Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
There’s a template the media uses to cover a wide range of stories. Sometimes it happens unconsciously; at other times, it’s guided intentionally by people with biased agendas.
It’s the drama triangle, in which players are reduced to one of three roles: victim or oppressed; hero or rescuer; and persecutor or villain.
Propagandists inside news agencies use it to convince you — even subconsciously — who “good guys” and “bad guys” are. They present you with endless images to cement that view.
Manipulation of the news is their greatest weapon in pushing destructive victim narratives that get you to hate whoever they hate. These narratives fueled the January 6th insurrection and the violent pro-Hamas riots that have swept across America over the last two years.
In right-wing media, the big message is: You are the victim. The persecutors are the deep state, school librarians, immigrants eating your pets, etc. The hero is Trump or another right-wing political leader.
In mainstream media, it’s: You are privileged, and therefore one of the persecutors —unless you become a rescuer by supporting the victims that “progressive” figures define for you.
So what happens when a news story involves actual victims, persecutors, and rescuers that don’t fit into the propagandists’ paradigm? Then, news agencies get sneaky. They fill the story with excuses to muddy the waters, and quickly drown out the story with a deluge of “news” that fits their agenda.
For example, take the amazing rescue of Farhan al-Qadi, a Bedouin father of 11. It should have been a global celebration. But the reality — an Israeli military unit rescuing an Israeli-Arab hostage from a terrorist group — didn’t fit the established, preferred paradigm.
To be savvy news consumers, we all need to see through the manipulation. So I talk you through it in the latest episode:
First, I discuss hostage situations involving Americans in Haiti and Yemen. Rescue attempts are extremely risky. As Brian Michael Jenkins of RAND explains:
“More than any other terrorist tactic, a hostage situation arouses powerful emotions, which in turn create crises for governments. Jihadist kidnappers exploit this with pitiful videotaped appeals from their hostages and brutal on-camera beheadings. These also serve as recruiting posters for the terrorist groups, fulfilling the vengeance fantasies of supporters abroad, inviting them to participate and stimulating them to action. For those holding multiple hostages, slaughtering some is also a way of increasing bargaining leverage.”
Given the likelihood that Islamist terrorists will slaughter hostages, rescue efforts make sense. When they succeed, these missions are amazing and historic. Over the past two years, Israel managed to rescue several hostages. Each should have been celebrated by all good people. But big legacy media drowned out the heroics under a flood of lies from Hamas and Iran.
As with all other journalistic standards and practices, Am Yisrael (“Jews”) are the big exception. Mainstream media avoid the usual template. They won’t let Israeli human beings come across as victims and heroes, but not villains.
As I explain in this episode, if the global media had acted with the same moral clarity it does with hostage crises around the world, more people would have been demanding the release of these hostages all along.
Listen for my discussion with the mother of a hostage who has been freed.
JL
P.S. Tomorrow’s episode focuses on answering supporters’ questions. Send your questions, feedback and more in comments or by messaging me here.