We have all felt it. We read an Israel-related news story, feature or opinion piece or watch a news report and shake our heads in frustration. The story is incomplete. Israel is portrayed in a bad light. The narrative is based on half-truths or incomplete or inaccurate factual recitations, or is driven by outright bias.
For some, the immediate response is to fire off an angry letter to the editor or post criticism online. Others cancel their subscription to the offending source. But most of us fume in silence, resentful of the fact that some segments of the media are consistently anti-Israel.
Fortunately, there are several watchdog organizations that review, monitor and call out anti-Israel bias in the media. And, from time to time, they achieve significant success. One such instance occurred last week and involved CBS News and its well-respected “60 Minutes” show.
In a segment titled “Dissent Within the State Department over U.S. Role in Israel-Hamas War,” the report vilified Israel and U.S. support for its ally. The report made almost no mention of Hamas’ murderous attack that triggered the war or the terror group’s placing of civilians in Gaza in harm’s way by embedding themselves, their weapons and their terror infrastructure in civilian areas. Instead, Hamas terrorists were described as “militants” and the report suggested that following the Oct. 7 attack Israel should have sought to make peace with Hamas rather than act in self-defense.
The report featured inflated Palestinian civilian casualty numbers and bemoaned the repeatedly debunked claims that Israel was blocking aid into Gaza. And in her introduction to the story, the “60 Minutes” reporter informed her audience that the “war has led to charges of genocide against Israel and has been fueled by American weapons and billions of taxpayer dollars.”
The report drew heavily on two former State Department officials who resigned from their
jobs in protest of President Joe Biden’s support for Israel amid the ongoing conflict. Those former officials claim that the U.S. has been “complicit” in helping Israel to carry out alleged violations of international law and “devastation” in Gaza that the administration has ignored.
The “60 Minutes” segment ignited a firestorm of internal and external criticism. The report was characterized as a “disgraceful one-sided hit job against Israel” by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), with similar sentiment raised by multiple commentators and Jewish organizations.
And the heat was raised when furious employees of CBS expressed similar concerns internally — when many are still stinging from CBS’s recent bungling of criticism of an interview by “CBS Mornings” co-anchor Tony Dokoupil of author Ta-Nehisi Coates in which Dokoupil challenged Coates’ intense criticism of Israel in a new book.
In response to the uproar, CBS announced the hiring of an interim executive editor of CBS News to deal with concerns and “feedback regarding perceived bias” in some of CBS’s coverage. CBS went on to say that “in today’s fast-moving news environment, it is critical for newsrooms to quickly and effectively deliver balanced, accurate, fair, and timely reporting, including highly complex, sensitive issues like the war in the Middle East.”
Let’s hope it lasts.
To follow up on your article “Recurring Media Bias”, could you publish a list of about the five or ten of the most effective watchdog groups and how to contact them? Also, how would your readers feel about not reading or subscribing to biased publications, or not watching the biased reports in video format? Are there enough available news resources other than the biased sources? How much do your readers need these biased media sources? My main question is, are they necessary? I’d be glad to expand on the topic should you have any questions.