What the "Jew-boy" story tells us about the media

Bushinsky

It started in Ha'aretz:

A former advisor of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used the derogatory Hebrew term “Yehudon” - loosely translated as “little Jew boy” to characterize remarks by U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro.

On a Tuesday morning political panel show, on Israel’s Channel 2, commentator Aviv Bushinsky reacted to remarks Shapiro made in his speech to the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) conference. Shapiro said "too much Israeli vigilantism in the West Bank goes on unchecked," adding that "there is a lack of thorough investigations… at times it seems Israel has two standards of adherence to rule of law in the West Bank - one for Israelis and one for Palestinians."

After viewing a clip of Shapiro’s remarks, Bushinsky declared, “To put it bluntly, it was a statement typical of a little Jew boy (Yehudon).”

 How could the media resist tying Netanyahu, through his former advisor, to a stupid slur on a TV show where people are rewarded for saying outrageous things?

Within hours, Reuters picked it up. So did The Financial Times. Time magazine. The Huffington Post.

What most of the Western media didn't bother reporting was that Bushinsky had not worked for Netanyahu for nearly twelve years.

His relationship with Netanyahu is quite tenuous. His top level description in Wikipedia doesn't even mention his political career:

Aviv Bushinsky (born April 13, 1967) is a journalist, CEO, business man and an undergraduate program communications lecturer. He is the chairman of the Israel Squash Association. He served as chairman of Maccabi Tel Aviv F.C. and as chairman of the Israeli Chess Federation.

The implication that Ha'aretz made, that this slur is somehow emblematic of the Israeli political right when Bushinsky has literally nothing to do with them, has been swallowed whole by the mainstream media in record time.

 Ha'aretz, always looking to denigrate its country, can write whatever it wants and it knows that while few in Israel will read it, their inane stories will often get amplified by the world's reporters who are too lazy to bother to check the context. In this sense, the Jews at Ha'aretz really do control the media - - filled with journalists too lazy and ignorant to bother to check the facts.

A stupid comment by a person with literally no connection to the government receives worldwide attention.

But statements condoning terrorism made by the current leader of the Palestinian Arab government get routinely ignored by that same media.

There is a much bigger story here than a pundit making a stupid comment on a TV show. The story is why Bushinsky is a story while the bile and threats and lies and hate that are said by current Palestinian leaders are ignored by Reuters and Time and the Financial Times and the Huffington Post.

But the media won't cover stories about why the media won't do their jobs.

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