I have just found an article that has some scholarly reactions to the video in my previous post. It is entitled “Radio-Canada Wrong In Airing Pro-Palestinian Advocacy Film.” It would appear that the playing of the video in my previous post has been the cause of much debate in Canada. The article claims that “by airing a film rife with false premises, serious omissions, and unfounded malicious allegations, the network not only misinformed Canadians about the politics and history of the Middle East, it also breached its own journalistic standards and practices by airing a one-sided partisan polemic bent on vilifying a fellow democracy, the state of Israel.” I think that this response to the film is very interesting.
It can be viewed at:
By referring to Israel as the “fellow democracy” there were red flags that immediately went off in my head about the objectivity of the response to the film. The article states that there was scholarly critique of the film by Yitzhak Santis who is the Director of Middle East Affairs for the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC). Supposedly he found many “decontextualizations, disinformation, selective emphasis and blatant lies, lack of balancing perspectives, lack of citations/documentation to back up assertions of facts, omission of facts, and straw man argumentations" within the film. There was a link to read the full scholarly critique, but it did not work and I could not find it anywhere on my own. This was really disappointing because just as the article blamed the film for lack of citations and credibility, I could not find any concrete examples that backed up anything in the article either. The article did not seem to prove that the U.S. media was not influenced in the ways that the film suggests, but simply to corrupt the information that was presented and write it off completely as propaganda that should never receive any media attention. To claim that a news station is no longer objective because they played something like this seems ridiculous. Would it not make more sense for a new station that wanted to remain objective to play propaganda and embellished reports from both sides if embellished reports were all that could be found?
Posts
The irony of the critique you found is amusing, but also unsettling: that they cried "propaganda" and said the movie didn't cite sources, but failed to do the same I think you bring up a good point about the origins of sources and how vital they are to taking information seriously. Even though the internet allows us so easily to check the credibility of a source, it is just as easy, if not easier to just trust what they are saying is true and legitimate and that there is knowledge and credentials to back it up. In a situation such as Israel/Palestine, I think many of us have mentioned how much the American public doesn't know. It's not that it would be hard to find out for ourselves (although it is complicated), but it is just easier to trust somebody else to tell us what is going on.
ReplyDeleteI think trying to present both sides of a situation is the best way to try to remain unbiased, although I think it is difficult for any news source to be 100% unbiased. there are too many people involved, to many hidden agendas, and even just intrinsic opinions that influence the way the media is formed and presented to the public.