Two items on this today:
1) A French newspaper has fired a reporter for publishing a book critical of anti-American bias in the French press. Associated Press reports:
The book, “La Guerre a Outrances” (The War of Outrages), criticizes the French reporting for continually predicting the war would end badly for the U.S.-led coalition.
“Readers can’t understand why the Americans won the war,” Hertoghe said in a telephone interview. “The French press wasn’t neutral.”
The book, published Oct. 15, charges French reporters were more patriotic than journalistic and what was written amounted to disinformation.
James Taranto adds: “What’s really pathetic is that in France, being ‘patriotic’ means showing fealty to a fascist Arab dictator.”
2) Frontpage Magazine translated an interview with a Barcelona leftist and contributor to a forthcoming book that ‘denounces the flagrant imbalance in the handling of information from the Middle East.’
Marc Tobiass: Why did you feel the need to write “In Favor of Israel”; to participate in the publication of this book?
Pilar Rahola: Since the start of the second intifada, the Spanish press, on the right as well as the Left, has taken a particularly aggressive approach toward Israel, an approach that leaves out the reasons for Israel’s actions and tends to ignore the Israeli victims in this conflict. In this situation, a small minority of intellectuals, public personalities—sensitive to the Jewish question in general and to Israel particular—felt deeply touched by this problem. Outraged by the return of Judeophobia in Spain, we, each in our own way, began to write articles; to use the media to condemn this situation.
Here Rahola touches upon deeper causes for European media bias:
Marc Tobiass: There is a comment in your text that sent shivers down my spine. You say that Judeophobia is, in the final analysis, the common denominator between Europe and the Palestinians.
Pilar Rahola: It’s true that there are in Europe non-Jews who are sensitive and respect the Jewish soul, which is also part of the foundation of Europe, but they constitute a minority. The majority, the unconscious European collective, does not understand, does not absorb, nor accept, the Jewish phenomenon. And it is there that the essential meeting point between the European and the Palestinian takes place. Palestinian identity is not just a recent phenomenon, but it is, above all, built on hatred of Israel, hatred of the Jews.
An important interview – read the whole thing here.
