Three Amazing Stories (From Today) That Teach Us: Never Overestimate the Competence of the Media

First, almost all of the major news media has reported about the confrontation between Israeli forces and people who tried to cross Israel’s border as part of a demonstration designed to help wipe that country off the map. But what’s their source? None of them has first-hand information. So in fact all their data came from the Syrian propaganda organs.

That’s right. The Syrian regime is killing hundreds of its own people. No Western government will act against that dictatorship. But when it comes to Israel they accept its claims as truth, and many didn't even tell readers or viewers--at least in the initial reports--where they got the information.

Second, this is from a CNN report on the same story today

“Israel has made peace with the other two parties to the 1967 Six-Day War, Egypt and Jordan, but still occupies the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza as well as the Golan Heights.”

At least this CNN item listed Syria as the source of casualty figures. But what’s wrong with the above sentence?

A. Who says they are “Palestinian territories?”

B. The populated areas of the West Bank have been governed by the Palestinian Authority for 17 years. The PA has received billions of dollars to run the show, has its own schools, health system, security forces, you name it. But CNN reports it as being “still” occupied.

C. And of course Israel pulled out of the Gaza Strip completely six years ago, yet CNN also acts as if that’s still “occupied,” too. The area lives under a revolutionary Islamist regime dedicated to Israel’s destruction yet supposedly Israel controls it.

But the third item is best. Let me explain. In an article remarking about how we are now told that the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and Syria’s regime, for example, are the good guys protecting everyone from even worse extremists, For example, we have been told for several years that dictator Bashar al-Assad is really a reformer held back by the “old guard.” (The alleged members of this old guard are never named because in fact they don’t exist.