Media

While I had always had a basic trust in the news we were being told, when I went to the Holy Land Foundation trial in Federal Court in Dallas, I found out that the news I got in the Dallas Morning News only gave the prosecution side. I have reported both sides, and found out that I could find that also at al Jazeera. I have a hard time with that, since I grew up in the '50's when propaganda was something that the iron curtain enabled, and I thought that freedom of the press was precious, to the press, and essential to our democracy. I've had a hard time coping with the bad side, and finding out I can't find out the truth by hearing our news reports.

Thanks, Avedon, for giving a really great report today at The Sideshow:

Over the years, the warblogging site LGF has led an online jihad against war zone journalists and specifically Middle Eastern stringers working for wire services, claiming they concoct the news--they fabricate violence--in order to spread terrorist propaganda. That local Arab or Muslim journalists are incapable of telling the truth about breaking news and that every dispatch they write, especially if it's for the AP, and every photo they file, especially if its for Reuters, must be dissected and mulled over and questioned by right-wing bloggers, lots of whom have no expertise in journalism.

This whole deranged online movement provides all sorts of comfort for war-loving bloggers as it allows them to attack and demean journalists and Muslims/Arabs at the same time.

The phony crusade has been on display since the launch of the Gaza incursion, as supposedly sharp-eyed bloggers, thousands of miles away from the action, stand vigil, looking to save the world from fabricated reports of violence. This week the swarm descended and casually accused a journalist of photoshopping a picture from Gaza. Of just making stuff up. Of taking photos of explosions and then digitally doctoring them and then sending them out on the wire service.

Why? Because the media are the enemy. Because that's what Arab/Muslims stringers do. They quote phony Baghdad police chiefs like Jamil Hussein in order to spread insurgent lies. Actually, on second thought, warbloggers would prefer you leave that embarrassing episode alone. (Still waiting for a collective warblogging apology/acknowledgment/retraction on that one.)

I am just sick about all this. When I see that yes, thousands of civilians are dying, probably because after eight years the total domination of our foreign policy will end for Israeli interests, it is clear that what we are watching is a good thing in only one way. We are seeing a final dissolution of a myth we grew up with, that the Middle East is not able to handle its own affairs. We and Israel should be in charge. No, I don't think so.

The death and destruction our funding has enabled is almost over.