You decide.
Philip Weiss of Mondoweiss reported this second if earlier episode in which a major American television and news network, CBS, intentionally spread Israeli propaganda to American audiences. This one came to light only recently (the first entailed newscaster, Bob Simon, hawking Israeli military propaganda against Iran. See `60 Minutes’ serves up Israeli propaganda).
In this episode, we catch Mike Wallace distorting an interview with the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for purposes of falsely representing the view that Iran has hostile intents towards Israel. Weiss picked up this story from another source, Representative Press, and it was actually dated August, 2006 and entitled,
President Ahmadinejad Calls for Democracy, Free and Fair Elections and a Durable Peace.
Here’s the Weiss story from the above source:
September 07, 2008
Report: ’60 Minutes’ Cut Ahmadinejad’s Statement, ‘Solution Is Democracy’ in Israel/Palestine
The interview that Mike Wallace did of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad 2 years ago was aired on C-Span recently, and a diligent blogger has reported on what “60 Minutes” cut out of the interview when it aired. When Wallace confronted Ahmadinejad with the “wipe Israel off the map” threats, Ahmadinejad said that “the solution is democracy” in Israel and Palestine, a suggestion that he favors a one-state solution. I agree with blogger Tom Murphy that “60”‘s edits misrepresent Ahmadinejad’s thrust, making him out to be far more confrontational than he is, especially after Wallace promised Ahmadinejad that he would listen to his complete answers to questions. And yes, that this amounts to “suppression of basic facts concerning Israel and the Palestinians.”
Here’s Murphy’s data. The text in bold was edited out of the 60 Minutes broadcast:
MR. WALLACE: You are very good at filibustering. You still have not answered the question. You still have not answered the question. Israel must be wiped off the map. Why?
PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD: Well, don’t be hasty, sir. I’m going to get to that.
MR. WALLACE: I’m not hasty.
PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD: I think that the Israeli government is a fabricated government and I have talked about the solution. The solution is democracy. We have said allow Palestinian people to participate in a free and fair referendum to express their views. What we are saying only serves the cause of durable peace. We want durable peace in that part of the world. A durable peace will only come about with once the views of the people are met.
So we said that allow the people of Palestine to participate in a referendum to choose their desired government, and of course, for the war to come an end as well. Why are they refusing to allow this to go ahead? Even the Palestinian administration and government which has been elected by the people is being attacked on a daily basis, and its high-ranking officials are assassinated and arrested. Yesterday, the speaker of the Palestinian parliament was arrested, elected by the people, mind you. So how long can this go on?
We believe that this problem has to be dealt with fundamentally. I believe that the American government is blindly supporting this government of occupation. It should lift its support, allow the people to participate in free and fair elections. Whatever happens let it be. We will accept and go along. The result will be as you said earlier, sir.
MR. WALLACE: Look, I mean no disrespect. Let’s make a deal. I will listen to your complete answers if you’ll stay for all of my questions. My concern is that we might run out of time.PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD: Well, you’re free to ask me any questions you please, and I am hoping that I’m free to be able to say whatever is on my mind. You are free to put any question you want to me, and of course, please give me the right to respond fully to your questions to say what is on my mind.
Do you perhaps want me to say what you want me to say? Am I to understand —
MR. WALLACE: No.
PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD: So if that is the case, then I ask you to please be patient.
MR. WALLACE: I said I’ll be very patient.
PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD: Maybe these are words that you don’t like to hear, Mr. Wallace.
MR. WALLACE: Why? What words do I not like to hear? [the words highlighted in bold and edited out of the interview]
PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD: Because I think that you’re getting angry.
MR. WALLACE: No, I couldn’t be happier for the privilege of sitting down with the president of Iran.
Here is a video of the relevant parts of the interview: It is entitled, Apologize to the World Mr. Wallace and Return that Emmy.
My thanks to Martini at Booman Tribune for drawing attention to this second incident in which CBS allowed itself to become an instrument of Israeli government propaganda.
Interesting diary, shergald. Control is too strong a word for the dynamics in various US media’s coverage of Israel. Networks like Fox have a strong right-wing bias on many subjects, including Israel, and make no apology about it. Other mainstream media compromise objective coverage of a variety of issues because of financial concerns (profitability, not offending the corporate backers, etc.) and consumer pressure. Groups like CAMERA have been extremely effective in cowing news execs from airing programs that are critical of Israel.
