Sunday, November 26, 2006

November 23 Media Critique: "Must See TV"

HonestReporting must have given up trying to conjure examples of “anti-Israel media bias” as this time it settles for promoting a CNN ‘documentary’ – “Exposed: The Extremist Agenda”.

This has, not surprisingly, only aired on American CNN. CNN, being a good corporate operator, knows to play to its' audience. This one-dimensional, axis-of-evil, us-versus-them stuff just won’t go down so easily with a non-US audience.

I’ve done the hard yards with his one and sat through the whole 41 painful minutes of this stuff. The presenter kindly lets us in on some useful information right at the start,

I am not a journalist, I don’t pretend to be one.

I would never have guessed.

It’s all pretty standard stuff from the look-out the-big-bad-muslims-are-coming-to -wage-jihad-on-your-ass crowd. Though they go to lengths to reassure the audience that this is ground-breaking, never seen before material. It ain’t. Updated? Yes. An ‘expose’? No.

The Iranian President gets a going over, but a rather limp one. The poverty of the case was amply demonstrated when the segment on Ahmadinejad concluded with footage of Hitler at the Nuremburg rally. The strained attempt to equate the two made me squirm with embarrassment.

Don’t expect to see this on CNN International any time soon - it isn't suitable for an audience with their critical thinking faculties intact and functioning.

Naturally HonestReporting ses this as perfect material for their audience. And they are absolutely correct. As we’ve seen in the past, HR is always keen to stoke the fires of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bigotry.