Media Bias against Muslims: Hagee, Parsley, McCain, Wright, Obama, Bible Burning and Qur’an Shooting
What do all of these subjects have in common? They illustrate a strong bias in the mainstream media against Muslims and in favor of Israel.
A few posts ago, I engaged in a comparative analysis of the Wright-Obama controversy and compared it to the lack of a Parsley-McCain controversy. [See “Rod Parsley and John McCain Expose How Bigoted America Is“] I pointed out how many of the attacks against Obama were based on conspiracy theories, such as the notion that he was a “secret Muslim” or an “apostate Muslim“, not to mention the clever play on words of his name, the allegation that he went to a “Maddrasseh.” If such insinuations were made against other racial or religious groups, they would certainly be classified as bigotry, but they are not because it is against Muslims. A perfect example of how serious insinuations against other religious group are taken is the curious event of the bible burnings in Israel (which got scant media attention) in spite of being an act of hatred analogous to me to Nazi book burnings and the fact that McCain disassociated himself from Hagee.
McCain didn’t disassociate himself from Hagee when he bashed the Catholic church, referring to it as “the apostate church”, “the Great Whore”, and “a false cult system.” He didn’t associate himself from Hagee when he made comments against homosexuals. He didn’t disassociate himself from Hagee when he compared women who have PMS to terrorists. He didn’t disassociate himself from Parsley when he invoked the American legacy to justify a war against Islam.
No, McCain ONLY disassociated BOTH of these extremists when recordings surfaced of Hagee making anti-semitic comments by referring to Hitler as a “hunter” for God who precipitated the migration to Israel. Interestingly enough, some have defended this interpretation as a valid one according to Orthodox Jewish teachings. (Such as Dennis Prager, the same idiot who denounced Keith Ellison for using the Qur’an to take his congressional oath upon) However, the people defending Hagee are less concerned with the morality or immorality of his statements, and more concerned with the fact that he has done so much for the state of Israel.
According to the Washington Times, Hagee is one of the power players of the Israel lobby:
“Since 1982, Mr. Hagee has sponsored lavish “Nights for Israel” banquets to raise $30 million for Jewish and Israeli humanitarian causes. Then- Houston Mayor Kathy Whitmire proclaimed Nov. 17, 1984, “Pastor John Hagee Day.”
“In 2006, he brought 3,000 pro-Israel evangelical Christians to the District for a “Washington/ Israel summit” to push the Bush administration to better support Israel and to showcase CUFI. A July 18, 2006, banquet at the Washington Hilton attracted then-Israeli Ambassador Daniel Ayalon and Israeli defense chief, Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon.”
Why did bashing Islam (or Catholics, homosexuals, or women for that matter), in the context of Obama, Parsley, and Hagee not raise any eyebrows in the mainstream media, but a perceived attack on Judaism caused John McCain to quickly dismiss them? Also, why was an extremely controversial event, bible-burning, in Israel not discussed in the media either, whereas the shooting of the Qur’an in Iraq and the subsequent protests in Afghanistan were published all over the place? Why is it acceptable to bash some religions and groups and not others?
EDIT:
The ludicrous conspiracy theories that were thrown around in the mainstream media against Obama illustrate the derogatory treatment that Islam is given in the public discourse.
One key difference between McCain’s supporters and Obama’s supporters is that the former were ardent supporters of Israel whereas the latter was not. A key difference between the Qur’an shooting story and the Bible-burning story is that the latter occurred in Israel while the former stories occurred in Iraq and Afghanistan.
What these stories tell us, when taken together, is that there is a negative bias against Islam and Muslims while there is a positive bias in favor of Israel in the mainstream media.
