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  • johnpi 10:07 am on January 26, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: ethan bronner, , , , , , , , US media

    Conflict of interest: New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief’s son may have enlisted in the Israeli army.

    The New York Times has all but confirmed to The Electronic Intifada (EI) that the son of its Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner was recently inducted into the Israeli army.

    Tikun Olam has more:

    Since the Times has no full correspondent in Gaza or the West Bank, Bronner is in effect the editor covering all those theaters. As such he MUST be able to report dispassionately from the Palestinian as well as Israeli perspective.

    Many of my readers have followed my ongoing critique of Bronner’s reporting, which shows decided, though perhaps not fully conscious bias towards Israel’s narrative. Given this, the possibility that his son serves in the army that maintains the Occupation and is the locus of injustice raises glaring questions of conflict of interest.

     

  • johnpi 2:31 pm on December 15, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , , US media,

    Time magazine decides what the story is and then makes the facts fit.

    Time has an article titled, “Defying stereotypes, most domestic ‘jihadists’ are educated, well-off” prominently illustrated with a courtroom sketch of David Coleman Headley.

    Headley, according to Time, fits the definition of an educated, well-off ‘jihadi’ because – as the reporter describes him – he is a “Chicago businessman.” Actually, according to his Wikipedia bio, he was an employee of his friend’s immigration agency, hardly a “businessman.” It doesn’t appear that he ever went to college, and he’s a convicted heroin smuggler.

    According to media reports, he was able to front himself off as a successful businessman in India, with a personal trainer and smoozing at the gym with Bollywood types, but it’s a huge inaccuracy to imply this con-man loser was some kind of successful person who inexplicably turned on his life of accomplishment and became a ‘jihadi.’

    There are also problems with saying Ramy Zamzam comes from the ‘educated, well-off’ class. Zamzam may have been a student at the dental college, but his family lived in a basement apartment (we of the ‘educated, well-off’ class tend to like natural sunlight). The building shown in the media looks like typical public housing project construction. The local imam said he was carrying the hopes of his family on his shoulders for a better life.

    I understand why educated, socially and economically accomplished terrorists are so fascinating, and some certainly do exist, but misrepresenting these people as something other than what they are is just shoddy.

     

  • johnpi 5:42 pm on December 14, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , US media

    ‘Sinister Muslim’ stereotype fades.

    Muslim voices are finally being heard by and from Hollywood, and it’s in Tinseltown’s best interest to listen.
    Negative stereotypes of Muslim characters date to at least the black-and-white era, but by the 1990s and the end of the Cold War, one-dimensional Muslim terrorist characters were the generic “bad guy” in countless movies and television shows, including True Lies (‘94) and Executive Decision (‘96). Even the cartoon Aladdin (‘92) portrayed villains with Middle Eastern accents while the hero and heroine had standard American voices.

    Such repeated portrayals have colored public perceptions of Muslims and Middle Easterners. The events of 9/11 crystallized and, for some, affirmed the stereotype. But nearly a decade later, Hollywood seems to be changing its tune toward Muslims and Arabs.

    It’s about time.

    Recently, especially on television shows, Muslim characters are being treated differently. On 24, federal agent Jack Bauer protects the U.S. against terrorist attacks, but those attacks aren’t all coming from stereotypical Muslim characters anymore.

     

  • johnpi 10:38 am on December 10, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , US media

    Headlines going sensational on the Pakistan 5 arrest.

    USA Today: “Pakistan police: Five Americans have al-Qaeda link.”

    Reuters: “Americans held in Pakistan ‘wanted to join holy war.’”

    There’s no new information here. Just more alarmist quotes and headlines.

    I’m sure the evening news will be quite a spectacle tonight with spinning graphics, bombastic music, moving photos and file film of training militants to go along with the breathless glower.

    I wonder which ‘experts on American Muslims’ will be on the shows….

     

  • johnpi 7:33 am on November 13, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , US media

    Time magazine: Nidal Hasan marks ‘a whole new terrorism war.’

    Weekly news magazines like Time and Newsweek, which each have a circulation of between 3 and 4 million, can’t ‘break’ news stories because they are weekly, so their coverage tends to be more like what is called ’second-day coverage’ where they are offering analysis, predictions, repercussions, the ‘bigger picture,’ etc. Both Time and Newsweek have become much more conservative in orientation through the 1980s and 1990s.

    For eight years, Americans have waged a Global War on Terrorism even as they argued about what that meant. The massacre at Fort Hood was, depending on whom you believed, yet another horrific workplace shooting by a nutcase who suddenly snapped, or it was an intimate act of war, a plot that can’t be foiled because it is hatched inside a fanatic’s head and leaves no trail until it is left in blood. In their first response, officials betrayed an eagerness to assume it was the first; the more we learn, the more we have cause to fear it was the second, a new battlefield where our old weapons don’t work very well and our values make us vulnerable: freedom, privacy, tolerance and the stubborn American certainty that people born and raised here will not reject the gifts we share.

