Reply #61: What you're defending is the use of news as political propaganda.

[Kagemusha]

You're saying that reporters do not need to report the news as it is, but rather, solely in conjunction with the popular conception of the Holocaust. What agrees with that conception is reported; what does not, is minimized and shunted aside as pathetic attempts by the enemy to disguise his hateful appearance.

What you're describing is not reporting the news.

But, you've got the situation all wrong if you're taking what I'm saying as defending this stupid conference. Uh, no. Not one bit. What I'm attacking is the loss of integrity in the news business that makes the rank hypocrisy of having an article title at complete odds with the reported quote contained within that the entire process must necessarily be viewed with ridicule.

I can only ridicule your statements that two things that are different on their face are, in fact, one and the same, and therefore the more extreme sounding version can be substituted for the other because it represents the greater truth, the truth of the heart, the truthiness, even though that is not what the speaker actually SAID. Nothing but mockery for this. I'd say you're kidding me if I didn't know you were dead serious.

It's not news, simple as that.

I'll just say this to get it off my chest: any reasonable reader would be unable to believe that anyone in his right mind would claim that the Holocaust is nothing but myth. So what, then, is the point of taking the cleric's words, which were not, "the Holocaust is nothing but myth," deciding that is in fact, what he really meant, and therefore stating, as if the cleric actually said it - which he did not - but as if the cleric actually had said, "the Holocaust is nothing but myth," except to make him appear to be clinically insane? Well there isn't one; it's precisely what it looks like, an attempt to make the speaker look insane rather than merely evil.

Except, there is a problem with this, a very serious one: the speaker, presumably quoted accurately in the body of the text, is obviously NOT insane, but probably mendacious, and most certainly insensitive and cruel. His manner of speech here is that of a fundamentalist espousing an idea that appeals to the faithful and scorns the West, but which is being spoken so as to sound reasonable enough that a person with enough spite towards Israel and the West (or the rest of the West, if you prefer) might view the statement as having at least some validity. You think it has none. Good for you, but that's not the point.

The point is that it is news as to whether or not this cleric is insane, or merely racist/ bigoted/ hateful towards Jews. For a profession that supposedly exists to serve the public, journalism is certainly dropping the ball here. It matters whether or not Iran's leaders are insane or not. Falsely portraying them as flat out nuts is not an innocent act of hyperbole, but rather, a fraud upon the public that injures democracy and makes rationally engaging Iran even more difficult than before.

Far worse, the fraud is so easily deconstructed by casual readers that it insults the intelligence and completely ruins the positive value of the propaganda - not that propaganda is apporpriate here, but nevermind that - to the editor, to Israel, to you, and so on. The only group impressed is the proverbial choir being preached to. It's not just propaganda. It's insultingly shallow propaganda that proves its own slant to be a fabrication tangentally based on the original quote.

I'm sad for the injury this article will do to well meaning supporters of Israel and Jews everywhere. Their cause is ill served by infantilizing Iranian leaders in a transparent and easily criticized manner. And frankly, I think the infantilizing is a mistake to begin with. It's too short a leap from there to underestimation.