;.cJR, Susser
;.l1,3,63,66,1,0,5,75,192,2,10,15,20,25,127,5,0,
;.l2,10,75,192,2,15,20,25,127,10,0,
;.l3,15,75,192,2,25,127,15,0,
;.l4,20,75,192,2,25,127,20,0,
TO:    David bar Ilan, "Eye on Media", Jlem Post FAX 02-389527
FROM:  STEVE AMDUR, KIBBUTZ HAON, D.N. EMEK HAYARDAN, 15170 ISRAEL
       Telephone:  972-6-757572;  FAX:  972-6-757554  
       Messsges:   972-6-757511
DATE:  
RE:    Media Bias, Jlem Report, p16 (Leslie Susser, Senior Writer)
REF:   
CC:    David Bedein, Israel Resource, Bet Agron Press Center;
       Telephone:  02-247803; 257303; FAX:  02-259239
------------------------------------------------------------------
                                       
Again, these notes on Media Bias are sent to David bar Ilan, asprincipal writer of Eye on the Media, as raw material which can beused, without compensation nor credit if need be, in subsequentarticles by any writer on media bias.

----------------------------------------------------------------- 
SUMMARY:  A well-written peace that (1) uses a solid kit of cheaprhetorical tricks to sketch the opponents of Israeli withdrawal fromthe Golan as refugees from Waco; (2) leads the reader,  in acircuitious route of "deniable logic" , to the insinuated but unstatedconclusion that Netanyahu is a nascent facist front-man who must bestopped before he precipitates a civil war in Israel.

l2
Such an attack itself has, of course, facist implications; that itwas run in the Jerusalem Report, a thoroughly establishementjournal associated with the liberal wing of the Labour coalition,is most worrisome.  
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(Of course there's always a risk in analyzing media bias ofreading too much into a relatively innocuous piece.  Butinsofar as one's analysis is logical, the writer can beexcused from malicious intent only by holding that he hadn'tcomprehended the implications of the aggregate of what hewrote.  And to assume that of a professional, senior writerwould be naive.) 





My emphasis added, as usual.

Title:  "Ready to Fight:  Right-wing politicians threatenthey'll go to almost any lengths to ensure this governmentwon't trade land for peace."

Punctuation error:  "land for peace" should be in scarequotes; or at least 'peace' should be.  

Photo of hunger strikers, looking like fat slobs.
Caption:  "...At present, the protestors are relativelypeaceful, but some right-wing politicians are speaking ofcivil war."
l2
Quite so; that was in a discussion of Antietam with Gore Vidal.
l3
Ok, seriously:  that's bullshit.
l1

"The words are apocalyptic."  
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Good lead sentence.  Like Beethoven's Fifth.  Or Hemmingway's.
l1
 
"the right isn't waiting"

"The alternative, Hanegbi warns..."
 ... "Hanebgi's warnings are part of a well-orchestrated campaign..."
l2
Another frustrated conductor takes up journalism.
Again, this is well-written political shlock; melodrama.
And anyhow, what's well-orchestrated is Rabin's ripoff; theopposition hasn't yet gotten its act together.
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"the rhetoric on the right is drawing equally tough words from theleft."
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Good rhetoric mis-match:  hot air on the right, but real men onthe left.
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"Laboor's Ephraim Sneh thundered:  "That's how facism is born."
l2
Be fair:  Susser didn't say that, Sneh did.
l3
Bullfeathers; they both said it; Susser just used quotes.
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"Merom...asked Attorney General Yosef Harish to check whether...Porathad committed incitement to insurrection..."
l2
Sounds frightfully sober and responsible of Merom to ask theAttorney General for an expert legal opinion.
l3
if you don't recall that this AG is generally regarded a aserviceable fool, and came in after Zamir was forced out inthe Labor-Likud coalition for denouncing Rabin's "beatingspolicy"  (JP, Friday,  March? 1988) as 'manifestly illegal'

Obviously left-wing insinuations of 'incitement toinsurrection' are gratuitious, but part of a -- "wellorhcestrated" tactic of intimidating opposition -- a tacticso simple, and so innocent of norms of democratic conduct,that only Rabin could have planned it.
[See my previous Opinion on a similar charge by MK Zucker].