Sphere: Related ContentPublished May 24, 2008 . Filed under: American Islam and Muslims
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Hagee has been continually attacked on all cable news stations. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked McCain about him on “Late Edition” months ago. ABC’s George Stephanapolis did as well. MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann has had a story about Hagee almost every day for 2 months, and he has also been mentioned constantly on MSNBC’s “Race for the White House” by liberal pundit Rachel Maddow. PBS’ Bill Moyers did an entire episode documenting the extremism of Rev. Hagee and the CUFI. He also spoke of the hypocrisy of Hagee compared to Rev. Wright on another broadcast.
Fox News hasn’t had much on Hagee, I will give you that.
Rod Parsley’s story was broke into the mainstream media by Brian Ross, the same one who broke Rev. Wright, on the highly rated Good Morning America on ABC. It was also the top story on ABC’s Evening News that night which is also highly rated. Keith Olbermann, who gets ratings of over 1 million people, put Hagee and Parsley as his top story on Thursday night. So did CNN’s Election Center with Campbell Brown which has ratings of about 600,000. CNN’s Anderson Cooper mentioned the Hagee and Parsley stories as his top story on AC360 on Thursday night.
Hagee and Parsley were also mentioned by Dan Abrams’ Verdict on MSNBC at 9:00 PM.
It was on the front page of the NYTimes, the Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor, and it is in this weeks issue of U.S. News and World Report.
I read and watch all of this media constantly, and other than Fox News, you cannot empirically state that Hagee and Parsley did not get coverage by the mainstream media. They purposefully covered him because it is a story that has to do with the campaign and will get ratings.
Rev. Wright on the other hand WAS covered much longer. I do agree that this was ridiculous, however Rev. Wright was Obama’s pastor, while Hagee and Parsley were people that McCain sought out to get to endorse him to beat Mike Huckabee.
There is no conspiracy, it is as clear as day why one was covered more than the other, but both were covered.
May 24, 2008 @ 4:31 pm
Your mention of Mearsheimer and Walt’s book also completely misconstrues their thesis. I have in fact read Mearsheimer and Walt’s books (as well as their other books) and spoken to Mearsheimer personally. He never says that the media is “controlled” by the Israel lobby. He simply says that supporters of Israel attempt to get influence in the media but often don’t. He writes an entire chapter refuting people who believe the Israel lobby controls the media or is a “cabal.” Instead it is an interest group like the NRA, the Arab lobby, the Armenian lobby, the AFL-CIO and others who will do what interest groups do.
May 24, 2008 @ 4:34 pm
I’m not sure if you read my post, but the main assertion I was making was not that necessarily that Hagee, Parsley, et al were not discussed in the media. My previous posts on the same topic make it clear that it was being discussed. The assertion I was making was that there are certain narratives that are being interwoven into the reporting of certain events where similarly situated groups (religious or ethnic) are given disproportionate coverage in the media that coincides with the political landscape. For example, many of the attacks against Obama were whether he was a secret or apostate Muslim, creating the insinuation that there is something “wrong” with a Muslim president. If one were to compare the Hagee-Parsley stories to the types of attacks that were made against Obama and the media furor they raised, its clear that attacking Islam has a much more muted response than negative portrayals of Israel.
And in terms of Hagee and Parsley being rejected, my focus was on how McCain rejected them only after Hagee’s anti-semitic statements emerged. Your citing of different news reports makes that clear. Most or the citations you gave refer to Thursday frequently - that was the day after Hagee’s anti-semitic statements were first revealed on the Huffington Post (which was a Wednesday).
Also, I never stated that the media was “controlled” by a “cabal.” I argued that the media has a very pro-Israel bias and a very anti-Muslim bias and suggested that it might have to do with interest groups beyond the media itself.
Just out of curiosity, do you agree that their is a latent anti-Muslim bias and a pro-Israel bias in the media? If you do agree, then what explanations do you have to account for this?
May 24, 2008 @ 5:49 pm
“The media” is a broad term. Your blog is the media as well. There is definetly a large outlet for pro-Israel views in the media. There is also a strong presence by pro-Israeli interest groups in attempting to spin things their way. However, this is the same with the Muslim lobby (CAIR) and other organizations.
Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, PBS, CSPAN, al-Jazeera English, BBC News, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN International, Headline News, France 24 - and this just for TV channels - is not one monolithic entity. Even the programs and directors of such channels are not the same. CNN hired Joe Klein last year who has strongly rectified many of their weaknesses in following the Fox model. MSNBC hired Dan Abrams to move the channel more to the left and since he has quit in November the channel has taken a new tone. Ditto for Fox News and Roger Ailes.
“The media” even questions concerning Israel bias are explored on TV shows weekly. PBS’ Bill Moyers journal has acted as a media critic for pro-Israel bias previously. Al-Jazeera English’s “Listening Post” has as well. There is also Howard Kurtz who criticizes the media twice weekly in the Washington Post, and has a show on CNN.
I do not believe there is an anti-Muslim bias at all in “the media,” because I don’t believe in a “the” media. I think that different opinion programming has different latent biases and they differ based upon their directors, general managers, and producers. The media is primarily profit centered and thus caters to what the American public wants.
Pat Buchanan said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe only last Thursday that American foreign policy was being formed with the “advice and consent” of Tel Aviv. He has severly criticized Israel before. Robert Novak of Fox News and previously CNN has called Israeli policy “apartheid” and to the schock of Margaret Carlson called Hamas “freedom fighters” on a 2004 edition of the Capital Gang.
One can find opinions here there and everywhere in a country with free speech. This is not to deny that there exists biases often, very often, in the media. There is also a very disturbing government-media industrial complex. And pro-Israel groups, like others, attempt to achieve media capital, as Mearsheimer and Walt make clear in “The Israel Lobby” and I agree completely with their argument, but this is not sufficient evidence to call the media biased against Muslims or latently anti-Islamic. There is good media, bad media, and ugly media for sure but there is no latent anti-Muslim bias by “the” media.
May 24, 2008 @ 6:29 pm
I’m not going in with the discussion of Islam Israeli conspiracies, but I did do all this work on Endorsement gate which you might be interested in.
trying to not get it swept under the carpet of the weekend.
May 25, 2008 @ 10:01 am
Abu Hatem,
So you believe that the media merely caters to what its viewers want. Just out of curiosity then, why do you think the majority of Americans support Israel unconditionally?
Also, how do you perceive the pro-Israel bias in the government?
May 25, 2008 @ 11:43 am
Hans,
Thanks. You’ve done an amazing job there. Keep up the good work.
May 25, 2008 @ 11:47 am
The media caters to high ratings. High ratings = higher advertising profit. Higher advertising profit = higher profit for the network.
Thus, the highest rating shows in cable news - the O’Reilly Factor and Hannity and Combes, are right-wing (neoconservatives however are really a branch of the left) pundit talk shows which get high ratings.
Countdown with Keith Olbermann is a liberal pundit talk show and gets the highest ratings on MSNBC. Tucker Carlson was a right-wing talk show but made no ratings (below 100,000 in the 25-51 demo) and was taken off the air to be replaced by another show (David Gregory).
The American public is not overwhelmingly pro-Israel. However, take the Israel issue off the table. The cable TV news viewership is overwhelmingly skewed towards right-wing talk (O’Reilly) and thus gives him ratings.
Headline News used to get no ratings, about 73,000 in the 25-51 demo before they put on Glenn Beck. Beck’s right-wing talk brought in more viewers than just the news, and thus made the network more money.
If people quit wathing Bill O’Reilly tomorrow and his ratings went down, then Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch would look for something else to put on which would get high ratings.
This is not to say I don’t believe in the harmful media-government industrial complex. Bill Moyer’s documentary “Buying the War” shows how the media didn’t even bother (other than McClatchy newspapers) to question the administration’s claims. And remember when MSNBC dumped Donnahue because he was seen as “unpatriotic.”
