Kalb Speaks on Media Fascination With Israel

American reporting on Israel is often biased and shallow, but an indifferent public does not reward more thorough coverage, Marvin Kalb, director of the Kennedy School's Joan Shorenstein Barone Center on Press, Politics and Public Policy, said last night.

Speaking at Harvard Hillel to a crowd of 250, he said the American press showed an intense fascination with Israel throughout the 1960s and 70s, and usually slanted its coverage in the nation's favor. He said the American media's "obsession" with Israel is primarily rooted in Christian ideology and Israel's unique position in the Middle East as a Western-style democracy.

"That fascination began to turn a corner in 1977," Kalb said. "What sympathy there was for Israel began to fade...when Menachem Begin became the prime minister of Israel."

Also during the late 1970s, Kalb said, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat began to capitalize on media interest in Palestinian discontent after Arab terrorism first attracted reporters' attention.

"I can still remember Sadat smoking a pipe, magnificently dressed, clean-cut, doing an interview with Walter Cronkite," said Kalb. "Through Sadat, other Arab leaders began to exploit [the press] for their own policy aims."

When Israel began bombing Beirut in 1982, Kalb said, "the American press' fascination with Israel...started to turn sour." Ever since, the media has reflected a distinct anti-Israel bias, Kalb said.

"Israel, which had always been seen as David against the Arab Goliath...began to be seen as Goliath...a sophisticated, modern, deadly, heartless machine against baby-kissing Palestinian leaders," Kalb said.

He added that the intense media coverage of battles with rioting Palestinians has subsided somewhat in recent months, although the bias remains.

On the other hand, Kalb said Israel is often too quick to blame its problems on the press, which "more often than not mirrors what is going on, does not concoct what is going on...there is no small group sitting in New York determining, 'how do we screw Israel tonight?'"

"The press is completely anarchic," said Kalb. "Most of the time there are no motives for anything. I'm astonished that anything goes on the air at all."

The American public, Kalb said, is largely bored by in-depth news analyses although it criticizes superficial reporting. "Documentaries are done--but you don't watch them. The very same people who complain about...superficial reporting are the very ones who are not watching the documentaries when they come on."