(Excellent) Why the Media Never Gets the Middle East Right - by Charles Krauthammer OBM

On October 24, 1993, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) held a conference at Brandeis University titled: “The Media, the Message, and Middle East Peace.” Among the speakers at the conference was Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Charles Krauthammer. To honor his memory, we are republishing his speech.

Charles Krauthammer..
CAMERA..
28 June '18..

Let me begin with the good news. I brought with me a cartoon that ran in a major newspaper on July 31. It shows a bunch of people, including some children, with bombs exploding over their heads, running for their lives. Why? They are being chased by a large creature, a Tyrannosaurus Rex. But not your ordinary T Rex. This one is wearing an army helmet with a Star of David on it. This is a cartoon about Southern Lebanon. The caption reads: “Sixty million in the making, one week in destroying. Jewrassic Park, a.k.a. Southern Lebanon.” Jurassic is spelled Jew-rassic.

Why is this good news? Because it ran in the Irish Times. It is much harder to find that kind of thing in this country. However biased, unfriendly, and off-the-mark is American media coverage of the Middle East, it cannot hold a candle to the rest of the world and in particular Europe. After all, Ireland is not a country well known for its raging anti-Semitism. Yet this is your typical European view of the Israeli campaign in Southern Lebanon this summer in response to the Katyusha rocket attacks.

So my first piece of good news is this: It could be worse. (I always like to start talks with good news. Chesterton once said of Zola: “He was worse than a pornographer, he was a pessimist.” I’m here to cheer you up.)

My second piece of good news is that the anti-Israel bias in the media is, in my view, not primarily a function of malice. This is good news because malice is incurable. The bias in the media is, in my view, a compound of other factors, principally sentimentality, ignorance, laziness, and over-attention. And some of those – particularly ignorance – you can do something about.

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