Sixty-seven Percent of Americans Believe News Media Are Biased. Here's Why.

By Lucille Barnes

Sixty-seven percent of Americans believe the news media are biased when reporting on politics and social issues, and 56 percent believe news stories are filled with wrong information. That's according to a survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press announced March 21. One doesn't have to look very far to confirm both assumptions. Here are some current examples from articles on the Middle East in the mainstream press.

Columnist Amos Perlmutter wrote in The Washington Times of March 24: "The Palestinians creeping annexation of East Jerusalem has been a process that goes back to pre-Oslo agreements and has been accelerated since." It's not a misprint. Perlmutter devoted an entire column to this thesis which, of course, is exactly backward, as Israelis continue their policy of annexing new chunks of the West Bank to East Jerusalem and then filling them with Jewish settlements. Meanwhile Israel repeatedly has promised to build housing for Palestinians in East Jerusalem. It has built none whatsoever, and it has issued virtually no permits to allow Palestinians in East Jerusalem to build homes for themselves or even expand existing ones.

Most of the population of East Jerusalem was Palestinian in 1967 when Israel seized the area from Jordan. Now, given the gerrymandered borders of what the Israelis call East Jerusalem, Israelis have a slight majority.

The New York Times editorialized on March 28: "The latest violence has been fanned, at least in part, by Yasser Arafat, president of the Palestinian Authority, whose explicit warnings of violent protest over a Jewish housing project in East Jerusalem predictably heightened tensions. Meanwhile, his conciliatory gestures toward leaders of the Islamic group Hamas have been taken by Palestinians and Israelis alike as implicit acceptance of Hamas's calls for renewed terrorism against Israelis."

In fact the latest violence was "fanned" solely by the accelerated building of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, and particularly Binyamin Netanyahu's decision to begin the building of 6,500 housing units for Jews only at Jabal Abu Ghneim, thus signaling that he had no intention of abiding by the Oslo accord agreement to make no moves to change the status of Jerusalem prior to the final status talks.

As for Arafat's "gestures" toward his Islamist opponents of Hamas, he had just convinced them to abandon their violent opposition to the Oslo accords and compete with Arafat's Al Fatah politically when Netanyahu's move plunged the area back into violence.

Columnist William Safire wrote in The New York Times on April 6 that "Clinton should resist [the] temptation to appear even-handed because it raises Arafat's hopes of getting the capital he wants. If the Palestinian leader should take Clinton's misplaced 'wish' as a signal of coming American pressure to divide Israel's capital, the peace process would end with Israel grimly setting its own borders and locking out Arab workers."

Where to begin? Netanyahu already has announced that he is not going to divide Jerusalem, and that Israel will set its own borders without any input from the Palestinians. Arab workers have been locked out of Israel for much of the past decade. Why can't the U.S. media blame Netanyahu for his own actions?

As for an even-handed U.S. policy, it is the obvious lack of one that is bringing back the Arab boycott of Israel, which will affect many American products, depending upon how it is applied. The conclusion by Arabs and Muslims everywhere that the U.S. is not being even-handed also is the cause of the extreme tensions in Middle East countries where American forces are stationed, resulting in evacuation of most military dependents, cancellation of shore leave for U.S. navy personnel in some Gulf ports, and a high state of alert at U.S. diplomatic and military installations throughout the Middle East.

And, incidently, although it will have no effect on Netanyahu and probably none on Clinton, a recent poll showed 24.1 percent of Americans think Jerusalem should be under both Israeli and Palestinian control and only 20.3 percent believe it should be solely under Israeli control. That's a poll you won't read about in the mainstream media. (See "Public Opinion," p. 50 of this issue.)

Columnist Cal Thomas wrote in The Washington Times on April 6 that "to judge Mr. Arafat a terrorist would have an impact not only on diplomacy but on the hundreds of millions sent to him courtesy of the American taxpayer." In fact, in connection with the signing of the Oslo accords the U.S. promised Arafat's Palestinian Authority $600 million over five years. Much of this has been held up by House International Relations Committee chairman Benjamin Gilman (R-NY). Thus the PA is receiving about $100 million a year. During the same period Israel has been receiving about $3.5 billion in U.S. economic and military grant aid and $2 billion in U.S. loan guarantees annually, a ratio of 55 to 1 in favor of Israel. Yet it is the Palestinians who have been complying with U.S. wishes in carrying out the Oslo accords and Israel's Netanyahu government that has been ignoring U.S. requests and destroying the accords.

The Washington Times editorialized on March 27: "Unilateral public pressure on the Israeli government, which is not responsible for the actions of Hamas terrorists nor the inaction of the Palestinian Authority, must stop. Perhaps, finally, the Clinton administration is beginning to understand that it is Mr. Arafat who must be forced to live up to his responsibilities."

One of the implications of these misleading generalities is that Arafat is responsible for the action of Hamas terrorists, which is untrue. Hamas is the largest (but not the most violent) opposition group among the Palestinians to Arafat's Al Fatah movement. The "responsibility" that Arafat supposedly has not lived up to is revocation of references in the Palestinian National Charter to the destruction of Israel. In fact Arafat declared them "null and void" almost immediately after he made the commitment. Both the U.S. government and the Israeli government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin declared themselves satisfied that he had lived up to that pledge.

Those who claim otherwise, like the authors of such passages as those quoted above, are not merely biased, they are liars. It appears that 67 percent of the American people already suspect this. They're dead right. Its time for the other 33 percent to wake up and come to the party.