Mere Rhetoric: Beit Hanoun Meme Watch - (4) "The al-Athamnah Family" - If You Make The Tragedy Seem Really Personal, Then People Will Really Get Outraged

MR's SERIES ON MEDIA COVERAGE OF BEIT HANOUN
(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

ORIGINAL POST

Not much analysis or substance about this meme - relatively straightforward bias expressed and transmitted in double standards. But it's such a standard media go-to that we can't justify leaving it out of a catalog on the different ways that the media is whipping up hysteria today. Critics have long commented that journalistic accounts of Arab-Israeli violence try to make the deaths of Palestinians personal by providing names and details, while keeping the identity of Israeli victims anonymous. It's Writing 101, but that doesn't make it ineffective. So of course it's all over accounts of what happened in Biet Hanun:

WaPo lede:

This farming community buried the al-Athamnah family Thursday, after marching through muddy streets bearing the bodies of the dead aloft and reaffirming in angry chants its commitment to war with Israel

UPI:

Seventeen of the dead people belong to one extended family of refugees, al-Athamneh. They include four women, five children and two infants. Ibrahim Athamneh said they had been asleep then, and he saw his daughter`s dead body fly out of the fourth floor.

The AP even managed to sneak the family's name into a photo caption.

Again, old trick - it's even been troted out for MSM Lebanon coverage. But as with some of the other tried and true tactics that the media is pulling out of the shed, there seems to be a certain lack of concern and shame this time around.

Now the great thing about being an anti-Israel hack is that you can mix and match your tricks. The job never gets boring. So for instance, you can take this "generate sympathy only for one side" tactic and combine it with the death porn fetish that we discussed earlier this morning. Mix them together and what do you get?

AP propaganda gold:

Not to worry - the AP archives are filled with TONS of equivalent pictures from the aftermaths of cafe and bus bombings. We can't track any down just this minute, but we're sure that they're there...

Previously: MR - Ahead Of The Curve on the Muslim Hypocrisy Beat, Think That This Will Be How It's Framed?,
Israel's Chris Hitchens