Solomonia Archive: Andrew Bolt: The Media War on Israel

Monday, December 12, 2005

Andrew Bolt is a columnist (not Jewish) for the Australian Herald-Sun. These are notes from a talk he delivered recently and are well worth reading.

Andrew Bolt: The Media War on Israel

Andrew Bolt opened with an aside, noting that there is a problem currently with speaking out about some contemporary issues in Australia owing to the Racial and Relgious Tolerance Act which is now used often to suppress factual statements and reasoned opinion, and almost never to enhance such. Discussion of religious issues in the news could be illegal. For example, open discussion of the events of the past week of Lebanese gangs attacking life savers at Cronulla beach south of Sydney could be risky. This legislation has led to the stifling of discussion.

Bolt asked whether any of the Jews in the audience in hindsight consider their original support of that legislation to have been a mistake. He suggested that Jews should rethink their support for these laws and work to have them repealed as they (Jews) have nothing to fear from open debate based on facts. He said that the contribution of Jews in Australia is unparalleled. He went so far as to say that unofficially he has heard that Jewish peak body support for the legislation is an important factor preventing its repeal.

Bolt then turned to the official topic of the talk, giving his analysis of the reasons Israel is cast as the villain by the media today...

Posted by Solomon at 11:50 AM on Monday, Dec 12, 2005 | Comments (2)
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2 Comments

#1 Meryl Yourish | December 12, 2005 4:14 PM

All due respect, Sol, that one was a waste. High on opinion and short on fact.

I'm starting to wonder how I can put together a simple statistical study of the way the press portrays Israel v. the way the palestinians are portrayed--language used, number of times, etc.

I suspect I need Lexis-Nexis as well as Dow Jones for the research, though.

Hm. Wonder if I could get a grant.

#2 Solomon | December 12, 2005 4:34 PM

Oh, I think you're being a little hard on the piece. Once in awhile you've got to go back to the basics for those just getting started on these issues, and this was pretty concise, and interesting coming from a non-Jewish, non-American news person to a non-American audience. But, whatever.

Have you considered trying Google News and plugging in various search terms and seeing how many results they come back with? That could be one way of getting at least some kind of quantifyable result.