The anti-American, anti-Israel Nir Rosen, and the MSM
I’ve got a new piece up at PJ.
You may ask: why are you giving Nir Rosen more attention than he deserves? My answer: because although his biases were so blatant, so transparently and typically far-left, he has nevertheless managed to be a highly respected member of the mainstream media, trusted to be a fair and honest reporter in the Middle East.
I know the MSM is biased, and I know it leans left. But Rosen is a far left ideologue of the purest kind. So how did he find such a comfy home in the mainstream press (WaPo, NY Times, Time, Atlantic, etc.), not just the far-left press? And not just as an opinion journalist, either—which would have been acceptable—but as an unbiased reporter of what’s going on?
The only thing that tripped him up was that, in the end, he made comments about Lara Logan’s attack that offended leftist sensibilities. Otherwise he would still be going strong. It will be interesting to see whether he will get as many assignments as before.
The bottom line is that his MSM editors must have either been negligent in not knowing who he was long ago; or (far more likely) they knew and did not care, or in fact are on the same page.
Just the tip of the iceberg?
The bottom line is that his MSM editors must have either been negligent in not knowing who he was long ago; or (far more likely) they knew and did not care, or in fact are on the same page.
Or, more likely still, they did know, and they did care, and they knew he’d provide exactly what they wanted.
A sound chap, who knew what was expected of him, as the Brits say.
Occam’s Beard: that’s what I meant about being on the same page.
I think conservatives got all the proof they needed in the wake of the Tucson shooting, especially as compared to the MSM’s reaction to the Ft. Hood shooting. I know that I had always kept some spot in my mind for doubt, thinking, “Surely the idea that the MSM is Marxist-dominated sounds like a conspiracy theory?” But after the Tucson shooting, I realized that spot could safely be deallocated.
Deal with it: Antonio Gramsci’s “Long March Through The Institutions” has been a stunning success. Recovery for America, indeed for any developed nation (that includes India, which a Hindu commenter on FrontPage Mag told me was just as surely in thrall to a hard-Leftist MSM as any Western country), will involve undoing it; putting Marxists out of power won’t be sufficient by itself.
neo, of course. Sorry.
“Surely the idea that the MSM is Marxist-dominated sounds like a conspiracy theory?”
One of Artfldgr’s references (IIRC, “The Sword and Shield,” which is based on the Mitrokhin archive) makes clear that the KGB long targeted the press for communist penetration. Besides having the ability to disseminate propaganda and disinformation, “journalists” in one context are a hop, skip, and a jump away from being spies in another.
So the notion that the MSM are Marxist-dominated is hardly a wild conspiracy theory. Observation and the practical considerations above make it the front-running conjecture.
(Btw, did anyone else’s antennae twitch at reading the JournoList comments regarding a “popular front?” Who else uses that phrase but communists? Hell, who else practically but communists even has any idea what it means?)
Michael Totten has a short piece on Mr. Rosen, as well. I suspect that his editors were fine with his views, as even if they didn’t exactly share such views, their perspective wasn’t very different.
Newsbusters.org does a regular disection of leftward bias in the media on specific news reports.
http://www.newsbusters.org/
So what can we do about this?
We know the media are biased, but the people who get their news from them don’t. They make it all sound so reasonable.
What can we do? Blogging is just preaching to the choir. We can expose them and their biases all we like, but it never gets to the public.
How do we reverse this? It’s all very well to wish for more conservatives in news, but asking people to devote their lives to being deep-cover moles is a bit much.
Unfortunately for him he expressed noxious views about a western woman. If the victim of a gang rape had been a Third World woman, the western leftist/feminist line would have been that this is their culture and who are we to judge?
But the left, which doesn’t really care what happens to, say, Afghan girls who want to go to school but get acid tossed at them, identifies with a western professional woman.
Occam:
Btw, did anyone else’s antennae twitch at reading the JournoList comments regarding a “popular front?” Who else uses that phrase but communists?
