Thursday, April 23, 2015

Why Would the Media Ignore a Story About a Jihadi Decapitating His Victim and Using the Severed Head as Soccer Ball?

It could be that the story is too gruesome for readers and viewers (although I doubt that would be the case had the decapitator/soccer buff been, say, Israeli). And it could be that it's an instance of "the soft bigotry of low expectations" in that we have come to expect--and have largely become inured to--such jihadi blood sport. But I don't think that's what's happening here. I think that this is a matter of media indifference, not to mention disinterest, in stories that put Muslims in a terrible light, an indifference that invariably dissolves when it involves Israeli Jews defending themselves against, and sometimes killing, Muslims. Media bias being what it is, in those scenarios, the Jews are always--always--depicted as the bad guys.

I may not be the first to have characterized the media's ingrained hostility toward Israel as "the hard bigotry of impossibly high expectations." But I like to think that the idea/observation was/is mine.

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