Two recent podcasts in the US hosted by progressive media stars and featuring leading Democratic lawmakers brought home the deep disconnect that exists between the way establishment politicians and media operate and the way both come to speak about the Middle East.
Late last month, Mehdi Hasan hosted Senator Mark Warner on his podcast Mehdi Unfiltered, while Congressman Adam Smith joined Krystal Ball on her programme Breaking Points. Both programmes demonstrated what happens when establishment politicians, whose prepared talking points never stray from what serves as the conventional wisdom about Israel and Palestine, run up against interviewers unwilling to give them a pass. Two observations must be made: one is about the relationship that has come to exist between American establishment politics and mainstream media. The other is how regional developments are playing out in the US.
One can see the incestuous relationship between political and media elites in full bloom at the annual White House correspondents’ dinner. In Washington, most politicians – liberal Democrats and centrist Republicans alike – and the mainstream media figures who report on them work and live in proximity to one another. Their homes are often in the same neighbourhoods, they send their children to the same schools, attend the same houses of worship and socialise together. There’s also a “revolving door” factor, because some former government officials leave their posts to become highly paid TV hosts or commentators, and some journalists leave their positions to accept government appointments.
This problem is most pronounced when it comes to media coverage of the Middle East. There’s no doubt that US public opinion regarding Palestine has changed, but this isn’t the case when it comes to the media and political elites. For evidence one can point to polling data, votes in Congress, the number of elections in which critics of Israel have won, and the hundreds of millions of dollars that pro-Israel groups have poured into both defeating what they call “anti-Israel radicals” and attempting to influence the public discourse. But these two podcasts revealed the impact of the changes in other ways.
For example, when senior political figures from either party appear on major network TV shows to discuss the Middle East, the conversations are usually constrained by the uninformed conventional wisdom shared by both politicians and their interviewers. This is the case for two reasons. First, almost no major network media figures know the history, culture or politics of the Middle East. For most reporters, that region’s history began the day they got the assignment. Even those who have spent years reporting on the Middle East tend to view it through the conflicts they’ve been assigned to cover or briefings they’ve received from policymakers, who in turn generally have no direct knowledge of the people affected by their policies. The stable of experts the networks regularly invite as commentators are largely former government officials who have failed in the past, learnt no lessons from their mistakes and therefore continue to propagate the same views that have defined their sad careers.
It’s much the same when we look at the way US lawmakers approach the Middle East. Most are either ignorant about the region or its history or have “willed ignorance” – not wanting to know because the cliches of the conventional wisdom have served them well. Why make things complicated? “Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East”, “Israel is an ally that protects US interests”, or a variation on “Israel wants peace, but the Arabs want only to destroy Israel”.
Regardless of what other Middle East-related issues elected officials are discussing, cliches like these form the backdrop to their thinking. Accepted wisdom shared by politicians and media alike. So, when Mr Smith and Mr Warner agreed to interviews with Ball and Hasan, they were clearly unprepared to be grilled on topics such as: how the US can continue to provide advanced military support to Israel when it uses this aid in violation of international law; whether millions of dollars from pro-Israel super-PACs are negatively affecting our elections; or whether Palestinians should be guaranteed equal rights in Israel/Palestine.
Some evidence of the changing public mood on Israel did come through in both interviews. Both politicians indicated that they were feeling enough public pressure forcing them to oppose some of the proposed Israeli military aid packages included in the new budget. However, they then displayed their lack of understanding by falling back on the “new conventional wisdom” of saying that they were doing so only because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the problem and they didn’t want to reward him.
The lesson that comes through so clearly in both interviews is the important role being played by new personality-driven media. They know the issues they cover, their questions aren’t scripted, and they are not afraid to challenge elites.
