Ben Gurion, Nixon, Bush, Sharon...

The more I read about USA, the more I feel really baffled - is it about USA or about my country?

When it comes to news on Bush - I'm completely in the dark. Are they misspelling Sharon's name?

Countries are easier to understand. Physically, Israel is small - USA is huge.
With Bush and Sharon it goes the other way.
No wonder I'm confused daily.

Then, the media. In Israel it used to be that every political party had its own newspaper.
Those were replaced later by independent, commercial media.
The journalist was entitled "the author".
No more.

Now we are back to square one, with a small difference. If at the olden times "the author" was the mouthpiece of the political party, directly - now the journalist is enjoying the services of the PR or Press Assistant.

To-night, reading Antonia Zerbisias, as re-published at the excellent truthout, I can only respond with the Hebrew slang, "I've already been in this movie"...

"Probably the most troubling admission comes from Karen DeYoung, a former assistant managing editor who reported on the prewar palavering: "We are inevitably the mouthpiece for whatever administration is in power," she says. "If the president stands up and says something, we report what the president said."
But since when is a presidential pronouncement The Word Of God? What happened to inquiry, investigation and, what's it called again, journalism?"

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Article Author: Corinna Hasofferett

Unknown Territory

This is one of the more unusual books to have been published recently in Israel. It's also a book that's hard to categorize. It's not a standard novel, not really a book of memoirs, not actually a work of history - …

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Article comments

  • 1 - wino

    Aug 26, 2004 at 10:44 pm

    all i can say is ... huh?

  • 2 - RJ

    Aug 27, 2004 at 12:39 am

    Heh...

  • 3 - Corinna Hasofferett

    Aug 27, 2004 at 8:56 am

    Is the word "eloquence" still in the dictionary or are BuSharon the only ones good at it?
    RJ, wino: translation please.

  • 4 - RJ

    Aug 29, 2004 at 11:57 pm

    Actually, I almost never drink wine. But thanks for the baseless personal attack! :)

  • 5 - RJ

    Aug 29, 2004 at 11:58 pm

    Oops! Never mind. I thought you were calling ME a "wino." I didn't otice that the other guy's moniker was wino... :-/

  • 6 - Corinna Hasofferett

    Aug 30, 2004 at 2:39 pm

    Now I know what wino is, or at least can guess. As for the "heh" and "huh" - I'm still in the dark...

  • 7 - RJ

    Sep 02, 2004 at 1:34 am

    "Heh" is like an under-the-breath laugh. It's a modest LOL.

  • 8 - RJ

    Sep 02, 2004 at 1:35 am

    "Huh?" means "I don't get it"...

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