When Bob Novak wrote a column against the war Bush refused to give him access. Same with Helen Thomas.
The Israel Lobby book presents these arguments in the chapter on the media. As I have said before I have spoken to Mearsheimer and he is a very intelligent man. He really makes his argument cogently about the media and Israel. Yet he also identifies its source and strongly condemns conspiracy theories that come out of the far-left.
In the end of his book, on the section “countering the lobby,” he illustrates the point that it would be possible for an anti-Israel lobby to use the same resources and organization to attempt to spin things their way as well. He doesn’t envision this happening however.
The media with all of its problems is still highly free, a government watchdog, and if taken as a whole (including with Arab media such as al-Jazeera English which is blatantly anti-Israel in its bias, read what Dave Marash said after he quit) cannot be said to have a latent anti-Islam bias.
Nobody is forcing anyone to watch CNN or MSNBC or to read the NYTimes. If you want to stick around with your own type of media you can read the Christian Science Monitor, watch PBS’ NewsHour, and the hardnews of Al-Jazeera English (which is available in the US through GlobeCast, and online through LiveStation).
In the end we agree to disagree. I don’t like to comment on blogs so this is my last post on here.
May 25, 2008 @ 4:54 pm
So your argument is essentially that the masses like the right-wing pundits and my question is why do you think that is so when they do not necessarily represent the majority of the viewers in the country?
May 25, 2008 @ 7:00 pm
Because the majority of the country does not watch cable TV news. The minority that does strongly gives high ratings to right-wing pundits, but also signficantly to other left-wing pundits. In the interests of making profit, cable TV news companies will cater to such needs. Where there is demand, then there is greater supply. Law one of economics.
If the consumers of cable TV news would change in demographics and instead highly value shows about environmental news, then you would find more environmental news shows. Cable TV news is a corporation and business. The single greatest motive for a corporation is to make profit for its shareholders.
Tell all those people owning NewsCorp, TimeWarner, and GE (MSNBC is owned by GE) stock that you want to put a program on which will lose ratings, and see what they say.
Go here:
http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/ratings/the_scoreboard_thursday_may_22_85583.asp
For an example of one day in cable tv news ratings. Also please read reliable resources such as the Project for Excellence in Journalism, the Columbia Journalism Review, and the journal Editor and Publisher for information on TV news. You can also read PEJ’s yearly summary of the state of cable TV news.
When Joe Klein, CNN’s managing director, replaced Paula Zhan with Campbell Brown’s “Election Center,” and hard news anchor Aaron Brown was replaced with pop-celebrity anchor Anderson Cooper ratings shot up. These people were kept in their spots because higher profits are payed by advertisers. When Tucker Carlson’s right-wing talk show was getting extremely low ratings on MSNBC he was replaced by David Gregory who is non-partisan and who gets higher ratings.
Keith Olbermann’s left-wing show Countdown at 8:00 PM has the highest ratings of any shows on MSNBC. Thus MSNBC changed their line up last month to air a repeat at 10:00, and has situated MSNBC for more left-wing programming to be a left-wing alternative to Fox. Since MSNBC has undertook this strategy the PEJ reports that its profits and ratings have seen record numbers.
GE, Time Warner, and NewsCorp want profit. Thus they will cater to the majority of CONSUMERS of the product. The majority of consumers of cable TV news want pundit shows, and of those a substantial proportion want right-wing talk while another substantial proportion want the left-wing talk of Keith Olbermann and MSNBC. It is a very simple question which I have already answered.
There is no cabal or conspiracy within the media which is purposefully and intentionally spreading an anti-Islam or pro-Israel agenda to harm Muslims and help Israel. There is no intentional or purposeful agenda. The media caters to that which gives profit, and non-news “opinion” shows cater primarily to the views of their consumers.