I believe some terrorist organizations have used it as well. (This doesn’t contradict you, since the organizations in question, PFLP etc., may have been Marxist; I don’t remember.)
Not that I’m comparing Journolisters to terrorists, of course… even though, as a Tea Party supporter, I doubt they’d extend me the same courtesy.
respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline
P.S. — a very thoughtful and well-written article, Neo, and congrats for the exposure in PJM!
Yes and yes, Neo. They knew, and this is the tip of the iceberg.
Yes, “popular front” has always been used by left-wing groups. The PFLP was (is? I haven’t heard anything from it in years) an explicitly communist Palestinian terrorist group founded by George Habbash, a Greek Orthodox Christian who thought Yasir Arafat’s PLO wasn’t sufficiently committed to Marxist ideology. I’m confident a “higher authority” has been most interested in his explanations of how he reconciled his communism and his terrorism with his Christian faith since his death in 2008.
Pingback:Twitter Trackbacks for neo-neocon » Blog Archive » The anti-American, anti-Israel Nir Rosen, and the MSM [neoneocon.com] on Topsy.com
I once read (was it here) that propaganda gives one an excuse for for believing what one wants to. Since believing in lies is a luxury for the secure the market for them is rapidly declining.
At least that is one explanation for the increasing irrelevance of the MSM.
BTW I heard that a woman MSM TV reporter in Cairo tried to get the demonstrators to admit that Obama inspired them to demonstrate for democratic change. When they did not she reported that they had even though it was clear she was lying. Rather funny in a way, sorta like comparing Obama to Reagan.
Traitors are always courted by leftists. Anarchists, pacifists and other destructive elements believe that they can enjoy all privileges of free society and pay nothing for it – this is their “right”. The most poignant fallacy of the modern liberalism is idea of rights without duties and responsibilities. But in reality you can not have safety and property rights without police and army to guard you, and so you should at least pay taxes needed to maintain these bodies and to abide laws.
These arrogant bastards feel no shame in betrayal of their family, their people, their nation and their colleagues. The very notion of loyalty is alien to them. So, we should treat them accordingly: as traitors of their race, their country, their culture and profession and strip them all protection which these bodies give at exchange of loyalty. Let them be torn to pieces by angry Arab mobs when exposed to be Jewish. This would be a poetic justice.
I wonder, Sergey. Did Nir Rosen tell his Taliban hosts that he was Jewish? Did they know, but the value of his propaganda in their favor outweigh his status as an “infidel”? Or maybe they didn’t know. Maybe Nir would like to explain it all for the world on, say, Al-Jazeera. Just to make sure the Taliban knows who they’re dealing with.
“”So what can we do about this?””
Trimegistus
We’re sort of at the mercy of reality exposing the lies. The Nov 2nd elections say this process is well under way with people who pay attention. Sadly it looks like we’re going to need the assistance of painful yet game changing events to turn this tide with those in denial our country is under attack from within.
Neo said:
“So how did he find such a comfy home in the mainstream press (WaPo, NY Times, Time, Atlantic, etc.), not just the far-left press?”
Hearing about his irrational diatribes, I’m amazed at this also even though I know how left the MSM leans. Maybe the MSM **IS** the far-left press.
One thing he and other idiots have said that just infuriates me is this bit about being lied to concerning the reasons for going to war with Saddam’s Iraq. I won’t preach to the choir here about how illogical and dumb that is but I do have to vent about it.
Thanks for listening 🙂 .
Good article there at PJ, btw, Neo.
“So how did he find such a comfy home in the mainstream press (WaPo, NY Times, Time, Atlantic, etc.), not just the far-left press?”
