Anti-U.S. Media Bias (surprise!)

[B-Man]

Dennis Prager
May 11, 2004

During the very same 10 days that every newspaper and television news program in the world featured photo after photo, day after day, of Iraqi prisoners being humiliated, a government not far from Iraq engaged in mass murder, mass rape and ethnic cleansing of approximately 1 million people.

Is that more serious, more evil and more scandalous than a handful of Americans sexually humiliating Iraqi prisoners?

Not to the world's news media.

To the world's (including America's) news media, the Nazi-like, racist, mass ethnic cleansing warranted minuscule attention as compared with the humiliation of some Iraqis.

Why?

The answer is as obvious as it is painful.

The world's news media are, with almost no exceptions, agenda-driven rather than news-driven.
The agendas are:

1. The political bias of the news reporting organization.

2. The monetary need to attract readers/viewers.

3. The desire to be the center of society's attention.

4. Not to be too different from other news media. As one who peruses up to a dozen American newspapers a day, I am struck daily at how virtually identical international news articles are. International reporters are like baseball players -- they all do the same thing, just on different teams.

In the case of the massive attention the news media have been giving to the stripping and humiliation of Iraqi male prisoners, all four agendas play a role, but the first one predominates.

How does this explain the tiny amount of news media coverage devoted to the near-genocide in Sudan (and North Korea and Tibet) as compared with the massive 24/7 coverage of the Iraqi prisoners?

The primary reason is the political bias of the news reporting organizations. Virtually every major newspaper in the world is anti-Bush, and most are anti-American. The desire to humiliate America (or George Bush) has deep roots. The America of those who support President Bush portrays itself as a moral beacon, and it has contempt for the moral authority of the United Nations and "world opinion." Therefore, those who loathe this American self-appointed moral role cannot pass up the chance to portray America as morally no better or even worse than other countries.

The virtually monolithic ideology that drives the world's news media should be a major concern among all those who treasure independent thought, not to mention moral clarity and America's well-being. For example, though free of governmental control, the reporting of the BBC has been almost as predictably leftist as Soviet newspapers.

The news media are numbing the human mind. The anti-American and anti-Israeli news reporting that saturates the European media is the major reason for the recent polling results that show most Europeans regard America and Israel as the greatest threats to world peace.

There is a second and related reason for the mind-numbing coverage of the Iraqi prisoners. The world's Left, which sets the United Nations' and the news media's priorities, is only interested in human suffering when it is caused by whites, Christians or Jews, especially Americans and Israelis. That explains the world's and the media's indifference to the decimation of Tibet -- it was perpetrated by Chinese; to the genocide in Rwanda -- it was perpetrated by black Africans; to the genocide of blacks in Sudan -- it is perpetrated by Arab Muslims; to the genocide in North Korea -- it is perpetrated by Koreans. On the other hand, when Israelis killed Palestinian terrorists and bystanders in Jenin, the world press was fixated on it, and the BBC declared it a "massacre."

So, too, the deaths of Arabs at the hands of Arabs -- the tens of thousands in Algeria, the hundreds of thousands in Iraq, the tens of thousands in Syria, the thousands of Arab and other Muslim young women in "honor killings" -- are of little interest to the news media, the Arab world, the United Nations and the Left. But Americans stripping male prisoners in Iraq? It is the most important story on earth.

It is essential to note that it is precisely because I believe America's role is to be a moral beacon to the world that those pictures from Abu Ghraib prison so anger me. Americans are not dying in Iraq so that other Americans can pile naked Iraqi men on each other and smile for photos next to them. The harm those pictures have done to the cause of good may be incalculable.

But it is not moral revulsion, let alone newsworthiness, that is animating the news media. One day, a Sudanese black will scour the world press archives to find out what the world was preoccupied with while her family and hundreds of thousands of other Sudanese blacks were raped, enslaved, ethnically cleansed of their lands and murdered. She will learn the world was deeply concerned with a couple of dozen Iraqi men photographed in humiliating sexual positions.

[nicky g]

C'mon, this is ridiculous. The reason people in America adn the UK and the press are fixated with what's going on in Iraq is because it involves American and British troops and is immediately related to the consequences of a hugely divisive and politically-charged war.The reason Sudan is getting shamefully little attention is that people by and large don't care what happens in far away poor countries unless they are somehow themselves involved. The author's thesis about the left-wing press is ridiculous. Is Fox TV an example of the left wing press? The Murdoch or Conrad Black newspaper empires? ClearChannel radio? Are any of these giving proportionately large amounts of coverage to what's happening in Sudan, or Tibet or North Korea? Yeah right.

