Yup, kind of like when we torture people and they call it ‘enhanced interrogation’.
Give something a sanitized term and people will run with it.
IDK, NYT has it’s issues but I don’t see anything wrong with their headline on this. They’re pretty explicit (possibly even skeptical given the other coverage of this…) that that’s what israel is calling these strikes. What else should they have said?
Oh wait hang on, “Israel assures west that IDF are ‘working closely’ with amrrican appointed DEI council to ensure no demographic group is unfairly left out of genocidal campaign”. They probably could have gone with that. Fucking hell, the only thing that makes my blood boil more than this limpwristed edit: wrist slap-y journalistic coverage is the literal cauldron of blood the IDF keeps scooting out of frame every time biden facetimes them…
The irony is that the tweet is the exact type of propaganda it’s claiming to call out. They just want to undermine faith in Western media because if you can’t trust them - and despite having some obvious failures they have proven to be the most consistently reliable sources - then they are free to feed you emotional manipulation to push their own agenda.
Early in life I have noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various “party lines.
~ George Orwell (Not from a book, this is his actual experience after fighting alongside the Spanish against fasciscm.)
The word pre-emptive implies self-defense.
Israel is “preemptively attacking” the entire region.
“Casting attacks as” implies they are reporting on what the IDF is claiming though, and doesn’t confer additional editorial meaning beyond that. Of those four it’s the only one with a semblance of journalistic integrity.
Far too many people only skim the headline and maybe the first paragraph of the article and then assume they don’t need to know anything more.
To include the perspective of Israel in a headline purporting to be neutral is instilling a bias in the mind of such readers no matter how many quotation marks and “Israel says” they use and they KNOW IT for a fact.
When it comes to Israel, the NYT has about as much neutrality and journalistic integrity as they do wrt cops: almost none.
israel was bombing Lebanon and Gaza far before October 7 where history magically starts.
Furthermore israel assasinated a Hezbollah top leader in Beirut. That was an escalating attack. Lebanon is defending itself right now.
Yikes who’s upvoting this homophobic racist? Zero surprise they’re defending genocidal propaganda. Fash support fash.
Homophobic I get (sorry, did not know about ‘limpwristed’, was genuinely unintentional) but racist?
A homophonic racist fascist? Wow. How can somebody be that stoopid? You misused a phrase that you assumed meant weak - and let’s be honest - I can see how you could arrive at that conclusion. For all I know English could be your fourth language… then you had the absolute audacity to think there’s any complexity at all to a generations long war; and not a simple one-size-fits-all approach to geopolitical crises. You brought it on yourself, blud. Ignore the prOpAGanDa and BELIEVE EVERYTHING THAT INTERNET STRANGER HAS TOLD YOU. Ffs. Smh. /s
Nyt and Guardian seem fine, (in)directly quoting the idf.
It’s “strange” how imperial propaganda is always quoting the IDF but never the resistance.
I see a lot of articles quote the Gaza health ministry about casualty statistics
The problem isn’t them quoting it. The problem is passing along the blatant misinformation as truth. Why are you using their words when it’s very clearly wrong?
I’m reading this thread in awe, as I can’t see what this ‘blatant misinformation’ is that everyone sees so clearly
Hezbollah planned a large rocket attack and Israel attacked them first… How is this disputed?
The misinformation is that Israel is claiming they were forced to attack first due to Hezbollahs aggression. When in fact Israel is directly responsible for escalating this conflict for several months now, and Hezbollah has been showing a lot of restraint.
The strikes - whether you agree with them or not and regardless of your political posture - are genuinely seen as militarily preemptive. Israel apparently expected a large Hezbollah attack and tried to get in there first. They “preempted” any such attack. The Guardian employs actual speech marks - so it’s not an opinion but a quote. Newspapers can report what people say, even if the editorial policy is contrary to what gets reported. Linguistically the headli(n)es are correct. (I haven’t taken sides in the Israel-Gaza conflict as I know both sides are currently led by scum who have no qualms about slaughtering innocent people for their own personal gain and have no interest in any meaningful peace.)
