The New York Times covered the anti-Israel protests that closed highways leading to major airports in NYC and LA during the busy holiday travel season.
But there is a standard format that most news articles follow: they usually try to add a human component to the stories, almost always in the first paragraph, showing how someone was affected by the event they are covering to draw in the reader with empathy.
This article, and most others about the disruptions caused by these protests, doesn't include that.
Thousands of people were blocked from getting to the airports (and train stations, and their jobs, and their families) in these protests over the past month.
When traffic is delayed for weather or other reasons, the media will always interview those who are affected. On December 14, a bull on the tracks delayed trains into Penn Station and the NYT interviewed commuters for their reactions. Of course they did - this is modern journalism 101.
But when the travelers are frustrated by self-righteous antisemites who think the world revolves around them, there are no interviews with the victims of their hubris. No stories about people forced to miss their flights or who cannot make it to their medical appointments.
The media only chooses to humanize victims when it fits their narrative - and they are more sympathetic with the privileged anti-Israel protesters who inexplicably seem to have no jobs or responsibilities, so they can be free to snarl traffic in the middle of the day, every day.
Over the course of several weeks, tens of thousands of commuters and holiday shoppers and tourists have been frustrated and inconvenienced not by a natural event but by the deliberate decisions of people who hate Israel to disrupt everyone's lives. These aren't planned protests with permits - these are illegal campaigns. This is a human story that is not being told. This is a story about planned criminal activity that is not being told.
Why not?
Media bias is often seen not by what it written, but by what is not written. And it is hard to look at this article and others without thinking that the reporters are more sympathetic with the lawbreakers than with the people whose lives are upset by these haters.
|
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. Read all about it here! |
|
