tim the expert didn’t know that Kfar Etzion was a well-established Jewish community before the state of Israel was born on May 14, 1948. Kfar Etzion was besieged by the Jordanian Legion – British-trained, British-equipped and British-led...

Today's journalists and media personalities don't get their positions due to their knowledge of history, geography, political science etc. They are chosen for looks, style and charisma. Fact-checking is definitely not done by editors who nowadays know little more than their writers. Publishers and producers are mostly concerned with the financial bottom line, not truth nor accuracy.

Unfortunately, the Israeli media is no better. Numerous times I've read and seen on TV Arabs blatantly lying about conditions and situations.  For example claiming that there is no public transportation in the eastern aka Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem to other parts of the city, even though there are gorgeous spiffy new white buses that ply those apartheid Arab only routes. Instead of doing an easy investigation, the reporters just repeat the Arab lies. Well, now those same Arab neighborhoods are isolated due to the violence and damage done by the very same local Arabs.

And one more thing. I challenge all those who believe that there is such a thing as a "Palestinian people" sic to list a timeline of events and leaders to compare with the History of the Jewish People over the past four thousand years, OK, three thousand years, and if that's too hard how about a thousand or a hundred years... And of course I expect you to document it, please.

Some Minimal Knowledge Would Certainly Help the Journalism Profession

Many years ago, when I was a "media star*" of sorts from here in Shiloh, I got to know the editor of a large newspaper from the American Midwest.  I'll never forget what he said about recruiting people to work for him:

"I prefer hiring those with degrees in History, Economics, Geography, Sciences etc. rather than those who studied Journalism in college.  Any intelligent educated person can learn how to write a competent article, but the Journalism graduates only know how to write and have no real knowledge of anything else."

This morning I thought of that when I saw a confusing phrase of words in a sensationalist article on Arutz 7:

"A 23-year-old Jewish man was assaulted near Long Island on Sunday night. He did not require hospitalization." 

I'm not writing this to belittle the pain and suffering of the victim.  But I was very curious about what they had meant when writing " near Long Island."

I grew up on Long Island and I've never heard such a description.  Here's a map of Long Island.

As you can see, it has four colored areas, because it contains four counties, Brooklyn and Queens, which are boroughs of New York City and also Nassau and Suffolk which are counties in New York State. If someone was to ask me what is "near Long Island," I'd say The Bronx, Connecticut and the Atlantic Ocean.  But "near Long Island" is not a location description I'd ever heard, so I was very curious about the location of the attack.

I googled about the attack to try to find a more detailed article, and I found one from a New Jersey paper:

Jewish Man Beaten By NYPD Files Civil Rights Suit

And so obviously I checked out where the attack took place.

Ehud Halevy, the 21-year-old Jewish man from Brooklyn whose beating by New York police officers was caught on videotape, has filed a civil rights lawsuit against the officers responsible for the attack.

Verrazano-Narrows Bridge at

night from Brooklyn

It seems that it took place in Brooklyn.  Brooklyn is on Long Island, so how can it be described as "near Long Island?"  Actually, New Jersey can be described as "near Long Island," because the Verrazano Narrows Bridge connects them, davka, via Brooklyn and Staten Island.

The bridge is owned by the City of New York and operated by MTA Bridges and Tunnels, an affiliate agency of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Interstate 278 passes over the bridge, connecting the Staten Island Expressway with the Gowanus Expressway and the Belt Parkway. The Verrazano, along with the other three major Staten Island bridges, created a new way for commuters and travelers to reach Brooklyn, Long Island, and Manhattan by car from New Jersey.

It may be understandable if someone who lives far from New York isn't all that aware of the simple fact that Brooklyn is southwest Long Island, but I'd expect someone writing from New Jersey to have a grasp of that basic geography.

And another "davka" for you is that the NJ paper credits Arutz 7 as the news source.

*We used to be on the "speed-dial" of international journalists and the staff of the Government Press Office for those who wanted to interview a real live "settlement family."  There were days when we'd give multiple interviews, including TV.  I'd find myself rushing to change clothes as one TV crew left, before the next one came in.  I used to joke that our number must be written on the doors of the "loo," with a PS that I served good food and cake, and our guest bed was comfortable.