It’s because he was cheap way to have “diversity” and a native speaker of Arabic. Since American media giants like Time closed down their foreign bureaus in the early ’90s, they’ve been relying on more “native” reporters as a cost-cutting measure, regardless of whether they had any inkling of journalism ethics or whether they were double-agents so-to-speak for anti-American groups. (And yes, there is such a thing as “ethical journalism” – and it used to be that j-schools taught a class or two in it. That’s where I first heard Walter Cronkite disparaged for putting his opinion into covering the Vietnam War, for example.)
Neo asks, “Just the tip of the iceberg?”
Your PJ article shows us that Rosen is just more upfront in stating his POV than most of the MSM. Thanks for sharing and shining a light on another nasty critter of the left.
SteveH: I join you in sadness. 9/11/01 has disappeared into the dim mists of history for the majority of our fellow citizens.
I’m old enough to remember when there were real communists around. I thought they had pretty much died out after the purges, the Doctors’ Plot, the Night of the Murdered Poets, Hungary, Czechoslovakia. I was wrong all those times, but I thought, surely, after the fall of the USSR, that would be the end of them.
But no, here we have Nir Rosen, self-hating Jew, Israeli, and now American, right out of the pages of The Daily Worker during the Von Ribbentrof-Molotov Pact. And people look at me funny when I say I don’t believe in evolution!
If the mainstream media were anywhere near as biased as you are suggesting here, they would be irrelevant.
By admitting that these same media are highly influential in one of the freest, best-educated places and times ever known to mankind, you are admitting that, in fact, the media are mostly informative and compelling.
Conservatives pretend to be mystified as to why their views don’t sell newspapers. To liberals, it’s obvious: the media have a “liberal” bias because the conservative worldview does not reflect reality.
If the conservative worldview were actually superior, why is it such a hard sell to ordinary Americans, again, some of the freest, best-educated people the world has ever known.
Rosebud, darlin’:
Why are all the left leaning newspapers (NYT, LA Times, etc), cable channels (MSNBC, for example), even legacy networks (NBC, especially), magazines (Times, Newsweek,etc) struggling to stay alive or are indeed belly up?
Why is Fox News and conservative talk radio eating all the other sources’ lunches?
Who is living in reality…you or conservatives?
Did Rosebud actually just say that?!
I somehow doubt that ordinary Americans are the best-educated people the world has ever known. At international junior school or college student olympiads US team usualy takes 17th or 20th place. The first, second and third are divided among Chinese, Russian and Indian teams. Dozens of my friends are professors in US universities, and they all complain that their US students are much worse educated than the level they accustomed to see in Russian universities.
If Fox News and conservative talkradio are “eating all the other sources lunches” then the liberal media are irrelevant to the national discourse and without significant influence.
If the liberal media are failing, why do they come up in virtually every conservative conversation about politics?
You should make up your mind. Either the liberal media are failing, while conservatives succeed, or vice versa. You can’t have it both ways, just to paint conservatives as victims.
Sergey, When’s the last time you heard of an elite parent sending their child to Moscow University? The world’s elite send their children to America to be educated. That’s just the way it is. Sorry if that offends your identity politics.
I seriously doubt Russians are better educated, on average, than Americans, but even if they are, they aren’t free. No amount of knowledge would allow them to exercise good political decision making, since they’re not given a meaningful choice. Same for Singaporeans, et al, who do so well on tests, but very little aptitude for democracy.
texexec
Last night I was reading a NYT Sunday Magazine that I had plucked out of the local library’s freebie/recycle bin. Years ago the NYT Sunday Magazine was thick with ads, an estimated 100 pages in length. The NYT Sunday Magazine I read last night was only about 30 pages in length, with much fewer ads.
Rosebud
The standard lib narrative is that the libs are brighter, better educated etc than the knuckle-dragging wingnuts. You can’t be both brighter, better-educated and ALSO ordinary.
BTW, polls show that self-identified conservatives outnumber self-identified self-identified liberals by about 40 to 20. Lot of ordinary people there don’t fall for the lib nonsense. Neo, myself, and a large proportion of the commenters here are Post Liberals.