    Even as the President weighs how to fight the wars he inherited, he and the entire U.S. security apparatus will have to figure out how you fight a war against an enemy you can’t recognize, much less understand. In that sense, the war on terrorism has left the battlefield and moved to the realm of the mind.

    This an excerpt to the main story in what appears to be “package coverage” with a number of sidebars and smaller stories linked off of it.

     

  • johnpi 1:55 pm on October 26, 2009 | 4 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , US media

    A round-up of ‘rush to judgment,’ ‘kangaroo court’ negative media coverage of the Tariq Mehanna case, from a leftist editorial written for a Baltimore newspaper:

    (More …)

     

  • johnpi 9:17 pm on October 17, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , US media

    ‘Security porn’, we hardly knew ye – Back in January I blogged about a new reality TV obscenity airing on ABC called “Homeland Security USA.” The concept was sort of like the program “Cops,” where cameramen would capture the drama of life as an immigration cop accosting suspected illegals. The series has been cancelled.

    The finale aired last month and the producers decided to go out in a blaze of real sleaze, with an episode called, “Strip Clubs. Open on Thursday.”

    The sun sets on this series with this scene:

    While the credits roll, an official talks about a CBP [Customs and Border Protection] German Shepherd named Rambo. His two-legged partner jokingly notes that, if Rambo could drive, he’d be out of a job. End of series.

    Oh vomit…

     

  • johnpi 11:35 am on September 14, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , US media

    NBC does the right thing and edits out video of tea party protester’s inflammatory anti-Muslim comment: “We are losing our country, we think the Muslims are moving in and taking over.”

    NBC has replaced this woman’s comment about Muslims with a less inflammatory comment: “I’m scared to death for my country. I believe Obama is running this country into the ground.”

    This appears to be the only edit made to this online video. Footage of her previous comment does not appear to be posted. The original video was broadcast Saturday evening, Sept. 12, 2009, on NBC Nightly News.

    A protester at Saturday’s Tea Party on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. made clear that she was afraid, saying “We are losing our country, we think the Muslims are moving in and taking over.”

    NBC Nightly News interviewed the woman, who was surrounded by fellow protesters as she made the remarks. Her name was not used.

    Just another example of how the tea bagger movement and its protests are not ‘teh awesome’ its supporters say it is. Max Blumenthal also visited the US Capitol protest this weekend with a video camera. Highlight: At about 4:20, Max Blumenthal says ‘Salaam Aleikum’ to one of the protesters who goes on to explain that not only does it mean ‘hello’ and ‘peace be with you,’ but that it also has something to do with beheading, boy rape, and killing young girls for getting an education.

     

  • johnpi 8:22 pm on August 4, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , , US media

    The “trial by media aspect” of the Daniel Patrick Boyd case makes for interesting comparisons. Here are a few notes on what different newspapers are saying about Boyd:

    (More …)

     

  • johnpi 6:12 am on July 25, 2009 | 14 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , US media

    Civil Rights group demands CNN’s Lou Dobbs be fired over crazy anti-immigrant stories and Obama “birther” rants:

    This is not the first time Mr. Dobbs has pushed racist conspiracy theories or defamatory falsehoods about immigrants. We wrote you in 2007 to bring to your attention his utterly false claim that 7,000 new cases of leprosy had appeared in the United States in a recent three-year period, due at least in part to immigrants. (The real number, according to official statistics, was about 400. Mr. Dobbs took his spurious information from the late right-wing extremist, Madeleine Cosman.) In addition, Mr. Dobbs has reported as fact the so-called Aztlan conspiracy, which claims that undocumented Mexican immigrants are part of a plot to “reconquer” the American Southwest. He has suggested there is something to a related conspiracy theory that claims the governments of Mexico, the United States and Canada are secretly planning to merge into the “North American Union.” He has falsely claimed that “illegal aliens” fill one third of American prison and jail cells. And Mr. Dobbs has routinely disparaged, on CNN’s air, those who have had the integrity to point out the falsity of these and similar claims.

    Respectable news organizations should not employ reporters willing to peddle racist conspiracy theories and false propaganda. It’s time for CNN to remove Mr. Dobbs from the airwaves.

     

  • johnpi 9:45 pm on July 2, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , US media

    Max Blumenthal praises the “courageous decision” of the US media for broadcasting Neda’s killing “vividly and repeatedly.” Wishes they would do the same for Palestinian victims.

    The outpouring of American public sympathy for Iranian demonstrators might never have occurred had cable news outlets not made the courageous decision to broadcast Neda’s killing vividly and repeatedly.

    Yet when Palestinians employ direct action tactics to protest Israeli oppression, and when Israeli forces respond with wanton brutality, they are ignored by the US media, even when footage is already available through online sources.

     

  • johnpi 8:31 am on June 29, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , US media

    On ‘aggregators’:

    The Washington Post has fired columnist/blogger Dan Froomkin, setting up a wall of silence about why they did – which strongly implies the reason would not withstand scrutiny, but some info has leaked out:

    Some reporters and editors at The Post view Froomkin as a superb, hard-working “aggregator” whose blog needed more original reporting.

