In the Telegraph, James Warrington has written an excellent piece on bias, antisemitism and the use of language in the coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict by Left-leaning media outlets and its implications for journalistic impartiality. Here’s an excerpt:
For Israeli satirists, the BBC’s coverage of the Hamas conflict was simply too good to resist.
In a sketch on Eretz Nehederet, Israel’s answer to Saturday Night Live, actors lampooned the British broadcaster’s coverage of a rocket attack on a hospital in Gaza with a spoof news bulletin.
“More, more,” urges the stern-looking presenter, clad in a blonde wig, as the number of alleged fatalities from the attack jumps randomly higher. “We love Hamas,” reads the scrolling text below. …
But beneath the comic veneer lies serious concern. Across Israel, and around the world, frustrations have grown at how many parts of the media have reported the conflict.
The BBC, a lightning rod for controversy, has found itself at the centre of the firefight. But it is not alone. Publications including the Guardian and the New York Times have repeatedly come under criticism from politicians and Jewish groups amid allegations of bias and even antisemitism in their coverage.
For many observers, the conflict has exposed a clear hypocrisy in how Left-leaning media outlets, who pride themselves on their progressive stance, approach stories about Israel. And behind the scenes at these organisations, bosses are grappling with divisions among their politically-charged employees as tensions bubble to the surface.
So as the conflict drags on and the threat of escalation lingers, will the media emerge unscathed as the western Left indulges in Hamas’s poison?
Since the terror attacks of October 7th, all news outlets have been plunged into a quagmire of confusion, disinformation and conflicting testimony. But amid all this, it is those organisations to the left of the political spectrum – whether in their internal culture or more overtly in their output – that have found themselves most often under pressure.
The BBC, New York Times, Reuters and Press Association were all forced to backtrack over their breathless reporting of the blast at the Al Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza that killed hundreds of Palestinians.
The media outlets were quick to conclude that the explosion had been caused by an Israeli strike, despite relying on Hamas officials as their key source. U.S. intelligence officials now believe the blast was caused by a failed rocket fired by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
The BBC apologised for speculating on the cause of the explosion, but not before Israel accused the broadcaster of perpetuating a “modern blood libel” – a reference to false claims dating back to the Middle Ages that Jews killed Christian boys.
U.S. President Joe Biden was reportedly furious at the New York Times’s credulous coverage, warning it could have led to an escalation in the Middle East. The U.S. newspaper offered a full apology, admitting its editors “should have taken more care with the initial presentation, and been more explicit about what information could be verified”.
While the hospital blast marked the nadir of press coverage of the conflict to date, it is far from an isolated incident.
The BBC was forced to launch an urgent investigation after several of its journalists in the Middle East appeared to celebrate the Hamas attacks.
Meanwhile, the public service broadcaster has tied itself in knots over its refusal to brand Hamas a terrorist organisation, opting instead to use the word “militants”. …
Furious debates over language may seem parochial, but on topics as fraught as the Israel-Palestine conflict, words matter.
When a murderous mob stormed the Dagestan airport in Russia in search of Jewish passengers from Israel, the Associated Press newswire described the incident as a “protest”. This, in turn, was picked up by publishers including the Washington Post.
And when a Gazan who featured in a 2019 BBC documentary said revolutionary songs “encourage you to rip a Yehudi’s head off”, the broadcaster caused controversy by translating the Arabic word to “Israeli” instead of “Jew”. …
Whether through overt antisemitism or more subtle uses of language, the controversy has shed light on the contradictions embedded within Left-wing media outlets.
While claiming to speak truth to power and be an arbiter of morality, the publications appear blind to the prejudices espoused by many of their employees, and in turn in their coverage.
Worth reading in full.
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Plant food causes climate?
Well kill Gaia. She emits 95% of the 0.04% rounding error essential for oxygen production. Oh wait, they are doing that with their lithium mines, their rare metal mines, their bird choppers, their biomass fuels and chopping down forests….
The devil carbon dioxide has been used to scare the children.
But, once you see it ain’t what you’ve been told to believe you can relax – and do nothing but smile benignly at the deluded.