If the lib newspapers have such an unbiased view of things, then explain why for several weeks Glenn Beck was pointing out that White House staffer Van Jones was a self-proclaimed commie, news that didn’t reach the NYT until Van Jones had resigned.
Gringo,
If the liberal media is failing and conservatives outnumber liberals, why should you care that some newspapers have a bias. If the NYT, Wapo, LAT etc. want to have a liberal bias, why not just let them? Why constantly moan and play the victim?
Rosebud, I have no identity politics, but it is simply internationally recognised fact that the quality of mathematical and physics education in Mechanico-Mathematical department of Moscow University and Moscow Physico-Technical University is way above any other world university. International elites do not send their children here simply because these institutions are not open for foreigners. This is not matter of quality, but a matter of admission policy. Why do you think hundreds of Russian professors teach in the best Western universities? Half of the Mech-Mat faculty of MSU now teach in USA and Germany.
Rosebud: Pleaser answer the question”
If the lib newspapers have such an unbiased view of things, then explain why for several weeks Glenn Beck was pointing out that White House staffer Van Jones was a self-proclaimed commie, news that didn’t reach the NYT until Van Jones had resigned.
This simply is not true that international elites do not send theirs sons to be educated in Russia. They do. In Moscow there is a special university exactly for such students, and it has 30 000 students. It is specialised in admission of African and Asian students, and in every country in these continents its graduates work as doctors, engineers, geologists and so on. The problem is that they need to learn Russian language first, and English is much more widespread internationally.
Rosebud
The issue is–I know you know but I want you to know that everbody else does, too–is that elections in this country are frequently won by a few percent. The lib media provides some of that margin. Evan Thomas of Newsweek (reported that sexual assault victim Paula Jones was trailer trash, faked up a Koran desecration story, tried to spike the Lewinsky story) famously said the msm provides the dems 15%. If that’s true, then without the msm bias, our little president man would have gotten six electoral votes. Thomas later said it’s only five percent. I haven’t done the math on that, but if it were equally distributed across the states, McCain would have won but not in a landslide.
The recent election would have gone better for conservatives had some of the swing voters not been misinformed.
Now that you know we know, you can quit wasting our time.
Please.
Rosebud,
We care because we think many Americans are being duped and unfortunately they can vote. So we fight the “dupers” every time we get a chance.
I keep remembering a YouTube video I saw back during the last election. A newsman was asking well dressed, sharp looking people coming out of a polling place questions like “Do you think Sara Palin was a good choice as Obama’s running mate.?” Many said “YES!…She sounds great!” Another question was “Do you agree with Obama that the Iraq war was a good idea?” Guess what the answers were?
If you think the American public is well informed, I have some squishy land in Florida I’d like to sell you.
The quality of a democracy’s government is dependent on the quality of its electorate. Our main stream media is lowering that quality and we conservatives intend to fight that.
And…the MSM *IS* becoming more and more irrelevant. They have decades behind them during which they were the ONLY source of news and opinion. It’s gonna take some time to overcome that but it IS happening. Newsweek magazine recently got sold for one whole dollar. Now, it has been merged into an Internet website!
I have no problem with any media resource having a bias in its editorial section. I *DO* have a BIG problem with opinion being presented as factual news.
The NYT had to fire an important reporter because he was making stories up. Did it time after time. Was THAT reality reporting?
What planet have you been living on?
According to a 2005 UNESCO report, more than half of the Russian adult population has attained a tertiary education, which is twice as high as the OECD average.
The U.S. ranks 10th among industrial countries for percentage of adults with college degrees.
Rosebud –
You seem to think there’s a contradiction between saying that talk radio and Fox News “eat the lunch” of their competitors and saying that the leftist MSM is a worrisome and potent phenomenon. Obviously that’s not a contradiction.
Fox News dominates cable news. True.
The MSM dominates non-cable news. Also true.
