;.cEnglish news
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MEDIA BIAS
TO:    David bar-Ilan, Eye on Media, Jlem Post
FROM:  Steve Amdur, Kibbutz Haon, Jordan Valley, 15170 Israel.
       Telephone:  972-6-757572; FAX:  972-6-757554
OCB E-Mail (to 4/96):  100310.15116@compuserve.com 
DATE:  2/29/96
RE:    English News 
REF:   English Radio News 2/26 AM
CC:
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PRE-EMPTIVE SLAGGING:

Reporting on points discussed at a Cabinet Meeting after the Bus18 bombing:  "This included how to respond to the Opposition if itreacts with restraint or aggression."
		
COMMENT:  'restraint/aggression' are, of course, value-loadedterms; restraint is necessarily good, aggression is necessarilybad; restraint is justified and mature; aggression isopportunistic and immature.
One might with no less truth have phrased it:  
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"responds by noting that it has been the Peres/Rabin strategyof making an Alliance with the PLO while demonizing thereligious fundamentalists that has destablized the pre-1992balance-of-forces, and led Hamas to try to get back into thegame with spectacular terrorist acts."
l1
To term acquiescence in government policy restraint, and politicalopposition to it, aggression, is to presuppose that governmentpolicy is both True and Good.

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GENERAL COMMENT ON ENGLISH NEWS:  As many others have noted, amajor component of pro-government bias is simply giving statementsby government officials extensive time on news-broadcasts,regarless of whether they actually constitute news (as distinct,eg from spin, and self-promotion), while giving time to Oppositionstatements only when these have exceptional news value.  
	Such a policy in effect if not in principle and/or intentconstitutes pro-government bias.
	One might rejoin that statements by government officials are,per se, news; but that does seem to presuppose a view ofgovernment which even Candide might have found unworldly.
	On the other hand, our Prime Minister, and his attendantclouds of syncophants, are not precisely of this world.
