Headline Driving Hatred

In exploring the corruption of the press, Eric Beecher, founder of the online news source, Crikey wrote The Men who Killed the News, a history of the manipulation of news by the various media moguls through the history of mass circulating newspapers, and in more recent times, television, and the social media platforms such as Facebook, X and the like.

This is particularly pertinent this week as we see a couple of stories emerge, one in Crikey, another in The West Australian and in The Guardian today.

The Crikey story, which also appeared in The Guardian where a person wearing a cap with the Star of David on it, wearing sunglasses which were a recording device confronted staff and the engagement was being recorded by staff from The Telegraph, part of a planned story to demonstrate anti-semitic views by the cafe staff. The ‘story’ had been planned a week ago, and the reporter was caught out in the act of confecting a story clearly intended to amplify the racist divisions between Islamists and the Jewish community.

The headline screaming from The West Australian this morning read; “EXCLUSIVE: PERTH TEACHER MOURNS HAMAS TERROR CHIEF IN CLASSROOM Kids subjected to twisted message of support.”

The story was relayed through a Jewish student in the class and the demands were made that the teacher be disciplined. Questions were asked of the Premier, the story grew legs at the time of a state election, so the Premier is asked to engage in a hot spot issue which has very little to do with the campaign, but a deflection on an event which, although there is no time line indicated, may well have happened earlier this year when the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in July last year.

This becomes an issue eight months later?

This morning’s Guardian has a story regarding a recipient of an ARC Future Fellowship grant where the speakers, Randa Abdel-Fattah, an academic at Macquarie University was critical of the Israeli/Palestinian situation.

The unfair dismissal case of Antionette Lattouf by the ABC is also in the news this week. Dismissed for posting a story on social media regarding the starvation of Palestinians in the Gaza war.

In each case, the stories are referenced to the Gaza war, a war started by an attack on an Israeli music festival which saw 1200 people killed and 250 taken hostage.

I have repeatedly, when referencing the Gaza war, referred to that attack, condemning it and defending the right of Israel to defend its people.

So far, for every innocent Israeli life lost in that initial attack, about 50 Palestinians, including women and children, have been killed and over 100,000 injured. Their homes have been levelled, the destruction causing Gaza to be uninhabitable.

The other matter which I have repeatedly stated, but which which seems quite irrelevant to the media accounts of the war is that the Palestinians living in Gaza have lived in a virtual prison since the Nakbah of 1948. None of the reports in the mainstream press mention that, none mention that the area which Israel claims as its own was, prior to 1948, known as Palestine, a protectorate of the British ceded to them at the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1917.

Another unmentionable is that in the lead up to and immediately after UN Resolution 181 which declared that Palestine was to be partitioned into two states, a Jewish state and a Palestinian state. Maps were issued with the statement, dividing the land, but the campaign by the Zionist settlers destroyed many Palestinian villages and towns and saw the expulsion of over 700,000 people who sought refuge in Lebanon, Syria and Transjordan. The intention appears to never share the land, it was and is to be a single nation state for Jewish people.

In subsequent wars, 1967 and 1972, the pressure on Palestinians to leave has increased, the supply of essential supplies, power, water, food into Gaza is totally dependent on the Israelis allowing those to be supplied. Border crossings have been tightly controlled. Israeli dominance has seen the suppression of human rights of Gaza’s population for over 70 years.

None of this seems to be relevant when dealing with the current conflict. It all started on 7 August, 2023. And Hamas, a terrorist organisation, defined as such by Israel and agreed upon by Israeli supporters are totally to blame for the attack and the subsequent ‘defence’ of Israel which as seen the devastation of Gaza. And all Palestinians are Hamas terrorists… Right?

But let’s not look at the West Bank while that is occurring. It just may be that similar atrocities are occurring there… Shhhhhh.

Several things come to mind in the press coverage of those stories mentioned above:

1. We are in election mode. Here in Western Australia, the state election is to be held on 8 March. Unlike the federal election, that date is prescribed through having legislated four year terms with the election to be held on the second Saturday of march every fourth year. As such, the weakened Liberal and National parties, which were decimated at the last election are scrambling to get attack lines working and are clutching at every straw they can grab, and the only newspaper specifically for the west, The West Australian is happy to find anything they can to make the government look inept. The current story seems to claim that the government has not got control of their education department or able to adequately ‘discipline’ a teacher who seven months ago raised a question regarding current conflict in the Middle East. We are not told the subject or year level the teacher was teaching. (I recall a question I raised to a year 11 history class at the conclusion of studying a unit dealing with the holocaust, asking whether Israel was conducting its own holocaust on the Palestinian people. I suggest that, as a rhetorical question, in today’s environment could it have led to disciplinary action.)
2. It appears the Jewish lobby is alive and well in driving the anti-semitic wagon, seeking out opportunity after opportunity to ‘expose’ especially Islamic voices as voices of hatred. Coming out of the unfair dismissal trial of Antionette Lattouf we hear that there was pressure to get rid of her from the moment she walked into the ABC’s studio. Pressure coming internally from the chair person down, that a story she posted on social media made her unsuitable as an unbiased voice. The excuse used for her dismissal, was of the same story the ABC had aired on their news programmes. So where was the pressure coming from? Ita Buttrose is recorded as stating that she got a lot of emails demanding the dismissal. But there is no telling who the originators of those emails were. I know, that is mere speculation, asking a question which may point to some people with an interest in silencing a voice which may be critical of Israel, is that too cynical?
3. With the story of the Egyptian cafe in NSW, The Telegraph, the plan to ‘use covert video-recording eyewear in the making of the story, which it internally named “UNDERCOVERJEW” and sketched out a week in advance’ (Crikey, 14 January), to concoct a story of anti-Semitism. It kind of makes one wonder what other nefarious actions have been taken to highlight and amplify a sense of growing anti-semitism….Who has been decorating various religious sites with swastikas and hate speech? Again, too cynical? Yes, maybe, but it does seem that various people in the media are susceptible to a bit if argy-bargy to push that barrow.
4. Coming back to the opening paragraph, regarding the way the press barons have used their power in the past, and looking at the way the media is today seeking to sway opinions, there seems to be no sense of finding balance in a story, no sense of fact checking, seeking out the source of a story, checking its validity. Rather the media appears to be pushing certain barrows, and in a political climate, leading up to a federal election where the Prime Minister is labelled as ‘weak’, to promote stories which seem to ‘put him on the spot’ when the responsibilities of the Prime Minister is to be Prime Minister for all Australians, when we have an opposition leader who as time and again used racist themes to create fear of ‘others’, and being ‘tough’ in immigration, promoting the false narrative of ‘African Gangs’ in Melbourne, and pushing any hate button he can find, the media is quick to pounce on the Prime Minister for an immediate response, and if it is not decisively backing the perceived cause is shown to be weak.

Has the media overplayed its hand in recent days or are they beholden to vested interests? Who has the most power over the stories raised in the press, on social media, on the national broadcaster, the ABC, or on SBS?

Who can we believe?

Who should we hate the most?

What ever the answer to those questions, their credibility as being ‘fair and balanced’ is seriously in doubt.

The video of the nurses from the hospital in Sydney, where they demonstrated hate and having the power to kill people, again gets a lot of traction. The nurses have been appropriately dealt with and that matter is under investigation. It seems that getting the hate barrow out attracts attention.

I prefer the ‘humanitarian’ barrow where the differences we have become insignificant, the qualities we share, our humanity, become far more important.

 

Also by Bert Hetebry: Privileged arrogance

 

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