In Newspapers it’s getting close, at last, to a wash (which is wasn’t for most of the 20th Century) – the WSJ is quite powerful, but cumulatively the NYT, WaPo, and all the other local leftist newspapers (such as my hometown Pravda, the St. Pete Times – “the best red paper in America” – and my current local Pravda, the LA Times), make it a close call. Overall, I’d say the leftists still win this one, not only because of sheer quantity of output, but also because they dominate the wires, such as the AP.
On radio there’s conservative talk and NPR. Talk radio is powerful, but it’s not powerful enough to make NPR a nothingness. Not even close. But again, the fact that talk radio is conservative doesn’t preclude NPR from being a potent – and obviously leftist – media source.
Plus, I’m sure you never complain about conservative talk radio or Fox News – after all, if they want to a conservative bias, why not just let them, right? C’est la vie, right? Oh, but wait – you do seem to like to go on comment-sections of conservative blogs and complain to conservatives that conservatives complain about liberals complaining about conservatives complaining… nevermind. The glass house is just shattered, dude.
As you no doubt know, the leftist MSM is struggling because the market is finally obtaining some balance, as people like me no longer have to read some leftist paper to get any news, or watch some leftist broadcast, but finally have a choice to get some news or opinionating with what I, as a conservative, think is a proper point of view. We’ll complain about bias until the last little local Pravda feels too bashful to put out things like PolitFact as objective source-material, thank you very much. Partisans tend to like winning. Yeesh. Human nature 101.
Anyway, that being said, I hope you understand basic logic better than you seem to. Then again, if you did, that would make you someone who just trolls around tossing off cheap sophistry, pretending to be dumber than you are in order to land short-lived rhetorical jabs. I’m not sure which speaks worse of you.
Make up your mind. Which is it?
Sergey
And Russia has a huge amount of economically accessible timber, enormous hydro potential, agricultural regions as good as Iowa and the other midwestern states beginning with vowels, loads of iron, coal, gold, commercially useful rare metals.
There’s no excuse for the place. H/T P.J. O’Rourke.
Richard Aubrey –
You citing PJ O’Rourke reminds me of something he said about the Middle East:
“It’s no coincidence that the region’s only significant invention is the number zero.”
Ouch.
kolnai
Sometimes O’Rourke gets it wrong. Much of the stuff the ME is credited with was transferred from its origin, such as Persia or India, or the remains of Byzantine and Hellenistic knowledge. I think that includes zero.
On the other hand, figuring out how to saddle a camel is certainly a noteworthy feat.
Yes, zero number was a Hindu invention. They played with numbers, especially huge ones, as a part of their abstract philosophy. Arabs actually invented nothing, but were useful mediatories in dissiminating knowledge aquired by others, more advanced cultures, whom they pillaged and enslaved.
kolnai,
The number zero may have come from the Middle East. It is unknown if the Hindus generalized the Babylonians’ medial zero (used only between digits*) or invented it all independently like the Mayans did. Whichever the case, the Arabs had no part in this until they got it from the Hindus.
Even if, however, it had all been an Arab invention, it is a logical fallacy to conclude that that entitles them to world empire. The ancient Greeks are the progenitors of practically all of modern science, but we’d laugh off a modern Greek who suggested it gave Greece the right to rule the world. This is no different than Fascist Italy’s imperial claims based on its being the lineal descendant of the Roman Empire. This is a dangerous idea that the resurgent Islamic Turkey might well pose in front of its non-Muslim adversaries (Europe as well as Israel).
The Arabs most surely didn’t invent zero, but even if they had, it means we owe them nothing! 😉
* These were sexagesimal, meaning base-60, digits, a heritage remaining in our notation for time and angles.
kolnai: I can clear it up for you.
“rosebud” is someone who trolls around tossing off cheap sophistry, pretending to be dumber than he is in order to land short-lived rhetorical jabs. And not always under the name “rosebud.”
“pretending to be dumber than he is”
I don’t think he’s “pretending”. In that, at least, he is real.