With the Israeli government apparently determined to derail the peace process before its even left the station, Electronic Intifada has a report into the reporting of violence in the region by the American media. They describe the continuing violence from both sides both before and after the Aqaba summit, and point out that violence on the part of the Israeli government is largely ignored.
Periods in which dozens of Palestinians have been killed have been widely and routinely termed "periods of calm," or "relative calm" just because few or no Israelis were killed during the same time. Such inaccurate reporting reinforces the claims of Israel's apologists that violence is a Palestinian problem to which Israel is only reacting, and helps to conceal the enormous amount of violence Israel uses to maintain its military occupation of more than three million Palestinians and their land.
This bias doesn't only apply to the printed media though. Ive just been watching a CNN report into today's suicide bombing in Jerusalem. CNN described the latest helicopter gunship attack by the Israeli government as a 'response' to the Palestinian attack. No mention of the Israeli government policy of assassinating or attempting to assassinate Palestinian leaders, which continues unabated.
Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz has a comment article about the recent assassination attempt:
The missiles that failed to killing Abdel Aziz Rantisi in Gaza City - but killed bystanders including a woman and a child - continued on their trajectory towards Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, and from there to Aqaba, Sharm al Sheikh, and Washington.
Finally, George W. Bush has appealed to the international community to cut off funds to terrorist organisations. America gives Israel about $3bn in aid each year.
The Guardian has an interview with Salam Pax, the elusive Baghdad Blogger.
As with so much in Iraq, it was never meant to be like this. In June last year, Salam (this much of his name, at least, is real) was a recently graduated architect, aged 29, living at home with his parents and brother in Baghdad. His best friend was Raed, 25, a Palestinian-Jordanian he had met while studying architecture, who was taking a masters degree in Jordan. Raed was at best an infrequent email correspondent and so Salam started writing up his news from home on a weblog, a site on the internet where he could post his scribblings as often as he liked for his friend to read. He called it: Where is Raed?
Recently I wrote about propaganda in the press, and its effect on the public perception of asylum seekers. Daily 'campaigns' against asylum seekers in some of the press, combined with the use of inflammatory language by ministers and the police ('swamping','tidal wave'), have led to a completely distorted view of asylum seekers in the public eye.
The Independent yesterday published a few facts and figures about asylum seekers. A few statistics:
It appears, however, that these so-called 'scroungers', actually make a net contribution to the economy:
The Economist also has a survey about migration.
The BMJ today has a report about the media (mis)handling of the MMR debate. Following a paper in the Lancet (A J Wakefield, S H Murch, A Anthony, J Linnell, D M Casson, M Malik, M Berelowitz, A P Dhillon, M A Thomson, P Harvey et al., Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children, The Lancet, Volume 351, Issue 9103, 28 February 1998, Pages 637-641.) about a possible association between MMR (measles, mumps and rubella vaccine) and autism, the usual hysterical reaction of the media (not just the tabloid press, this time) led to a dangerous decline in uptake of the vaccine in some parts of Britain.
The authors stated in the Discussion of the original paper:
We did not prove an association between measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine and the syndrome described.
but even the vaguest speculation was enough to set the hacks off. Since then the debate has raged, despite the vast majority of the evidence being totally supportive of the combined MMR vaccine. The BMJ report states that:
"Although almost all scientific experts rejected the claim of a link between MMR and autism, 53% of those [the people] surveyed at the height of the media coverage of the issues assumed that because both sides of the debate received equal media coverage, there must be equal evidence for each. Only 23% of the population were aware that the bulk of evidence favoured supporters of the vaccine," says the study.
The Department of Health has extensive information on MMR, and concludes:
The latest scientific evidence shows no link between MMR and long-term problems such as autism and inflammatory bowel disease, that separate vaccines are worse for children than MMR and that MMR remains the safest way to protect children against these three potentially serious diseases.
And finally, the WHO states:
WHO stresses the importance of scientifically evaluating rumours, anecdotal reports, rumours and speculation about the safety of vaccines. The Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety has recently published its guidelines for assessing causality in this context in the Weekly Epidemiology Record. WHO is not aware of any scientific evidence that meets the criteria laid out by the Committee that might substantiate an association between autism and MMR vaccines.
Read the report here.
Charl links on his weblog to an article on the (self-imposed) censorship of the American media during the war on Iraq.
"Editors across the US also worked hard to avoid the grisly images of war, especially scenes of dead Iraqi civilians and Americans, while Europeans saw uncensored horrific images."
Al-Jazeera was roundly attacked for showing such images, including those of a young boy with half his head blown off. I applaud al-Jazeera for this action, and agree with Charl that had these sorts of images been more widely shown in the western media, many people would think differently about the so-called 'liberation' of Iraq.
But let's not forget that its not only the US media who are guilty of such crimes of omission. John Pilger has an article on his website discussing similar themes. He points out that 'a study of the reporting of the war in five countries shows that the BBC allowed the least anti-war dissent of them all. Its 2 per cent dissenting views was lower even than the 7 per cent on the American channel ABC'.
Its not, however, just the blatant misreporting of facts (and fictions) that influences the way people think, but the insidious misuse of language. For a long time now, the British tabloid press have been particularly offensive in their reporting of subjects such as asylum seekers. A few years ago, the term 'bogus asylum seeker' was so often seen in the papers that it became an expression which was ingrained in the national psyche. That is to say, asylum seekers were automatically considered 'bogus', whether they were or not. This attitude prevails today.
Last week the British National Party (an extremely right wing and racist party) doubled the number of local councillors it has in England. This was in large part a consequence of constant stories in the press linking asylum seekers to rising crime. A recent report in The Observer polled public perceptions of crime and compared that with actual crime figures:
"Three out of four people in Britain think crime is rising, although official statistics show it has been falling for a decade."
A recent Guardian article dispels a few asylum myths:
"The notion of "asylum burden" is a relative concept. Yes, in terms of absolute numbers, Britain received the most applications in Europe last year. But this refers to requests for refugee status, rather than the number to whom it is granted. And although the number of applications to the UK has been high in recent years, when looked at per capita Britain remains mid-table; indeed, below the EU average."
And finally, the absolute proof that tabloid propaganda works:
"Of the world's 12 million refugees, developing countries together provide asylum for 72% of them. But despite this, a Mori poll conducted in May last year found that the general public believed that around 23% of the world's refugees and asylum seekers resided in the UK - the true figure was less than 2%."