Barry Rubin: Never Forget the Power of the Mass Media to Distort Reality

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Never Forget the Power of the Mass Media to Distort Reality

By Barry Rubin

[Name withheld] is one of the kindest and most generous people I’ve ever known. [Name withheld] is well-educated and is an open-minded liberal. [Name withheld] is not Jewish but is friendly to Israel. Yesterday there was a column in the Washington Post claiming–on ridiculously distorted arguments–that Glenn Beck is an antisemite. For two years I’ve been listening to Beck on television and radio as part of a research project on understanding the new conservative debate (with special reference to the Middle East and Israel) and explaining it to Israelis. I know, then, that while Glenn Beck sometimes makes silly mistakes on details he often has a better grasp of Middle East issues than the mainstream media. The charge against him is not only profoundly false but based on such a distortion of everything he has said and done for many years that one can only assume that the Washington Post author was consciously lying.


Indeed, Dana Milbank called Beck, “The leading purveyor of anti-Semitic memes in the mass media.” It would be interesting to consider who really deserves that title. I don’t have a candidate but I’d love to hear yours. Somehow I don’t think it would be Louis Farrakhan, Pat Buchanan, or Ron Paul since they aren’t that much in the mass media though they are certainly antisemites. Nor do I think it is someone who politically agrees with Beck on any issue whatsoever.

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Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His latest book is Israel: An Introduction, to be published by Yale University Press later this year. You can read more of Barry Rubin's posts at Rubin Reports, and now on his new blog, Rubin Reports, on Pajamas Media

Technorati Tag: Media Bias.