Beit Hanoun Meme Watch
(Intro) Beit Hanoun Meme Watch
(1) "Rage and Tears" - Apparently Theats Of Genocide Are OK If You're Really Upset
(2) "The Palestinians Are Really Pissed Off" - And The NYT Will Publish Death Porn To Prove It
(3) Stupid Headline Tricks - Hey Listen, Calling It A "Massacre" Is Still Bias, Even If You Think You're Being Clever By Quoting Someone
(4) "The al-Athamnah Family" - If You Make The Tragedy Seem Really Personal, Then People Will Really Get Outraged
(Interlude) Convergence of Bias - With This Simple Formula, You Too Can Produce Solid Anti-Israel Journalism
(5) "World Indifference" - We Learned About That Indifference From Every Major Newspaper On The Planet
(6) "Israelis Demoralized and Blaming Themselves" - Actually, No They're Not
(7) "Palestinian Unity (Government / Suicide Bombings / Whatever) Is Israel's Fault" - LIARS
(8) "Israeli Terrorism" - Want To Guess Who Reuters Is Willing To Label A Terrorist?
(9) "It's All About Olmert's Domestic Political Situation" - Predictable Bias Is Real Bias
The journalistic feeding frenzy around the Beit Hanoun tragedy shows no signs of slowing down. And don't get us wrong - this is a really newsworthy, earth-shattering event. It won't revolutionize our understanding of the world (let's not exaggerate), but just think of what we know now that we didn't know before this horrible accident:
It turns out that when terrorists fire missiles at Israeli schoolhouses from the middle of densely-packed neighborhoods, they are putting the residents of those neighborhoods at risk of being hit in the crossfire of Israeli counter-terrorism efforts.
Again, this isn't a revolutionary discovery. No one is claiming that (we don't want to put words into the mouths of international journalists, obviously). But to witness the sheer volume and diversity of coverage, you have to conclude that there's at least billions of people who didn't know it before. And journalists themselves are tripping over themselves trying to come up with new and insightful angles to explain this discovery to the rest of the world. Some are falling back on old favorites, demonizing Israel and excusing the most insane kinds of Palestinian statements and threats. But there are definitely a few innovators out there, mining this tragedy for new ways to approach the Israeli-Arab conflict (or, more precisely, for new ways to blame Israel for the Israeli-Arab conflict).
So over the course of the day, we're going to try to track down and comment on a few of the more prominent ways that this story is being spread around the world. We already kind of started yesterday, with the Xinhua's breathless "raid on civilians" headline (although that wasn't so much "framing" as "lying" - but as you'll see, it counts). We're going to avoid dipping into the blogosphere, because we're out of the state and we just didn't bring enough painkillers with us to deal with that. Besides, what's the point - once you've advocated destroying Israel, there's really no reason to look for new reasons to advocate destroying Israel.
Previously:
MSM: It's Israel's Fault We Made Things Up, NYT: Just Because You Were Forced at Gunpoint to Convert To Islam Doesn't Mean You Were Harmed In Any Way, Kidnapping of Reporters by Palestinians Proves that Palestinians Love Peace! Brilliant!
