Rolling Stone Editor Believes There is a Pro-Israeli Media Bias in America

Most NBers are likely unfamiliar with the name Eric Boehlert. He is a contributing editor for Rolling Stone magazine that used to write for Salon, and has a book out called “Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over For Bush.” In it, he accused the media of actually having a pro-Bush bias in a book that the Washington Post’s Book World comically declared was “written as though a cadre of Bill Clinton's defenders were its editors.”

Well, Boehlert is at it again, this time claiming at Huffington Post that “the Arab-Israeli conflict is told in the United States mostly through the eyes of Israelis, and that's especially true on cable news channels.”

Boehlert’s angst stemmed from watching CNN on Thursday after reading a Reuters article about 53 Lebanese civilians being killed in an Israeli attack, “a fact that struck [him] as central to the unfolding story” in the Middle East:

Later, I went back and checked CNN's reporting, via TVeyes.com, and discovered that throughout the day CNN repeatedly reported on the lone Israeli civilian causality without making any mention of the more than 50 Lebanese civilian casualties. To be exact, CNN did that at 10:31 a.m., 11:02, 12:09 p.m., 12:19, 1:00, 1:30, 1:52, 2:00, 2:17, 2:30, 2:50, and 4:04.

Boehlert then asked his readers a question that is sure to raise some eyebrows:

Has CNN gotten to the point where it won't report pertinent facts that are essential in putting the story in context? Facts that certainly would have helped viewers understand some of the international criticism Israel was coming under for what the European Union called a "disproportionate" military response to the conflict at hand.

You’re a contributing editor for Rolling Stone, and you’re just now starting to realize that news organizations don’t report pertinent facts about stories when it fits their agenda? That being the case, Boehlert's conclusion won't likely be very surprising:

At this point I don't think it's even controversial to suggest the Arab-Israeli conflict is told in the United States mostly through the eyes of Israelis, and that's especially true on cable news channels. American news organizations have more resources in Israel, better sources within the Israeli government and most American viewers likely consider the Israeli's more like 'us.' And if you don't think there's a difference on how the U.S. media cover the warring sides, then try to imagine what the press coverage would have looked like yesterday if 50 Israeli citizens had been killed by the missiles that hit Haifa.