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"Merom, in a motion for the Knesset agenda, responded by dubbing theright-wing MK's, 'the highly visible anti-democratic underground'."
l2
Well, Merom's Susser's stalking horse in this piece.
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I mean:  who are MK's talking to?  Not their colleagues;nobody's ever there unless there about to give a speech, goto a party, or go to jail.  The Knesset is just a platformfrom which a nonentity can be amplified by the mass media.
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"And Labour politicans warn that in his quest for power...Netanyahu mayruthlessly exploit an emotion-laden situation -- and push it beyondcontrol
l2
Part of journalism is leading the reader to draw the conclusionsthe writer wants to advance.
The conclusion to draw here is that Netanyahu may unleashuncontrollable forces -- (and guess what fear that exploits) --and so must be checked

l3
Netanyahu's "quest" is to return control of the Israeligovernment to the Likud bloc, in order to forestallterritorial compromise.  Personal ambition may provide hismotivating force, but -- as with Kennedy, and unlike Johnson,Nixon, Bush, and Rabin -- it seems subordinate to ideologicgoals.

The Likud has always stood rather clearly for a greaterIsrael.  It's not clear what Labour has ever stood for,beyond "jobs for the boys".

Rabin seems to have decided to become the anti-de-Gualle ofIsrael -- single-handely reversing the country's destiny --because that's what George Bush wanted; he seems scarcely tohave  noticed that the administration changed last November.
        
The media-myth of Netanyahu as power-mad seems to be losingsteam, but Susser seems to be hanging on for one last freeride.

Heck, even David Levy wasn't on a quest for power -- hecouldn't figure out what to do with it when he had it -- hewas on a quest for glory.

l1
"Uzi Baram accused [sic!] Netanyahnu of running a 'motorcycle'-styleLikud -- a reference...to facist motorcades in prewar Europe."

l2

Ok fans, I'm making a new rule of media bias:  a writer may bepresumed to have insinuated whatever he quotes (includingquotation by paraphrase) unless he can demonstrate otherwise.

l3
So eg I say here that Susser says that Netanyahu's like afacist; and Susser can't say that he didn't say it because heonly said that Baram said it.

l1
"Although he has come out against illegality and violence..."
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he was unable to provide a clear-cut answer to the question ofwhen he had stopped beating his wife

l1
"That leads Labor politicians
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from the Faction of the Miraculous Taxi-Driver
l1
"to ask whether Netanyahu can walk the fine line
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(association:  traffic cops make a suspected drunken driver walk astraight line)
l3
Looking-glass Journalism:  we all know that there's a leadingpolitician who's a black hole of power, and a bit of atippler -- and his name is --
l4
(it's all done with mirrors)
l1
between legitimate plans to thwart government plans and words andactions that contribute to a climate of a political violence."
l2
Yup, that's what facists do.  Netanyahu as skinhead.

Notice how Susser laid the basis for this insinuation with hisexegesis of the quote from Baram, and then sprung the mental trapon the reader, without repeating the insinuation, by laying out --again, in a hypothetical mode -- its criteria
l3
(Like I've suggested, the logic of media-bias is prettyintricate and subtle, but I think one could trace it
l4
(But am I fantasizing a 'logic of media bias'?
 Well, an employed political journalist has got to beeffective, and there must be some logical pattern thatdistinguishes effective from ineffective politicaljournalism.

In honest journalism, reported facts lead to a trueconclusion; the logic is simple and straighforward.
In biased journalism, pseudo-facts are not asserted butinsinuated, and the reader is led to the conclusion bythe writer to a pre-intended conclusion, by asufficiently veiled route that he believes he arrivedthere by his own reasoning.  
That is the "hook" of biased journalism.
Like TV or pictorial subliminal advertising, itseffectiveness depends on "hiding the hook".
Vance Packard (The Hidden Persuaders) detailed visualhooks; I am looking for logical hooks.
l1
 "The yellow and black flags of the extremist Kach group have been muchin evidence at Likud-initiated right-wing rallies."
l2
Well, I saw none at the two major Golan rallies; nor do I recallhaving seen one for years -- I think I saw some kid carry one onIndependence Day a year or more ago.  

l1
"Says Merom of the threat of violence:...'now it's spreading to Knessetmembers.  If we don't nip it in the bud, we could really find ourselveslocked in civil war."
l2
"nip it in the bud" -- that has a nice familiar American ring toit -- who could say no -- rose-buds and all that

l3
Ok, rewind and slow forward:  what would it mean to 
`nip-in-the-bud the threat violence'?
We know what a threat of violence is; and to nip is to cutoff; but what is this `bud of the threat of violence' that weare called upon to assent to cutting off.

It is concerned citizens expressing their outrage at semisecret government machinations, in collusion with a foreigngovernment (the USA), to in effect surrender without a fightportions of the land of Israel.  It is (as I have previouslyargued) a call at a Likud party convention for the Likud toundertake to dissociate itself from any such agreements.  

In short, this article is a rather powerful argument forstifling dissent during the Rabin government's negotiationsto divest territory.

Well, Rabin has shown very little tolerance of criticism.
Old Caesar with camp-followers.


