1. Want to revisit a question that I think is pertinent: we live in the age of the democratization of the web, of social media and citizen journalists and VC cash injection into nontraditional online news spaces.
So: why—how—is Western coverage of Israel *still* so bad?
So: why—how—is Western coverage of Israel *still* so bad?
2. When the print industry contraction began in earnest, the big worry was that as foreign bureaus closed, the news world would be reliant on reprinting the NYT or AP for its Israel coverage—iow, there’d be a lack of credible news sources.
3. Well, that was a real worry. But we’ve come out the other side of that now. The print industry was ravaged but the *news* industry adjusted in ways that at least eliminated that specific concern. No one has to follow the NYT.
So why do they?
So why do they?
4. Let’s review what happened this week. The US opened its embassy in J’lem, righting a longtime historical wrong. Hamas continued with its attempts to invade Israel, counting on the media falling for the distraction. But something unusually grotesque happened.
5. Rather than just distract from J’lem, the media went psychotic and juxtaposed images of the president’s Jewish daughter with images of the Gaza violence. I don’t think Hamas even expected this level of medieval blood libel insanity.
6. Obviously since only part of J’lem is disputed and Israel is a sovereign state, the arguments (to use that term generously) against moving the embassy are laughably weak and irrational. On the merits, the argument against the move just isn’t there.
7. Except, of course, for the so-called realist argument, which acknowledges that the facts are on the side of moving the embassy but which argues Trump erred in not getting a concession of some kind from Israel.
8. It is, shall we say, interesting to see ppl supposedly concerned with Trump’s lack of moral compass and his tacit excusemaking for anti-Semites to claim Trump shouldn’t have done the right thing without first extracting a pound a Jewish flesh.
9. Which is all to say, by and large the media coverage of Israel this week was morally repugnant and shockingly ignorant. Here’s what I don’t understand, however:
Where in gods name are the disrupters!? What happened to the nimble outfits who so often deftly exploit traditional media’s weaknesses?
11. (Sorry that was 10.) Two examples: yesterday @CraigSilverman at Buzzfeed published the results of his brilliant and surefooted investigation into a natsec cyber think-tanker. It was a work of art. Second example: Matti Friedman’s extraordinary oped in the NYT.
12. So here’s the obvious question: Why hasn’t Buzzfeed hired Matti Friedman to lead a Mideast division? Matti has been writing about what he learned all his time covering Israel for the mainstream wires, and where they go so, so wrong.
13. If you want to fix what’s wrong with “dinosaur” media’s Israel coverage, you hire Matti and throw bags of cash at him and say “lead us out of the wilderness.”
14. The only real answer is: the disrupters don’t *want* to disrupt. At least not on this issue. They’re being handed the keys to the kingdom, but they’d rather *reinforce and perpetuate* existing media’s weakness on Israel.
15. We have identified the problem. We have identified the solution. Let’s see some disrupters do some disrupting.
Unless you’re not actually here to change things. /fin
Unless you’re not actually here to change things. /fin