–
Climate disease is an odd affliction. Most sufferers of an illness are pleased to be told their life is no longer in danger, that the fever is subsiding, and they can stop taking the expensive medicine because, well it was only a placebo anyway.
But with climate disease the afflicted don’t believe the good news and want to continue their suffering – hence indicating it is more of a mental illness than a physical one – and they can’t stop wanting more people to suffer from it.
—-
I say; Reject Dogma; Question Authority
In fact, Just Stop Net Zero https://juststopnetzero.com/
Is there a Woodward and Bernstein opportunity, or perhaps a Pulitzer prize in the offing, for the first team of journalists to dispel the WEF/UNIPCC belief system?
Unlikely, the whole media establishment is corrupt to the core.
Welcome to the Dark Side, Neil 😉
The idea that we are some kind of CO2 induced climate crisis is such demonstrably bollocks now that it can only mean Reuters have been bought by the Gates/Getty/Soros/WEF cartel to add to their roster of many other previously ‘independent’ publications. They’re having to work hard though, word is fast getting out that this is the biggest mass deception and financial scam in human history.
Send this to anyone who still uses the words ‘climate emergency’ and ‘science’ in the same sentence.
“Reuters is committed to providing the most accurate and insightful coverage of the climate crisis, as it threatens the health, safety and economic well-being of people world-wide. Our hope is that our careful, factual reporting will help nations, businesses and individuals respond to the challenge rapidly and intelligently.”
This whole statement is self-contradictory. It starts with the premise that the “climate crisis” is a given. The possibility that this “fact’ deserves to be questioned is ignored, therfore “careful, factual reporting” is inherently impossible. The author is clearly not well versed in either logic or the use of English.
Without labouring the point my one word critique would be – bollox.
There is one huge flaw in Mr Winton’s argument and that is that he appears to accept that the Wannabe Powers That Be believe in global warming, the next ice age or climate change or whatever is dish of the day, except…they don’t.
Climate change is the mechanism upon which all the desired control measures can be hung. Carbon dioxide, widened out now to include anything containing carbon, and essential for all life, is easily measured and because we are expected to believe that it is pushing climate change we have to be seen to control it.
Aah, that will be your carbon credits then. Every single action will soon have a carbon value. It is not inconceivable that even a visit to the bathroom will soon have a carbon value.
Climate change = measurable carbon = complete population control.
The myth of climate change is being used to introduce the most dystopian society ever and one which will ultimately destroy humanity.
Climate change hoax crushes freedom
*****
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“Everybody agreed that the climate had warmed over the last 10,000 years as the ice age retreated, but most weren’t really sure why.”
This video clip, showing a panel of climate scientists, suggests that during the last 10,000 years the Earth has been warmer than now 90% of the time – and the same applies over the 4.6 billion years of the Earth’s existence.
https://youtu.be/mqejXs7XgsU
You beat me to it. Great video. I’m guessing you are aware of Tony Heller and teh website wattsupwiththat?
I’ve never ever considered Reuters to be a non-partisan news source, so that bit sort of gobsmacked me.
All good except for this:
“Every scientist knows the world’s climate has been gradually and occasionally irregularly warming since the last Ice Age over about 10,000 years.”
The Holocene Climate Optimum was the warmest period in the last 10,000 years. During this time the Sahara was green and wet due to the vast amount of moisture brought to this region because of the extra heat. Also, Neolithic settlements were a lot further north as can be seen all across northern Scotland and it’s Islands. They were all abandoned when temperatures dropped. There has since been the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Warm period and each was a step down on the previous. We are in the Modern Warm Period where temperatures have come up following the end of the Little Ice Age. The current warm period is coolest of all of them although and the warmest period in the last 200 years were the 1930s.
Looking at the pattern of global temperature covering the last 4 glacial cycles there is nothing to indicate that the pattern has stopped. The last inter-glacial ended while CO2 remained elevated indicating CO2 was unable to prevent temperatures from falling.
CO2 is measured in parts per million. To see exactly how much it has increased create a graph where the y axis is scaled to 1,000,000 and then see how ‘scary’ the increase in CO2 is.
