French Press Offers a Perfect Case Study in Anti-Israel Reporting

Eldad Tzioni
newsrealblog.com
27 January '11

One does not have to look hard to find anti-Israel bias in the wire services. In fact, once you know about the anti-Israel memes that the media uses, one has to look hard to avoid biased news articles.

Here is a case in point, from AFP. Just the first paragraph has enough bias and distortion to keep us busy for a while:

JERUSALEM (AFP) – Jewish settlers are to expand a housing scheme being built on the site of an historic east Jerusalem hotel which was razed by Israel sparking global anger, a city official said on Thursday.

Let’s start from the top.

“Jewish settlers:” While the term is technically accurate — after all, the original Zionists who built Tel Aviv were also considered “settlers” — nowadays it implies Jews who are living in the so-called “occupied territories” and who are doing something vaguely “illegal.” In other words, the term “settler” has turned into a pejorative term, and its use by a news source is never value-neutral.

A neutral, and accurate, term would be “Israeli Jews.”

“A housing scheme:” Why did AFP choose the word “scheme” rather than the word “plan”?

The answer is simple: “Scheme” connotes something underhanded, something vaguely immoral, something that people should be ashamed of. Put it together with the word “Jewish” and things start to really get juicy!

(Read full "French Press Offers a Perfect Case Study in Anti-Israel Reporting")

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