Wallace promised Amadinejad that he would listen to everything that Amadinejad had to say. Unfortunately, we were not able to listen to everything because the tape was edited — edited not only to shorten the comments, but to distort their meaning. Whoever edited that interview — whether Wallace or the producers of 60 minutes — owe Amadinejad and the show’s viewers an apology.
The title was a question. You gave a good answer. Perhaps others will voice another opinion as well.
I say this knowing that the information provided suggests a confirmatory response. If one considers the amount of censorship and propaganda that characterizes Middle East news in the US, which is proIsrael, the implication is even very positive. But let others take a shot at this question.
a question of Israel controlling CBS.
I don’t think anybody “controls” CBS in that they tell them what they must edit out, I think this kind of censorship is self-imposed.
As to why they would self-censor, I can’t make up my mind.
It might simply be that people in our news media ignore uncomfortable news about Israel because they sincerely want to report the news accurately but – like most Americans – they have Zionism, tinged with a hint of racism against Arabs and Muslims, as their default way of looking at the Middle East. So they act out of a kind of blinkered ignorance. In this country, Zionism is treated not like a political movement that you can be for or against, but like a self-evident law of nature that only an idiot or anti-semite would argue against. So when someone does argue against it, you just know they can’t possible be sincere or genuine, so you just go ahead and unthinkingly edit them out. That’s the more benevolent explanation.
The less benevolent explanation is that the people who conducted and edited that interview are supportive of Zionism to the extent that they didn’t do anything unthinkingly or by default, but cut out that part of the interview because they knew very well that Ahmedinejad had honed in on the central argument against political Zionism, i.e. that you cannot create a Jewish state in Palestine except through the disenfranchisement of the pre-existing – overwhelmingly non-Jewish – population, because they (inconveniently) happen to be the majority.
I’ve seen Ahmedinejad make this point about solving the I/P conflict through the ballot box in other interviews too. The key point is that he wants the vote to include all Israelis and all Palestinians – including those Palestinians who were expelled to make way for a Jewish state. When he says the Israeli govt is “fabricated”, he means that a system that reduces the Arab majority by expelling them to refugee camps or keeping them disenfranchised under military rule, in order to ensure that Zionist parties will always dominate elections, is a fake democracy. Ahmedinejad says that the really democratic thing to do would be to give everybody an equal vote, regardless of their ethnic-religious origin, because he knows that if everyone had the vote, the Arab majority would change their situation overnight.
If the people at CBS understand their Zionism well enough to recognize that Ahmedinejad is articulating the Achilles Heel of The Only Democracy In The Middle East™ , then the edit would not be ignorant, but ideological. Limiting your reporting on Ahmedinejad to He’s a raving nutter who wants to wipe Israel off the map by nuking the Jews! is a much easier way of nullifying him than reporting Ahmedinejad wants to end minority rule in Israel/Palestine through the ballot box!
I don’t know if that second alternative is too Machiavellian; maybe I attribute too much knowledge to the people at CBS and don’t give enough weight to traditional MSM values like laziness and ignorance. Either way, it’s not a question of “Israeli control”. We can’t really blame Israel if Americans in the news media (and their audience) are so unquestioning about Zionism that they (innocently) cannot or (culpably) will not allow for rational debate on the subject. We seem to be doing a pretty good job of self-censorship all by ourselves, without bringing Israel into it.
No one disagrees with the notion that “Israel” specially has a control button in which they act to censor material in a manner that is compatible with current Israeli foreign policy toward Iran. Clearly, everyone knows that Israel wants to stop Iranian nuclear developments.
And everyone likewise knows that there is a general censorship of news concerning the IP conflict in the US, biases in reporting (as shown by Alison Weir’s studies of newspaper media), and that the MSM has picked up on Israeli propaganda concerning the “Palestinian terrorism” that was heavily criticized in the documentary, Peace, Propaganda & The Promised Land.
But it is possible that self-appointed propagandists inside the 60 Minutes program were implicated in editing the Mike Wallace and Bob Simon pieces, since the outcome did apparently support Israeli propaganda about the Iran and its president and Iran’s concocted plan to bomb Israel with nuclear weapons. It is one thing to give a one sided view as the Simon piece did, but quite another to delete statements by the Iranian president that appear to contradict Israeli propaganda.
I asked the question: does Israel control CBS? The answer is no. But there must be some explanation for the bias in reporting that extends to molding responses so that they comply with Israeli propaganda concerning Iran. Its source, if not from the commentators themselves, or the CBS producers of 60 Minutes, is obscure. But it happened. There’s no question about that.