First, an organization like a think tank, university, or activist group carries out a survey. Then, a biased “news” organization searches through a summary of findings for the most damning claim it can make out of context. A finally, other media cite that report to make a sweeping, false conclusion.
It’s a three-step dance radicalizing people. It’s used to swing elections and sway public opinion on the biggest issues. In the new episode, I focus on one big practitioner of this propagandistic artform.
Here’s just one of several examples of how The New York Times’ Ezra Klein does this. “A poll came out that was reported on by Ha’aretz, where 79% of Israeli Jews said they are not so troubled or not troubled at all by the reports of famine and suffering among the Palestinian population in Gaza,” he said recently. “I'd seen another poll not long before, saying that Israeli Jews felt that they had heard enough about the suffering in Gaza. And what chilled me so much about it, even beyond the level of suffering in Gaza. was the level of indifference that had gripped hearts of Israeli Jews.”
There it is. An unnamed “poll” that he doesn’t look into; a “report” from a far left agency that runs hit pieces to get global traffic from bigots; and a declaration that the vast majority of a group of people have “indifference” in their “hearts.”
If Klein cast aspersions against any other racial, ethnic, religious, or national group, the Times would take action. Can you even imagine someone at the Times declaring anything negative about the vast majority of Arabs, Palestinians, or — literally — anyone else? But at the Times, this is par for the course.
Instead of feeling “chilled,” he could engage in basic journalism and look into what the poll, from the Israel Democracy Institute, actually found.
Here’s part of this episode. (As always, transcripts are lightly cleaned up for readability.)
It starts off with a finding about something that is essential for understanding the survey. The vast majority of Jewish Israelis (78%) believe that, given the circumstances of the fighting in Gaza, Israel is making efforts to avoid causing suffering to the Palestinian population there.
If you get what you think is “information” only from big mainstream media in America, you’ll probably think that's crazy, that you know better. Because that's how the Western media operates. But the people in this survey, hey, maybe they know some stuff that we don't. Most Israelis, especially most Jewish Israelis, served in the military. And it's a small country with people who are generally aware of their surroundings. So maybe, unlike people in America, they have seen the videos of restaurants that are still open and of people abusing their children by getting them to eat dirt for propaganda. Maybe they’re aware Israel has sent in tons and tons of food that the United Nations is refusing to distribute for political reasons, and that a lot of the food gets stolen by Hamas and other terrorists.
Next, the people in this poll were not asked whether they care about people starving in Gaza. If you want to know whether people have indifference, you can ask, "If there is a person who is starving, do you care?" That would give the kind of information Klein is pretending this poll gave. They were asked about reporting.
This is so important — especially what it says about the media. Just over half said they're not troubled by the reporting. That could mean all kinds of things. It could speak to something people like to talk about when it comes to Israel: the idea of a PR war. People say Israel is bad at PR or doesn't do PR. Most people in Israel don't worry so much about reporting that other people are hearing. They're busy focusing on day-to-day life, preventing terrorist attacks, having political disputes.
Democracies have a short-term perspective because they're always looking to the next election, the next move, the next way to pressure their leaders into doing what they want, while anti-democratic governments like Hamas and all the Arab and Muslim governments can take a long-term view.
Maybe these folks don't trust the reports. After all, they’re based on claims from Hamas, which lies about everything. And there's more context for this. The hostages from Israel, people who are Jewish and not Jewish, different nationalities, different backgrounds, they have definitely been starved this entire time.
This is just one example.
In this episode, you’ll hear Klein say, “Only a small and shrinking minority are still willing to entertain a Palestinian state.” He links to a survey that does not support his claim. He also mischaracterizes Arab Israelis, ignoring how they feel a greater sense of “shared destiny” with non-Jewish fellow citizens in the war. (Klein should listen to Yoseph Haddad.)
In an era of so much misinformation and disinformation, people need trustworthy sources of truth. Instead, big mainstream media like the Times subject millions to head-spinning choreography, leaving them unable to see straight.
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