I think the population of the world reached 8 billion a couple of weeks ago. They all need energy. Where is to come from? It obviously cannot come from coal oil and gas, at least not for very long, as this is a finite resource. This is what “climate change” is really all about. ——–Control of the world’s wealth and resources. It has been decided at UN level that the wealthy west has used up more than it’s fair share of the coal oil and gas in the ground to become prosperous and must stop doing that. To get away with that you need a very good or at least a plausible excuse for your citizens and that excuse is “climate change”. The west can afford to dabble in niche technologies like wind and sun and fob it’s people of with expensive unreliable energy, because it is all for the greater good of “saving the planet”. So over the last 50 years up has grown the Climate Industrial Complex. All apparently based on “science”. But as someone once pointed out ” One cannot rigorously rule out global warming due to an increase in greenhouse gasses. It nonetheless seems peculiar to base policy on something for which there is no evidence”. —Atmospheric Physicist Richard Lindzen.———- So if there is no evidence for something how is a problem? How is it a crisis? That is where the politics comes in. The politics of “Sustainable Development”. All environmental scares whether global cooling, global warming, storms, floods, droughts, and any extreme weather you can think of require the same response. Bigger government, more central planning, more and more regulations, more taxes, and less freedom. CO2 that is allegedly responsible for all the rising seas, melting ice and a climate apocalypse is indeed classed as a greenhouse gas. But it is also something else. It is the one gas that can be tied to Industrial capitalism. All human activity involves the release of some CO2 so what better way to control all human activity than by regulating it? CO2 is the socialist bureaucrats dream gas. Without global warming as the excuse, the whole Sustainable Development politics of controlling all human activity collapses. Which is why we see a bought and paid for mainstream media make such an issue of presenting the climate emergency as “fact” and ridiculing anyone daring to question any aspect of it. They are condemned as “deniers”, which surely has to be one of the most infantile terms imaginable if what is being discussed is supposed to be “science”. In science you question everything, and the fact that no dissent from orthodoxy can be allowed only reveals one thing. ——It is and never was about science in the first place. It is indeed a manufactured crisis for political purposes. It is “Official Science” not “science”, where truth is to be decided by a show of hands from government funded data adjusters.
All very believable ammunition, but for a journalist at Reuters not very well written.
There is an outfit called “Covering Climate Now” which provides “guidance” to the media and all types of business on how to push the climate change narrative. So we now get it shoved down our throat not only in News items but also in advertisements. This is blatant propagandising with that great word they all love – disinformation!
I too worked at Reuters many years ago when it was still based in Fleet Street.
Its decline from a source of trusted, unbiased news, to a partisan arm of the Climate Change Propagandists is sad to witness.
Again I feel the urge to post this image, once used in junior / infant school science classes.. ‘Visuals’ can also be useful to educate the intellectually challenged and miopic minded, helping to demonstrate the effects of sunlight, water,and Co2 with plants here on planet earth.. Is this truly beyond the understanding of modern journalists and MSM? (rhetorical)
Problem is, many of the afforementioned appear to be living on a completely different planet. Away with the faeries so to speak.
Nice. A picture paints a thousand carbon credits.
Why even put the phrase “Rising Temperatures” in the heading?. Giving succour to the harbingers of doom. Who caused the ice age 10000 years ago….Fred Flintstone?
“Journalists need to stand up and be counted. The trouble is that requires bravery and energy, and an urge to question conventional wisdom”.
Did the author practice what he preaches whilst in secure employment with Reuters?
The best protection against MSM propaganda is for more people to never buy their products and support any movements that call to break up these modern day robber barons.
The simple fact that the climate catastrophes are organized and want to shut down any opposing debate should be enough to convince any questioning mind that something is not right with their message.
Some are getting rich and powerful in the the ‘humanity caused climate change’ industry.
They won’t give up their wealth and power without a fight.
Be prepared for it.
To convince people that humanity is a significant factor in the earth’s changing climate is for the ‘humanity caused climate change’ advocates to follow the scientific method.
Make a hypothesis and then proof it.
They should make a detailed accurate prediction of the erath’s climate for each small section of the earth in the near future (2025), not some very distant date 50 years in the future.
If they actually know how the earth’s atmosphere work, and know how and why the earth’s climate is changing, then it should not be difficult.
Then we can see if their hypothesis is correct or not.