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August 05, 2009
Bad News... (from the Netherlands)
We've added — much too belatedly — a no-so-new site to our blogroll.
It's called Bad News from the Netherlands. You can check out the blog by clicking on the previous link, or read about it by clicking through to our interview/article on the CAMERA Web site.
Why it hasn't been listed here since 2007 isn't clear. It must have just slipped our attention, because we've long known that the site fantastically captures, even if indirectly, so much of what can go wrong with Mideast media coverage.
Bad News from the Netherlands relays, well, bad news from the Netherlands. The articles posted on that blog are all genuine. Visit the site and imagine that the stories summarized there were published in the New York Times (or AP wire or Boston Globe or BBC or...) nearly on a daily basis. And imagine, moreover, that many of them were prominently featured on the front page. How would that impact the public's understanding of that little northern European country? How useful would such coverage be to ideological groups seeking to promote boycott and sanctions against the Netherlands? And now imagine a little bit harder — how much more material would there be for the Bad News blog if the Netherlands were faced with a Belgium and Denmark and France that were at war with it, and hosting and funding attacks against it?
Understand that and you understand much of why there's a disconnect between the reality of Israel and the version of the country all-too-often conveyed in the media and seized upon by anti-Israel advocacy groups (who in turn provide more fodder for selectively negative media coverage). The Netherlands is, after all, a normal country populated by normal people. But how ugly it can look when you hear "bad news" out of all context and proportion.
Posted by at August 5, 2009 08:54 PM
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