    Susie Madrak clarifies:

    Not aggregator. ‘Aggregator’ implies that a blogger collects news without discrimination. What we do is more properly described as a ‘news concierge’ – that is, we tell you which news organizations spit in the food, keep you waiting for a table and whose snooty waiters aren’t worth a tip.

    Emptywheel says the Wapo just couldn’t stand the media criticism that comes with “the aggregator’s” territory.

     

  • johnpi 11:05 am on June 3, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , US media

    Muslims aren’t to blame for that Arkansas shooting. It’s the blogs and MSNBC:

    LAURA INGRAHAM: Are we now going to look at the websites that he frequented to see if he was on some of the crazy left-wing anti-war websites, Win Without War, George Soros-funded websites, DailyKos, all the crazies. … The way they are reporting on the George Tiller murder, all of talk radio was responsible for that. … Did he frequent MSNBC, did he like to watch it? [...]

     

  • johnpi 4:54 pm on June 1, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , US media

    LA Times hypes anti-Taliban protest in Pakistan.

    Reads like a WWII propaganda news reel.

     

  • johnpi 7:06 pm on May 26, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , US media, war crime,

    Here’s Fox News ’strategic analyst’ Ralph Peters:

    The phenomenon of Western and world journalists championing the “rights” and causes of blood-drenched butchers who, given the opportunity, would torture and slaughter them, disproves the notion–were any additional proof required–that human beings are rational creatures.

    Two paragraphs later he writes:

    Pretending to be impartial, the self-segregating personalities drawn to media careers overwhelmingly take a side, and that side is rarely ours. Although it seems unthinkable now, future wars may require censorship, news blackouts and, ultimately, military attacks on the partisan media.

    Yes, what poor form it would be to take the side of a journalist killer.

    And if that’s not enough words of wisdom from a Fox News analyst for you, here’s Peters on the need for summary battlefield executions in Afghanistan and elsewhere, because terrorists “aren’t human any more, they’re monsters, and… monsters deserve to die.”

     

  • johnpi 7:30 am on May 18, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Hollywood, , , , US media

    Planet of the Arabs: This is old news, but I was looking for this recently to link up to a Chuck Norris story – whose Arab/Muslim bashing role features prominently – and couldn’t find it, so I’ll archive it here. For those of you who haven’t seen it, here’s the description:

    Planet of the Arabs is a powerful 9 minute collage of racist stereotyping of Arabs in movies.Out of 1000 films that have Arab & Muslim characters (from the year 1896 to 2000) 12 were positive depictions, 52 were even handed and the rest of the 900 and so were negative. A montage of Hollywood’s relentless dehumanization of Arabs and Muslims.

    Also here’s another CN story – Chuck is threatening to run for president of Texas. Here’s the quote (complete with bad English):

    In a recent column titled “I May Run for President of Texas,” Norris writes that he might have no choice: “That need may be a reality sooner than we think. If not I, someone someday may again be running for president of the Lone Star State, if the state of the union continues to turn into the enemy of the state. … I’m not saying that other states won’t muster the gumption to stand and secede, but Texas has the history to prove it.”

    Texas is America’s own Northwest Frontier Province…

     

  • johnpi 11:36 am on January 14, 2009 | 4 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , US media

    Three lies in the US media today about Gaza:

    William Pfaff writes at Truthdig.com:

    Hamas in Gaza will have its victory, according to the official account, despite having broken the truce that had prevailed in the months leading up to this crisis. Resuming rocket attacks on Israel was even more stupid and useless—with catastrophic results for Gaza’s people—than what Israel’s leadership has done.

    Israel broke the truce on November 4th when it attacked and killed six Palestinians in Gaza. Pfaff asserts that Hamas broke the truce but he offers no account to back up the assertion. Some have claimed Hamas is at fault for not renewing the ceasefire agreement when it expired in December, but that agreement had already been violated by Israel the month before with this attack.

    Jeffrey Goldberg writes in the New York Times:

    The moderate Arab states, Europe, the United States and, mainly, Israel, must help Hamas’s enemy, Fatah, prepare the West Bank for real freedom, and then hope that the people of Gaza, vast numbers of whom are unsympathetic to Hamas, see the West Bank as an alternative to the squalid vision of Hassan Nasrallah and Nizar Rayyan.”

    Richard Silverstein punches out the lie that “vast numbers” of Gazans don’t support Hamas. Says Richard, “This notion is part of the Israeli delusion that by bombing Gaza back to the Stone Age this will somehow turn the Gazans against Hamas. Anyone with eyes in their head can foresee that the only party they will turn against and blame in this situation would be Israel.”

    Alan Dershowitz writes at the Huffington Post:

    The only reason Israel has not won overwhelming military victories in Lebanon in 2006 and in Gaza now, is that Israel has decided to engage in only limited and proportional military actions designed simply to stop the rocket attacks.

    Baldface lie.

    Note: I’ve gone through this post three times to reinsert the links and the Wordpress software keeps stripping them out when I save it. Go to http://www.progressiveislam.info for an “echo” post of this entry to access working links.

     

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