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To:  David Bar-Ilan, (re "Media Watch") Jerusalem  Post, FAX: 02-389527
From:  Steve Amdur, Mevo Modi'in 73122; FAX/phone:  08-256085
Re:  MEDIA BIAS:  The Jerusalem Report on Shamir


The "June 18" Jerusalem Report pre-election feature on Shamir vs.Rabin, while not up to the level of bias one comes to expect fromTime/Newsweek and the USA TV networks, still manages to get in a fewlow blows.  The subhead reads `The eerie calm of Yitzak Shamir', and isvalidated by a untypical photo that catches the Premier looking as ifhe just forgot his name.  The text goes on to strengthen this image,referring to Shamir as "irrelevant", and picking up little remarks thatmake him seem like an aimable but rather ineffectual old man, (thoughhe is neither).                                                                      
The dramatic juxtaposition of the photos of Shamir and Rabin isskillful.  Shamir looks 10 years older than his age; Rabin looks 10years younger.  Shamir's photo is harshly lit; Rabin's is softlyairburshed.  Shamir looks expensively overdressed; Rabin, humblycasual.  Shamir is looking downward; Rabin gazes idealistically upwardin the finest tradition of socialist realism.  Even the captions areneatly tailored to the lifestyle of USA liberals; Shamir is "thepersonification of toughness"; Rabin is "driven by a sense ofinjustice", (although the text eventually admits that it is a sensethat life has been unjust to Rabin which most motivates the Labourcandidate).  

There is skillful, if biased, editting in the juxtaposition of theShamir/Rabin texts.  Shamir's begins on a very downbeat note -- "YitzakShamir is coming to shake hands in a Jerusalem shopping mall" -- almostas it it were a New Yorker story about a little old man.  Rabin's text,in contrast, begins with a tough, no-nonsense flourish:  "Yitzak Rabinis out to put the record straight".  The contrast in tempos continues: forceful and rushed for Rabin; slow, even rambling for Shamir.  Ineffect the Jerusalem Report is trying to trap Shamir in the image ofaimiable grandpa that he has put on in the past few years for foreignconsumption; and trying to displace the perception of him as anexceptionally self-disciplined, steadfast, and altruistic chiefexecutive.  

Rabin's 1977 foreign bank account is brushed off as "technicallyillegal"; his positions are sketched in uncritical detail; and theimplication is nurtured that it is he, not Shamir, who is a person ofexceptional physical stamina. ("He fits five or six major campaignevents into long days that often drag on past midnight, leaving hisaides [but, by implication, not Rabin] groggy with with accumulatedfatigue."  There are even sketches of Rabin getting support from exLikud roughnecks (the Israeli analog of USA hardhats) , to show that heis a tough, regular guy, a man's man.   Shamir in contrast is shownwarming up only to children, as one would expect of an old grandpa.

Well, media bias is a subtle art, and The Jerusalem Report's bias lacksthe vicousness one comes to dread between TIME's glossy images ("Begin-- rhymes with Fagin" was a classic).  Still, a bi-weekly periodicalaiming to represent Israel to the USA liberal community might show moreclass.