However there is often government pressure on the media to cover things its way or lose coverage (the media-government industrial complex) which showed its ugly face before the Iraq war and was condemned by esteemed journalists such as Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather. This is not to be mistaken for a concious, purposeful, and intentional agenda against Islam, Muslims, or Israel. Period.
(My real last post).
May 25, 2008 @ 7:39 pm
I never argued that there was a ‘cabal’ or conspiracy within the media which propagated anti-Islam or pro-Israel bias. My critique of the media follows the Propaganda Model described by Herman and Chomsky with respect to how the corporate media, in general, serves out the foreign policy interests of the state in a variety of ways. I was merely attempting to use a perceived pro-Israel and anti-Muslim perspective in the media to substantiate that such views correspond, generally, to American foreign policy interests.
In terms of whether an anti-Muslim or anti-Islam bias exists in the corporate media, the articles posted above due illustrate how it is still somewhat acceptable to hold conspiracy theories, stereotypes, and fear-mongering pertaining to Muslims. A report conducted in England last year illustrated that 91% of the news stories in the media there portrayed Muslims and Islam in a negative light. Jack Shaheen, author of “Reel Bad Arabs” has engaged in extensive research on how Hollywood portrays Arabs and Muslims in a negative light. If you want to deny that an anti-Muslim or pro-Israel perspective in the media exists, then be my guest.
Again, just to reiterate, I never claimed that there was a ‘cabal’ in control of the media. Nor have I claimed that there are no positive stories of Muslims or negative stories of Israel in the media. My claim is that the general propensity in the media is to portray Islam in a negative light and to portray Israel in a positive light and I have argued that there is a nexus between them that has to do with foreign policy interests and not necessarily a secret group of people controlling the government or the media.
May 28, 2008 @ 12:30 am
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/opinion/01pubed.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=login
In today’s Times.
June 1, 2008 @ 4:20 pm
Assalam Alaikum Brother.
One had just to see the speeches that B. Obama and H. Clinton made to today to the AIPAC after Obama was elected as the Democrat Prez candidate today. If that isn’t proof enough of the Israeli bias, I don’t know what is.
! Give us the stregnth and power to change this world of unabashed political hypocrisy! Give us power over these false unbelievers! Let truth triumph, please. Ameen.
It was ridiculous how they were pandering after the Jewish lobby. So Mr. O thinks every Israeli child has the right to live without fear, the right to peace and to a homeland. Yeah, right. Apparently Palestinian kids aren’t human. And, it also doesn’t matter that Israel actually, err, ‘usurped’ the Palestinian homeland.
It made my blood boil to see the way those two went on and on glorifying the “American-Israeli bond” and making a vicious villain out of Iran for possessing nuclear weapons. Let me get this straight: don’t the US and Israel also such WMD’s themselves? But oh, they have all ‘noble’ purposes for them in mind, right?
Allah
June 4, 2008 @ 4:13 pm
coz we still weak
June 4, 2008 @ 11:00 pm
ReallyPosh,
I agree with your posts that there is a complete unfair double standard with regards to American and Israeli hegemony. However, I wanted to point out that my critique of the Israeli lobby is not of Jews or Judaism. Most Jews in America actually vote liberal, not conservative whereas the Israeli lobby has stronger connections to conservativism and very strong ties with the neoconservative movement.
Also, there are many non-Jews in the Israeli lobby as well, such as US politicians, think tank members, journalists, and of course, the Christian zionists.
So let me be clear that I believe that the negative portrayals of Islam are not coming from a secret cabal of Jews, rather, the Israeli lobby (made of Jews and gentiles) who have a strategic interest in preventing a challenger arising to question their hegemony in the Middle East and their dominance in the American public sphere. The global Muslim community has taken it upon itself to defend the honor of the Palestinian people and have attempted to change the public discourse into one that favors Palestine in an equitable manner and it is for this reason that, I believe, its come under attack from the Israeli lobby and the Christian Zionists, although the latter have long had beef with Islam.
June 4, 2008 @ 11:41 pm