The strikes are only pre-emptive if we put on white-nationalism glasses and take away Lebanon’s right to defend itself. Israel attacked Beirut first. TheGuardian quotes IDF propaganda but Hezbollah just “fires rockets”.
I haven’t taken sides in the Israel-Gaza conflict
…
Can I borrow your “white-nationalism glasses” and reread my OED? Perhaps the text will read differently… Whilst I applaud your passion and presumably heartfelt desire for this conflict to stop you can’t just redefine words on a whim. Language doesn’t generally work like that.
If you haven’t picked a side after 10 months of Genocide I can understand you’re not very passionate about the conflict. For more info see
The strikes are only pre-emptive if we put on white-nationalism glasses and take away Lebanon’s right to defend itself. Israel attacked Beirut first.
I guess as always with language, there are many possible interpretations. Yours is one, that’s right.
To me, it came somewhat surprising to see you connected “pre-emptive” to moral judgements, or to the question who attacked “first” (which is a controversial and potentially infinite topic to track the actual honest true ‘first’ origin).
Another interpretation is just military doctrine. The best defense is a good offense. Who cares who started the fight.
In this interpretation, the IDF felt there might be an attack incoming, and prevented it’s adversary from doing so by striking first.
Much like Hezbollah (or any other military force) would gladly pre-emptively strike their foe to protect their own troops. Doesn’t say anything about who started the overall conflict or even who’s right.
You still have a point; by highlighting the reasons behind the strike, and painting it as a protective measure, it probably makes it easier for the reader to sympathize.
A fair take by the newsmedia would have been to use the word “retaliatory” for Hezbollah’s attack just like they used “preemptive” for Israel’s.
Both attacks have causes, so if one is mentioning the causes for one set of attacks (which makes it seem less senseless) one should also mention the causes for the other set of attacks.
The manipulativeness here is not the use of “pre-emptive” for Israel’s attacks, it’s in the systematic framing of Israel’s attacks as having “a reason” (in this case pre-emption) whilst the other side’s attacks are portrayed without mentioning the reason and hence sound senseless to anybody less well informed.
What they’re doing here is called “spin” or “framing” and it’s a Propaganda technique meant to project a more favorable impression about one of the parties involved.
In this interpretation, the IDF felt there might be an attack incoming, and prevented it’s adversary from doing so by striking first.
The idf assasinated top general Fuad Shukr in Beirut, far from the Lebanese border.
This is like if Hezbollah bombed Yoav Gallant in Tel Aviv. And then Hezbollah starts bombing israeli airports “pre-emptively” because “an israeli attack” (retaliation) is coming.
Hitting someone and then hitting them again because you expect them to hit back does not seem very " self defensy" or “pre-emptive” te me.
The tnyt title looks accurate to me: it says Israel is striking Lebanon AND that Israel is casting these strikes as pre-emptive.
The title is not saying that tnyt believes that the strikes are actually pre-emptive, instead it’s reporting that Israel claims that the strikes are pre-emptive. Which is accurate, since Israel does in fact claim that.
Yep, this is a good example of what actual inaccurate/deceitful reporting would be like. Unlike the headlines in the post of the op, your made up title is reporting things that didn’t happened, and your quotes are not things that Hamas’ spokespeople have said. It is vaguely based on things that have happened, but it’s mostly just made up and thus completely inaccurate and deceitful.
The point being made is that they’ll harp unconditionally any old bullshit coming from Israel, putting it in a position of prominence, but not any old bullshit from other sources - even when they say the quote cones from sources in the Israeli government, merely choosing that for prominent position is already promoting it and that source.
Selectivelly and reliably quoting just the one side or always giving more prominence to what is said by just the one side says is an old Propaganda trick for when the Propagandist does not have full information control, and works by the same principle as exploited by lots of far-right populists to rise on saying controversial bullshit and on the criticism of their adversaries: anything given prominence and more attention is internalized by readers/viewers a being more important.
Actual Journalism would treat both sources equally.
Unlike plain-old-lies, such Propaganda Techniques can only be confirmed as such by measuring lots of articles from a news outlet and statistically analysing the words they choose and where they use them by comparison to other outlets, as pointed out in Linkerbaan’s post.