Ben-Dror Yemini
Ben-Dror Yemini On How To Fight Media Bias
Israeli journalist says the problem isn’t only the lies, but the willingness of American Jews to believe them.
Ben-Dror Yemini is a journalist on a mission to report the facts. You’d think that would be a basic job description for any journalist, but when it comes to reporting on Israel, the search for the truth can often be a rare exception. Media bias against Israel, including the false claims of “apartheid” and other crimes against Palestinians, is deeply woven into the narrative consumed by most Americans—most glaringly in the New York Times, Yemini says.
Yemini is the first to admit that he has no magic formula to undo the damage caused by media bias—except to print the truth. No, he says, that does not necessarily mean printing only positive things about Israel. It means helping people formulate their opinions about what kind of society Israel is, faults and all, based on facts. If the facts were as well-known as the falsehoods, he says, then that would go a long way toward dispelling some misunderstandings that Israeli and diaspora Jews may have toward one another.
I recently spoke with Yemeni in advance of something called the Z3 Project on Israel-Diaspora relations. The California-based group asked me to interview him about the media landscape and how it impacts Israel-Diaspora relations. The first question I asked was whether he believes that information gap is so wide, right now that American Jews are starting to internalize some of the false claims about Israel.
Click here to listen to the entire interview with Ben-Dror Yemini
Read more of my Jewish News and Commentary here.
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