This week, some of the most prominent figures in American broadcast news tried to get away with telling a shocking lie. The story is a particularly instructive case study on the dynamics of the American media’s failure to accurately cover the ongoing Israeli massacre in Gaza.
On September 12, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced that his office would move Criminal charges against students and alumni who protested the massacre by camping out on the main square of the University of Michigan. The protest began on April 22, one day before a Palestinian civil defense force a mass grave was dug 180 bodies were stored at the Nasir Medical Complex in Khan Younis. On 21 May, university police moved against the protest in the early morning and cleared the camp. Pepper-spraying protesters In the process, Nessel’s office filed misdemeanor charges against two of the protesters; the other seven face felony charges under the additional charge of “resisting or obstructing a police officer.” According to the D.A.’s officeFor “making direct body contact with officers” during an arrest.
On Sept. 13, the day Nessel’s office announced it would charge people with felony assault charges, U.S. Representative Rashida Tlaib said the move was an “extremely serious offense.” Condemned the harsh behavior of the Attorney General In an interview with Detroit Metro Times. Their reactions were profound and thoughtful: They lamented the precedent being set by Nessel’s office, the prosecutors’ choice to ruin students’ lives, and the long-term consequences of excessive policing of the protests. They said, “In 10 years, the University of Michigan itself will be teaching about this movement and saying how great it was.”
Tlaib also discussed asymmetric harsh treatment and severe repressive actions were taken Characterization of the nationwide response “We have a right to disagree and protest. We’ve done so for issues of injustice ranging from climate, the immigrant rights movement, Black lives, and even water shutoffs,” the Michigan representative said. “But it seems the attorney general decided that if the issue was Palestine, she would look at it differently, and that alone speaks volumes about the potential biases within the agency she runs.”
Tlaib was attacked on September 19. disgusting political cartoon Prepared by Henry Payne detroit news and this National Reviewwhich showed Tlaib next to a smoldering pager — a day after Israeli Gov. Explosion Thousands of pagers and handheld radio devices were attacked in Lebanon, killing dozens and injuring thousands. It was claimed to be a targeted attack by Hezbollah extremists. Tlaib responded on Twitter, the cartoon says “Racism will only fuel more hatred and violence against our Arab and Muslim communities.” This is a claim Nessel agreed with, though only as a means of discrediting Tlaib: His own tweet Denouncing the Islamophobia in the cartoon, Nessel also said, “Rashida should not use my religion to say I cannot do my job as attorney general fairly. That’s anti-Semitic and wrong.”
But Tlaib never did that. Metro Times Tlaib never said anything about Nessel being Jewish in any context, in the interview, on Twitter or in any other published interview. Yet that did not stop Nessel’s apparent implication from becoming a powerful accelerator.
For this we blame CNN’s Jake Tapper. Tapper – who speaks his mind on any excuse. Use current events To defame Palestinians – Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer said in one of her programs last SundayTapper asked, “Do you think Tlaib’s suggestion that Nessel’s office is biased is anti-Semitic?” Whitmer declined the temptation, but did not defend Tlaib either, instead responding with nods about how the Jewish, Muslim and Arab communities are all suffering.
Tapper pressed home his point. “Do you think Attorney General Nessel is not doing her job properly?” he asked. “Because Congresswoman Tlaib is suggesting that she should not prosecute individuals who Nessel says have broken the law, and she is doing so simply because she is Jewish and not a protestor.”
This is a very serious thing to lie about so casually, even for a man. which speaks of mass death Regarding Palestinian citizens, it seems that the only problem with the phrase is that “Palestinian citizens” is an oxymoron. Tapper had set the terms of the issue: Tlaib’s alleged anti-Semitism, not the arrests of protesters or the protests against them. Whitmer herself became a target, because even though she refused to come to the defense of her alleged colleague, she also refused to join in the attack. Josh Kraushaar of Jewish Insider Published a storyAlso on Sept. 22, Tapper continued his falsehood, calling Whitmer a “fellow Democrat” Nessel who betrayed him.