"2. The monetary need to attract readers/viewers."

This is the one sensible sentence in the whole article. The news focuses on what people are interested in, which is largely parochial garbage. Its organisations frequently dubbed as "left-wing" and "anti-American" or anti-Israeli by the likes of Prager such as Amnesty and HRW that have spent the most amount of time publicising what is going on in places such as Sudan and Tibet. The right-wing and the right-wing media largely doesn't give two hoots except at those times it needs to point to someone doing something worse than its poster boys.

[elwoodblues]

Great article from a source with a lot of credibility on the issue --- Dennis Prager. According to Prager, the World Media have the following driven by the following agenda:
1. The political bias of the news reporting organization.
2. The monetary need to attract readers/viewers.
3. The desire to be the center of society's attention.
4. Not to be too different from other news media.

What is so funny about this is the first 3 describe Prager (and his ilk) and the 4th is the way that they try to differentiate themselves in an effort to drive 1 - 3.

If someone on the street were talking about how "The World's Left" is setting the agenda for the UN and for all of the World's media people would look on the individual with sympathy and maybe give him a quarter for some lunch (be it a liquid lunch or other...) Give him a microphone or a computer and you can syndicate him.

What I find to be the funniest part of the article is the following:

[ QUOTE ]
It is essential to note that it is precisely because I believe America's role is to be a moral beacon to the world that those pictures from Abu Ghraib prison so anger me.

[/ QUOTE ]

THIS QUOTE REFUTES HIS WHOLE ARGUMENT. Maybe watching a "moral beacon" perform atrocious acts is newsworthy. It goes back to the old adage that Dog bites Man isn't newsworthy, but Man bites Dog is.

[andyfox]

"International reporters are like baseball players -- they all do the same thing, just on different teams."

You, of all people, should know how ridiculous a statement this is. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

As for the substance of the article, of course there is more focus on Iraq than Sudan. There always has been, always will. Sudan is in Africa; nobody cares about Africa. How many times has President Bush addressed the nation on the problems in Sudan?

[elwoodblues]

[ QUOTE ]
How many times has President Bush addressed the nation on the problems in Sudan?

[/ QUOTE ]

That just show's Bush's anti-American bias.

[superleeds]

To claim western media has a left wing bias is absurd. Pictures of naked Iraqi's being piled up and humiliated sells, dead Sudenese don't. It's as simple as that.

[B-Man]

[ QUOTE ]
To claim western media has a left wing bias is absurd.

[/ QUOTE ]

To claim western media does not have a left wing bias is absurd (regardless of whether or not you agree with anything else in that article).

I think there have been a few good points in response (especially Andy shooting down the baseball analogy!), but I find it hard to believe anyone in this country that reads the news on a regular basis doesn't detect a liberal bias. Probably, its that you are so used to it you don't even notice the bias.

[superleeds]

Why no serious reporting in any US major paper/TV station regarding the 2000 election? Why no stories about the fact that education system in this country sucks. Or that a high percentage of Americans have no health care? Where's the stories on pollution or corruption in Corporate America, (Oh thats right it was only Enron and they got caught).

[Greg J]

the closest thing coming consensus among social scientists about the slant of the media is that there is a sensationalist bias, not a left wing or a right wing one. people on the left say there is a right ideological slant, and those on the right say there is a leftist ideological slant. both rely on anecdotal "evidence." I could make the argument either way, but I don't particualrly agree with either position -- there is a sensationalist bias, not an ideological one. Of course there are exceptions (eg Fox News, the Guardian in the UK, etc), but to say that the western media as a whole has a leftist (or rightist) bias is highly questionable at best.

Sorry B man, but the force of your conviction does not make you right.

[B-Man]

[ QUOTE ]
Why no serious reporting in any US major paper/TV station regarding the 2000 election? Why no stories about the fact that education system in this country sucks. Or that a high percentage of Americans have no health care? Where's the stories on pollution or corruption in Corporate America, (Oh thats right it was only Enron and they got caught).

[/ QUOTE ]

You have GOT to be kidding me. All of those issues have been widely covered by the media. Hell, the 2000 election was the #1 story for weeks during the Florida recounts and the lawsuits. Where were you?