Via Yglesias, here's a charming leaflet from the Republican Jewish Committee that helps demonstrate just why the GOP deserves - even needs - to lose on Tuesday.
Nice touch too, that the photograph used shows Barack Obama speaking in Germany. Obviously Obama is, rather oddly, Adolf Hitler and Neville Chamberlain.
Equally obviously, it scarcely needs saying that Neville Chamberlain was not in fact to blame for the Holocaust.
Is this Glenn Reynolds post a plea for more coverage of Tibet or less of Palestine?
GOOD QUESTION: Why Do Palestinians Get Much More Attention than Tibetans?
But, just perhaps, the Israel-Palestine question receives lots of coverage because it's a question, at root, of competing rights, not because the media has an incurably anti-Israeli bias or is, in this instance at any rate, acting in an especially hypocritical fashion.
The other answer, of course, is that readers, are much more interested in the Middle East than they are in China and Tibet and, consequently, this is just market forces at work. Shocking!
Matt Yglesias writes:
People often note that there appears to be a more vigorous debate over Israel's approach to the Israeli-Arab conflict in the mainstream Israeli press than there is in the mainstream American press. This is, however, the kind of judgment that it's hard for a casual American observer to make with much confidence. Writing in International Security, however, Jerome Slater takes a more systematic comparison of coverage of the conflict in The New York Times and in Haaretz and concludes that, indeed, Israelis debate this matter more freely.
To which Megan responds:
1) No one in Israel is worried about being called anti-semitic.
2) Ethnic groups in safe exile tend to be more committed to territorial possession than the people back home who actually have to get shot at in order to obtain or retain the land. This is certainly true of the Irish.
3) Being correct about Israel/Palestine matters a lot more in Israel than it does in America. People expressing views here (or in Europe) are more often staking out ethnic or political solidarity with a cause. People in Israel have a certain level of solidarity assumed, and are in a high-stakes battle for the lowest cost solution, which permits and even demands a wider breadth of views.
4) Newspapers in Israel are just better than newspapers here.
2 and 3 seem pretty plausible to me (with a dash of 1 thrown in) but if 3 has some validity then it's likely that 4 is true too - at least as far as coverage of Israeli national interests is concerned. Which makes me wonder if Megan is joking when she says:
Obviously, four is not the correct answer. I don't know how much to weight each of the other three.
I mean, it stands to reason that Israeli newspapers are going to cover Israeli political and security issues better - and from a wider range of viewpoints - than papers anywhere else? Similarly you'd expect British newspapers to be best for British political news, Australian for Australian etc etc. These papers may not necessarily be able to compete with the big American metropolitan dailies across the board, but pound-for-pound they have their specialty niches where they can continue to provide a service that is valuable beyond their own immediate markets.
Relatedly, it's the case that, though I'm a partisan for foreign coverage and expanding it wherever possible, it makes a certain amount of sense for penny-pinching proprietors (the enemy in other words) to target foreign coverage, even if doing so dents the credibility and authority of their newspaper (foreign coverage being, alas, one of those things that flatters readers estimation of their own seriousness and inquisitiveness even if they rarely, most of them, do much more than glance at th foreign news). For those readers who are most passionate about the rest of the world, however, it's now possible to go straight to source and get the full or at least a more complete, picture of events abroad than one can get from even the New York Times which must, necessarily, simplify matters so as not to suffocate the casual reader with detail and nuance.
Still, cutting back on foreign coverage is an admission of defeat; it tells you that a paper has lost confidence in its purpose and, even more fatally, in the ability of its readership to be interested in and stimulated by events beyond the city limits. This is fatal even if many of those readers are not in fact, as I say, much interested by foreign affairs; many of them still like the idea that they might be one day or that if they suddenly develop an interest in, say, Spain or Russia, their paper will be there to provide them with copy a level or two above The Bluffers' Guide to Funny Foreign Parts. It's what one editor of mine used to call The Virtue of Un-Read Copy.
But once you start treating your readership as simpletons in one area it's often not long before you the cancer spreads to other sections. It's easy to patronise and condescend to readers - one reason the trade is struggling - it's much tougher to hold yourself to demanding standards when the marketing people and the accountants are telling you to go with the flow.
The trouble is that when you do listen to them they seem so sweetly reasonable (they have stats! And Powerpoint! And surveys!) But sooner or later the readers see through it and realise they're being treated as mere advertising fodder and then they find reasons not to buy your newspaper and you can't rake in as much advertising loot and you're on the downward spiral to ending up like the poor old Daily Express, once the envy of Fleet Street and now a sad laughing-stock...
I've defended Rupert Murdoch's purchase of the Wall Street Journal, but that's not an endorsement of his political sensitivity. From the Campbell diaries:
Thursday January 17th, 2002:
Murdoch was coming in for dinner and... brought James and Lachlan [his sons]...Murdoch was at one point putting the traditional very right-wing view on Israel and the Middle East peace process and James said that he was 'talking fucking nonsense'. Murdoch said he didn't see what the Palestinians' problem was and James said it was that they were kicked out of their fucking homes and had nowhere to fucking live. Murdoch was very pro-Israel, very pro-Reagan. He finally said to James that he didn't think he should talk like that in the Prime Minister's house and James got very apologetic with TB, who said not to worry, I hear far worse all the time. Most of the discussion was a run round the main foreign policy blocks, Israel, Saudi, Iran, Indo-Pak, a little bit of why does Britain have to bother so much?...Murdoch pointed out that his were the only papers that gave us support when the going got tough. 'I've noticed,' said TB.
OK, one observation on the South Carolina debate. I know it's considered improper to mention that Israel and Israeli concerns ever play a part in American politics or policy making. But just because that's a charge made by some anti-semites does not a) make it anti-semitic to mention this or b) refute the suggestion.
Anyway, the most telling moment, in this regard, during the debate came when Barack Obama was asked "What are America's three most important allies around the world?'' and, rather startlingly failed to include Israel in the list.
Brian Williams (the moderator) drew Obama's attention to this and gave him a second shot at answering the question. I don't think Williams was trying to catch Obama out or embarrass him, rather I suspect he wanted to help him recover from an inadvertent moment of forgetfulness and spare him the vitriol that would doubtless come his way had he not avowed his support for Israel. We would, I fear, have heard more of the "Madrassa Obama" nonsense had this not happened.
But if it's inconceivable - as seems to be the case - that you could or should be able to leave Israel off a list of vital allies, then doesn't that rather make the point that Israeli interests are important to the United States? And what sort of ally would the United States be if it routinely ignored the interests and needs of its allies? (On second thoughts, British readers might want to ignore that question. Obama, of course, didn't mention Britain by name either. Scandal!) Are we seriously supposed to believe that it's illegitimate or anti-semitic to notice this? Or to believe that if Israeli interests have no impact in Washington then AIPAC is perhaps the least effective advocacy group in the city?
Apparently so. No wonder this city so often seems to have escaped from the pages of a political version of Alice in Wonderland.
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