Tapper and the Anti-Defamation League Jonathan Greenblatt Kraushaar’s article was used to attack Whitmer for not holding a congresswoman accountable for something she did not say, and his intimidation worked. “The suggestion that Attorney General Nessel would make charging decisions based on her religion as opposed to the rule of law is anti-Semitic,” one article read. Whitmer’s statementWho buckled under the pressure because the decision was too clear: either throw Tlaib under the bus or attach an anti-Semite label to her. For the governor of the 10th most populous state in America, signing on to lies about the most prominent member of his own party from his own state is easier than defending the only Palestinian American in Congress or even maintaining cowardly neutrality.
This all escalated further when CNN’s Dana Bash – as expected – Horrible and was dishonest in its coverage of the topic — which only exacerbated it. The anchor began Monday’s segment about anti-Semitism by referring to Tlaib’s “accusations that the state’s Jewish attorneys general are letting their religion influence their work.”
To this point Steve Neavling, Metro Times Reporter Joe Tlaib interviewedissued a fact-check clarifying that she never said anything she was accused of. This caused Jewish Insider to receive it poorly Edit its storyand inspired the tapper Address the controversy— but only on technical grounds, and in circumstances that allow Nessel to repeat the lie.
“I should note that I misspoke yesterday,” Tapper misspoke again and used a fake word for “lie.” “I was trying to characterize your thoughts about Tlaib’s comments,” he told Nessel, before once again saying she thinks Tlaib is anti-Semitic. Bash surpassed Tapper in terms of spinelessness, just in case. Reiterating Tlaib’s statement And instead of correctly paraphrasing Nessel, he corrected himself.
To call this a simple failure of journalism on CNN’s part would be to misunderstand the dynamics at play. Facilitate Israel’s destruction campaign in Gaza means that Americans must prepare for war. This task is being carried out by American prestigious media outlets such as new York Times and on CNN in February, Guardian Detailed It is CNN’s policy to submit all stories on the Holocaust for approval to the network’s Jerusalem bureau and to copy Israeli government sources, which is how you get Anderson Cooper. nodding As one former Mossad officer puts it, “The non-combatant population in the Gaza Strip is virtually a non-existent term.”
The drawback of this strategy is that people not that naive As mainstream outlets think. Any defense of the war on moral grounds hinges on the idea that Palestinians are fundamentally less valuable, less humane than other people. One way to do this, Tapper’s way, is to portray Palestinian identity as inherently violent and anti-Semitic, usually by casting doubt on the idea that not everyone in Gaza is a member of Hamas. (You can see this cycle in Israel’s coverage of War of expansion in Lebanon,
As it becomes harder to cover Israeli aggression without talking about the murder of aid workers and the mass graves outside hospitals, CNN and its ilk set the terms of the discussion, making it dangerous to criticize Israel. If you’re talking about the signs 20-year-olds bring to protests, you’re not talking about dead children, so you can put your enemies on the defensive. The public defense of Palestinian life becomes more difficult, especially if there is anti-Semitism. defined downwards Any criticism of the Israeli government or its war will not be included.
Naturally, this downplays the real and violent anti-Semitism of the American right. Tlaib’s rhetorical goal of equating condemnation of anti-Palestinian prejudice Donald Trump said If he loses the 2024 election, “the Jewish people will really have a lot to do with it,” painting all criticism as an ongoing genocide support a fantasy. Look at Whitmer’s immediate retreat after her neutrality was labeled anti-Semitic. It doesn’t matter that Bash and Tapper’s attack on the governor was based on a lie; Whitmer had every incentive to keep herself safe from the false accusation. As a Palestinian-American whose identity has been virtually established as anti-Semitic, Tlaib doesn’t have that luxury. When she condemns the killing For criticizing Palestinian-American journalist Shirin Abu Akleh or highlighting the contradictions between American progressivism and Zionism, she Labeled anti-Semitic,
The resistance that Tapper and Bash are facing in this particular case is because their lies are so easily disproven; this is the only case in which this is exceptional. I recently learned that 2013 Huffington Post interview The one with Tapper, conducted shortly after he got the job at CNN, revealed how important the media’s failures were to the preparations for the invasion of Iraq. “I can’t overstate how much the media’s failures affected the way I did my job while working as a White House correspondent,” Tapper said. “He’s proving it every day.”