Since the horrific attack on Israel this past Saturday by terrorist insurgents from Hamas, the general public has been focused intently on the aftermath. And one of the things that has been noticed has been the rather obvious side being taken by a large amount of out news industry. Whether in the form of support, or simply taking a balanced look and applying equivalency, the press has been notably giving the barbaric attackers a soft-peddle approach.
The problem for them is, the public is not buying their snake oil on the Israel/Palestine war.
Morning Consult conducted a secondary poll this week in the wake of the attacks, balanced against an identical poll taken earlier this summer, and the results show the American public taking up with Israel at a growing rate. The most surprising aspect is who is lending the most newfound support.
It was in May when the last such poll was released and they asked respondents in regards to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict where their sympathies rested, or if they were split or had no opinion. Then, following the attack, a follow-up identical poll was made this week and it is clear that a growing level of support for Israel has been revealed. By a double-digit amount more Americans now favor Israel than had this summer, but the more revealing aspects are revealed inside the metrics.
As far as Republican voters there has not been a huge swing, as that voting block had already favored our allies by over fifty percent. The slight increase from 51% to 55% was primarily from those with no prior opinion. More revealing is that with Democrats and independent voters the swing of support was vastly greater.
Both Democrats and Independents now back Israel with each increasing by a 16% margin. With Independents most of the shift came from those same undecideds, while surprisingly the Democrats showed more coming form those who had divided support or previously backed the Palestinians – 9% shifted from from those positions to now sympathizing with Israel. This is especially glaring given the way the news networks targeting those voting groups have been covering the breakout of war along the Gaza Strip.
One of the issues that has emerged this week is the sheer amount of news outlets that have worked to avoid calling these brutal attacks “terrorism”. Mostly we have seen the use of “militants” employed, despite the Hamas attacks specifically targeting citizens and not military targets. The BBC initiallly referred to “gunmen” as it then detailed Israel sending rockets in retaliation. In Canada the CBC sent its reporters a memo telling them to avoid using the dreaded word, and at NPR it went so far as to edit the quotes of an IDF spokeman as he called Hamas terrorists.
CNN has had its mix of strong reporting as well as some curiously softer reports from the Hamas perspective, but MSNBC has been notably one-sided, especially throughout the weekend coverage. In particular you had hosts like Mehdi Hasan, Ali Velshi, and Ayman Mohyeldin clowning themselves as they explained away the violent incursion and found ways to lay the blame the gruesome violence on Israel. (No shock to understand that all three pundits formerly worked at Al Jazeera.)
MohYeldin was citing the hardline right-wing Netanyahu government as inspiring these attacks with his treatment of Palestine. Velshi was declaring Israel’s response to the barbarism a war crime, but not the previous systematic extermination of Jewish families by Hamas. Add to this Matt McBradly declaring the carnage in Israel was “a very big gift for Netanyahu”. Andrea MItchell chimed in by initially taking a both-sides approach in reporting, and then days later interviewed an Israeli mother and jarringly asked her if she had sympathy for the plight of Palestinian families - this mother lit up the dense Mitchell, given she has two children kidnapped by Hamas.
These attempts to take the side of the terrorist aggressors has not delivered the hoped-for sympathies, another sign of the media complex in this country having a waning influence. After days of attempting to spin the events and make this into a complex two-sided skirmish, the general public has been going on social media to get the actual details, and their support is mounting instead for the Israelis.
Perhaps the best indicator of how failed this effort has been is seen in the ratings. Normally a global news story such as this is a ratings boon for the cable networks, and largely it has been, according to Neilsen viewership figures from this week. Fox News has seen a spike of over 40%, as CNN has enjoyed a 17% bump, and even upstart News Nation has enjoyed a surge for its meager numbers. Meanwhile the sympathizers at MSNBC have experienced a collapse – since the outbreak of violence on Saturday, the PLO-network endured a flight of viewership, dropping -33%.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member