Another academic survey of daily newspapers, this one published in 2007, finds that there are “frequent conflicts between the business side and the journalism side of newspaper operations” and that “advertising directors are willing to appease their advertisers, and are also willing to positively respond to advertisers’ requests.” The survey suggests that this problem is particularly acute at chain-owned newspapers, which are especially prone to compromising editorial integrity to either please their advertisers or keep from offending them. A similar problem exists in television, where polls of network news correspondents say that nearly one-third feel directly pressured to report certain stories and not others because of owners’ or advertisers’ financial concerns. [...]
The three widespread narratives about Palestine-Israel discussed throughout my book are, as I have shown, highly misleading. An accurate rendering of the story would tell of Israel violently colonizing Palestine, with vital US support, and functioning as a garrison for US-led imperialist capitalism. Instead news media outlets present fables in which both Israelis and Palestinians have subjected each other to comparable wrongs and are blameworthy to a similar extent for the unresolved status of Palestine. Readers are also offered disorienting accounts saying the problem is that extremists are driving events in Palestine-Israel rather than moderates. Equally unhelpful are the tales the news tells about Israel’s supposed “right to defend itself.” [...]
The people in charge of these outlets do not necessarily hatch conscious plots to trick the population into believing misleading tales about Palestine-Israel. The institutional orientation of news organizations steers them toward consistently framing issues in ways beneficial to the class to which they belong whether the topic is Palestine-Israel or any number of other subjects.
For the question of Palestine to be resolved, the Western ruling class will have to be prevented from backing Israel as a means of dominating the Middle East. Because of Western military, financial, and political support for Israel, public opinion in Western societies has a role to play in bringing a just, de-colonial peace across historic Palestine. Western states will not undertake the massive policy shifts necessary for that to happen unless mass pressure compels them to do so. Yet the structure of Western news media suggests it is unlikely to begin telling stories about Palestine-Israel that are less weighted in Israel’s favor, which means that this formidable barrier to building the popular sentiments necessary to stop Western imperialism will remain in place for the foreseeable future.
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