Exclusive: data reveals pro-Israel bias in ABC coverage since October 7
Exclusive: data reveals pro-Israel bias in ABC coverage since October 7
New analysis by Newscord and Deepcut finds ABC reporting repeatedly privileges Israeli perspectives over Palestinian voices
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Can anyone explain to me why? Why Israel gets so much mainstream media attention? Israel is practically irrelevant to Australia's future.
They get a lot of attention because they're a majority (in terms of political power, if not numbers) white nation that Australia does quite a lot of trade with, who are currently committing genocide.
Australia could stop our arms trade with them, but that would make America mad. And it would also make the pro-Israel lobby in Australia mad. It's not really clear to me why we care what the pro-Israel lobby says; they're a vanishingly small number. But for whatever reason, politicians on both sides do listen to them.
I don't like to reduce explainations to -isms but I cannot think of a better reason. They just think brown people/Muslims are inferior and doesn't upset them at the injustice of killing them compared to the deaths of white/Christian/Jew.
It's good to be hesitant about -isms and racism doesn't explain the whole story (imperialism has economic and therefore political implications, the Zionist Regime has played an important imperial role for the US and its allies in the region) but it's absolutely an aspect at play.
Growing up, I only really remember SBS talking about the Middle East bombings most years unless something truly exceptional happened. Not to trivialise it in any way, but when the Ukraine invasion happened, the reactions of a lot of Australians around me really showed that wars are far more important when White peoples are involved, despite being on the other side of the world, further away. Barely a peep about New Caledonia or West Papua. And to be fair, when I say "racism" I'm also talking about a casual environment of it, not any conscious discrimination. Most of Colonial Australia has a real and significant social link to Europe and the US, we see it as more relevant to our own situation than South East Asian countries, for example.
But, as you mentioned, there's also the Islamophobia and overt racism. There's absolutely an assumption or framing that this is a religious conflict and the evil Muslims want to kill those in the Zionist Regime simply because of "uncivilized" religious differences.
happy cake day
Rightly or wrongly, it has become a culture war issue where support of Israel is associated with centre to right positions whilst opposition is associated with left positions (not saying it has to be either/or, that's just how it's commonly framed). A lot of Australia's media ecosystem is either centre or right leaning, which means they will inevitably push the Israeli narrative harder. Additionally, the pro-Israel lobby is super active and well financed and rabidly goes after any journalist or publication that doesn't adhere to this default framing of current events. In places like the ABC and the BBC, I think both factors influence the reporting which is why you see a subtle bias despite those organisations claiming a position of balance.
The most common religion in Australia is Christianity.
As a result there's a prevailing assumption that Israel are the good guys because they live in the holy land.
That's it, really.