Monday, June 11, 2007

a reflection on the media age

(MG) The following statement comes from John Pilger a documentary film maker and investigative journalist. Pilger said these words during an interview with Amy Goodman.

"I quote at length in the book a pioneering study done by Glasgow University Media Group in which it asked a cross-section of television, viewers of television news in Britain, what they knew about the so-called Arab-Israeli conflict. And they found that of young viewers, I think people under the age of 21 who watched TV news, 92% of them thought that the settlers, the illegal settlers, uh, were Palestinians. And the clear, and the clear message from this report was that the more people watch television, the less they knew. And, I think, I have to say that because I think Edward Said’s rather bitter lament just before he died, in which he blamed journalists, foreign journalists, for ignoring the history of the Palestinian struggle, never contextualizing it, never using the terms equally, like terrorism towards Israel as well as toward the Palestinians, almost never used towards Israel. His complaint stands today, and I think the fact that we still have so much misinformation about what is the world's longest military occupation and one of the world's longest struggles for basic justice, uh, is, is a reflection on the so-called media age in which we are said to live."