MOHAMMAD JABER
Gargoyle staff reporter
Posted Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2009

WHEN ONE READS a CNN article, one usually expects to find an unbiased straightforward report.

For the most part CNN has been living up to this standard, but it is not perfect, and a little bit of bias always manages to creep in on some specific issues.

While a little bit of bias can be acceptable, there are those times when a statement can display a lot of hidden bias. When I recently read a CNN piece about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the first paragraph instantly hit me as subtly misleading:

Prodding Israel and the Palestinian Authority to restart talks aimed at a permanent resolution of their decades-old conflict, President Obama dropped a demand for an Israeli settlement freeze, U.S., Israeli and Palestinian officials said.

At first sight, a regular literate person who uses CNN as a news source would think that, as a result of Obama dropping his demand for Israel to stop its settlement expansion, both the Palestinians and the Israelis would feel like approaching the peace table.

That literate person would also define peace to be "a pact or agreement to end hostilities between those who have been at war or in a state of enmity," as stated in Merriam-Webster Dictionary.

On the other hand, that person wouldn't have thought the peace CNN was referring to meant "freedom from civil disturbance" — a peace that would consist of Israel being able to do anything it wants to the Palestinians without any retaliation.

CNN fails to explain that by dropping his demand for a settlement freeze, Obama sends a message to the Palestinians and the Israelis that:

• Israel will still take Palestinian lands, even if there is "peace."
• Israel will be able to get away with doing whatever it wants to Palestinians' property, whether in peace or war.
• Palestinians will continue to lose land whether they are fighting or not.

Because CNN omitted these consequences, the reader would consider Obama's dropping his demand for a settlement freeze to be directly responsible for catalyzing peace talks between the Palestinians and the Israelis.

In reality, however, by dropping his demands, Obama is giving Israel the green light to make some sort of peace treaty in which Israel continues to usurp Palestinian lands while the Palestinians would be pacified. CNN never states that this peace would be the "peace and quiet" type of peace.

The CNN article fails to go into detail on how the Palestinians view Obama's changed stance, settling for brief quotes from an unnamed aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. This is significant, for the Palestinians gain nothing through Israel's increased taking of Palestinian land. All they see is the threat that if they are not quiet about losing most of their land, they will lose even more land.

In these subtle ways, this CNN article adopted the Israeli framing of the issue. Whether this was because the reporter was writing too fast or because CNN wanted to mislead the reader is irrelevant. The point is that the purpose of journalism is not to persuade or mislead people into believing something but to relate a story as accurately and as interestingly as possible.

In recent years, however, many American media outlets have taken many pro-Israeli sponsors, like Starbucks, The Limited Inc. (Victoria's Secret and Bath and Body Works), Coca Cola, and other companies, according to The Tygrrrr Express.

When one looks at Starbucks, for example, the company's chairman and CEO, Howard Schultz, is an active Zionist. According to The Tygrrrr Express:

In 1998 he was honored by the Jerusalem Fund of Aish HaTorah with ‘The Israel 50th Anniversary Friend of Zion Tribute Award’ for his services to the Zionist state in ‘playing a key role in promoting close alliance between the United States and Israel.’ At a time when other businesses were desperately pulling out of Israel, Starbucks decided to help Israel’s floundering economy and invest in Israel. It has been revealed that Starbucks still continues to support Israel by sponsoring fundraisers for Israel.

Companies like Starbucks sponsor news media like CNN by paying to have their advertisements aired on that news source.

While a company has the right to sponsor anybody or anything it wants, the danger is that the sponsor will use its leverage to make sure news coverage is tailored to its interests and biases.

Another factor leading to a pro-Israeli slant in the U.S. media is the fact that the majority of Americans tend to be pro-Israel. Thus a majority of CNN's readers are pro-Israeli. When readers encounter something they don't want to read, that can lead to a reduction in CNN's audience, thus reducing the price/value of commercials on CNN.

In other words, it's in the best economic interests of CNN and other news media to be biased toward that which their readers and sponsors support.

This structural defect of corporate journalism isn't going to change anytime soon. But people who are sincerely interested in getting a broader view of the world have ample opportunities to do so.

Thanks to the Internet, people have access to multiple sources of information. Some, like NPR, tend to be supported by contributions from individuals instead of commercial ad revenue. Free from the need to impress Wall Street with ever-increasing profit margins, public media like NPR can provide a broader spectrum of views.

Alternative sources of news aren't a cure-all for the deficiencies that plague the for-profit media system, but they provide a reason to be optimistic that accuracy and fairness can find their way back to journalism.