HOW THE MEDIA IS PROGRAMMED TO SUPPORT ISRAEL...


 This is a superb article by Jonathan Cook who has written about Palestine for years.....and how he had to 'de-programme' himself...(you will be guided to the comments section of the article and will need to scroll back to the top to read it from the beginning).

'....... journalists and editors have historically been afraid of being accused of antisemitism by Israel. It is tempting to overestimate this pressure. I suspect it is better viewed as a cover story, rationalising the failure of journalists to do their job properly – as illustrated by their reluctance to identify the Gaza genocide as a genocide.

But beyond these practical pressures, there is a deeper reason for why the western media avoid serious criticism of Israel.

Israel is integral to a continuing western colonial system of power projection into the oil-rich Middle East. Israel is the West’s ultimate client state. Western establishments need Israel protected.

None of this would be so significant, of course, if our celebrated “free press” was, in fact, as free it claims. If it really served as a watchdog on power. If it really held the feet of the political class to the fire. If it really served as a Fourth Estate. Then the politicians would have no place to hide.

But that is not what the corporate media do. Instead, they echo and amplify the political establishment’s priorities. They are, in fact, the media wing of the establishment.

When I was at the Guardian, the foreign editor – now a major columnist – once told me that he did not like his correspondents to spend more than a few years in difficult posts like the Jerusalem bureau because, given time, they were likely to “go native”. At the time I did not understand what he meant. But I learnt soon enough.

I moved to cover the Israel-Palestine beat as a freelance journalist in 2001. I had no editors breathing down my neck. I based myself in Nazareth, a Palestinian community inside Israel, thinking that taking a different approach – my colleagues were in Jewish areas of Jerusalem or in Tel Aviv – would make my journalism distinctive and interesting to editors back home. In fact, my different perspective made me far less interesting to them. Indeed, as quickly became clear, it made them extremely nervous of me.

But the point is this: despite my unique circumstances, it took me years to fully “deprogramme” and emerge the other side relatively whole.

I first had to unravel the conditioning and training – both ideological and professional – that had encouraged me to assume Israelis were the Good Guys and Palestinians … well, they must be something less than the Good Guys.

And then I had to rebuild my ideological and professional worldview from scratch – like a child, trying to make sense of all the new information I was absorbing. Although I hid it at the time, the truth is it was a slow, frightening and painful awakening. Everything I believed in and trusted had crumbled to dust.

Is it any surprise that the vast majority of journalists never make such a transition. They are highly unlikely to have the opportunity to immerse themselves deeply in the lives of those “natives”. They are rarely allowed the time to step off the journalism treadmill to develop a bigger perspective. They are surrounded by family, friends, colleagues and bosses, who constantly reinforce received wisdom or enforce “professional” standards that shore up the existing consensus. They are disincentivised from straying off the path, when they have a salary to earn, a career to develop, bills to pay, a family to feed.

And ultimately, of course, there is the prospect of a terrifying journey ahead, down a dark tunnel to a destination unknown.' 







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