[ot] Historian starts website to monitor the media
- From: pluto <pluto@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2005 16:02:18 +0800
http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/14929.html
Historian starts website to monitor the media
Source: Solomonia (Blog) (8-30-05)
Richard Landes, a medievalist at Boston University, has announced his
intention to establish "a media oversight venue for discussing how the
media processes the information they gather and how they present it to the
public as news. We'll take significant news events and present them as
dossiers to the public for discussion, using for grist as much primary
source material as possible, starting with the Pallywood discussion."
Pallywood is "a play on the expression Bollywood, the designation of
India's film industry, based in Bombay. It identifies a practice among
Palestinian journalists to turn staged drama into news. This fictional news
industry then feeds Western news reporting, who don't seem to suspect
they're being duped. The expression acknowledges that the active, if still
young, film industry of Palestinian culture, especially since the advent of
cultural autonomy with the Oslo Accords in 1993, has already made a
distinctive contribution to global culture."
[From an interview posted on the blog Solomonia:]
S: Isn't the expression disrespectful...mocking?
L: On one level, not at all. Most national film industries would love to
have the success in the larger world media that Pallywood has achieved.
Pallywood is a distinctive and powerful national product. But on the other
hand, because it identifies Pallywood as part of a campaign of
disinformation and propaganda, why should we respect that, rather than
criticize it? As for mocking, at a basic level Pallywood is a joke played
by the Palestinians on the West, and one can see it in the smiles on the
faces of by-standers as they walk away from these staged scenes.
S: So you'll be posting raw footage for visitors to view for themselves?
Visitors to the site can see the "rushes" from which their news was
prepared?
L: Yes. We'll post the raw footage from Palestinian cameramen working for
major Western news agencies at Netzarim Junction on Sept. 30, 2000 and
possibly the next day. The visitor can view these videos for themselves and
start to form their own impressions, then they can hop in and start reading
our analysis and participating in the ongoing discussion. They'll have the
chance to form their own impressions first.
It'll be like having a look behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz.
S: When is the site going up?
L: Early September. Starting at the end of September, we'd like to follow
the Intifada in real time five years later. Ideally, we'd present the raw
material, then show you how that was reported in the media's product -- in
the headlines. For example, the footage from September 30th was supposedly
taken on a day when the Gaza strip exploded in violence over Sharon's visit
to the Haram al Sharif (Temple Mount) and the casualties on the West Bank
from the previous day. Nothing of the sort is visible in the crowds milling
around right in front of the Israelis, smoking, talking on cell phones,
laughing, while others put "wounded victims of Israeli gunfire" into
ambulances. We'll also try to include material from various web logs and
online diaries that were being kept at the time. So once you understand
Pallywood, once you understand how the media was systematically duped by a
propaganda machine...
S: Were they duped, or did they play along with it? Were they willing
participants?
L: We want the web site to raise these questions and let people make their
own judgments. Now, we think we have some answers, but we're post-modern
enough to think there isn't only one answer. So for instance, in answer to
your question, if we were to take a pie and slice it up, there would be a
slice of journalists just out to make their living by providing their
bosses in the West with action footage, another slice of people harboring
some sort of bad faith or resentment -- some kind of strong anti-Jewish
feelings -- then you've got another chunk of it who are people who really
believe they are helping the Palestinians by recycling their propaganda.
There's this great line by Bob Simon [of 60 Minutes], 'In the Middle East,
one image can be worth 1000 weapons.' I think that there's a prevalent view
in the press that since the Israelis have most of the weapons, the media
can "level the playing field" by giving the Palestinians the media victory.
In fact what they're doing is they're prolonging everyone's misery. They're
prolonging the conflict. It's not pro-Palestinian to run this propaganda,
it's pro-Palestinian leadership which is systematically exploiting its own
people's suffering to pursue a vendetta and the media is essentially
backing the nastiest people in the conflict and telling themselves that
they're somehow siding with 'the Palestinians.' It's as if the press in the
US were willingly to run material about WMDs in Iraq in the thought that by
supporting an American government bent on war they were somehow helping the
American people. Now no one on the Left would support that -- that's the
point of Michael Moore's movie -- but when it comes to perceived victims
not only is this kind of misinformation okay, but let me help. Our
"liberal" and "progressives" seem to have a curiously hard time identifying
the Arab and Palestinian leadership -- secular and religious -- as
victimizers of their people. Strange -- it's a standard Marxist perspective
that elites exploit their masses, but somehow our "radicals" have dropped
the ball here.
Now, again on your question as to whether it's on purpose, or are they
really duped -- to some extent the web site will act as a litmus test. If
you're being duped and you come to the web site and you walk away and say,
'I don't want to hear it,' then I'd say at some level you've shown that
you're just not equipped to confront your own darker side. But if you come
to the web site and you say, 'Oh my God, I had no idea, I really have to
re-think this,' then you're one of the people who's been honestly duped.
Posted on Tuesday, August 30, 2005 at 4:16 PM
====================================================
cheers
pluto
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