- What began six months ago as a brazen attempt to counter
a perceived anti-Israel slant in the Dutch media, has evolved into a network
monitoring the media in eight countries across the world. The idea is simple:
Beat press bias at its own game by advertising only bad news about one
place.
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- Over the past months, seven activists from Israel and
elsewhere have been exposing online readers to scandalous yet accurate
reports from media in Britain (violent drunk teens), France (high homeless
mortality), Norway (serial child molesters), Finland (sexual harassment
in parliament), Sweden (soaring suicide rates), The Netherlands (menacing
Muslim unrest), Mexico (rampaging flood victims) and Los Angeles (drive-by
killings).
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- The seven bad-news activists visit one another's online
blogs and have incorporated links referring the dozens of surfers who visit
their pages every day to sister-sites. Though they all act out of a desire
to counter what they see as media bias against Israel , they operate independently
and have little communication with one another. Some of them rely on friends
to send them interesting bits of bad news.
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- "This project demonstrates how media coverage can
degrade any country's image by using selective news without context,"
explains media analyst Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld from Jerusalem . His seminar
last summer, entitled "Bad News about the Netherlands ," became
the kernel of his blog.
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- Gerstenfeld told Anglo File at the time that by maligning
Dutch society he was "merely employing the methods of some in the
Dutch media." Those parties, he said, habitually report only about
Israeli aggression while omitting any reference to Palestinian violence,
among other tactics.
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- The Netherlands ' former ambassador to Israel , Bob Hiensch,
indicated he found the project "simplistic and naive" - which
hasn't stopped Gerstenfeld from updating the site every day. His blog attracts
up to 300 readers a day.
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- Dr. Genevieve Benezra cites a sense of deep frustration
in explaining what made her launch her bilingual Bad News from France blog
two months ago. "For years I'd fume over bias in French papers and
television," she says. Benezra, a retired jurist from Kfar Hayam near
Hadera and veteran French immigrant, heard about the initiative from Gerstenfeld
last year at a conference for child survivors of the Holocaust.
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- It was around that period the British blogger, who preferred
to remain anonymous, joined the Bad News club. John (not his real name),
who immigrated to Israel from Britain 12 years ago, heard about Gerstenfeld's
pet project at a lecture. "We agreed we could make a very good one
on Britain ," he recalls. "I realize this can be seen as unpatriotic,
but the truth is British society never fully accepted me. I was always
a Jew there," says the 69-year-old academic. "You could say I
have a chip on my shoulder, even though I love British culture in general."
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- David Silon, a Los Angeles are Jew from birth, runs Bad
News from L.A. He says defaming his hometown - which enjoys some degree
of glitz in foreign media - is only a means to demonstrate how easily media
reports can be manipulated.
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- Appearing patriotic seems to be of little concern to
Kenneth Sikorski, a Finnish non-Jew who runs both Bad News from Finland
and Bad News from Sweden . "Even harsh criticism does not generally
register as unpatriotic in Scandinavia ," says the 48-year-old retired
paper industry machinist. Sikorski, who was born in the U.S. and immigrated
to Finland 20 years ago, has been monitoring the media for years. "I
observed egregious errors in the reports about Israel . One major newspaper
said the Separation Fence was electric instead of electronic," he
says.
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- "I have written countless letters to editors,"
says Leif Knutsen, 48, who runs Bad News from Norway . "I usually
received no response and my letters weren't published." Knutsen, a
management consultant who converted to Judaism and immigrated from Norway
to New Jersey 15 years ago, says the Norwegian press is particularly hostile
to Israel . Part of this, he says, draws from Norway 's strong peacenik
tradition of the 1960s, which Knutsen thinks has resulted in "a simplistic
world view where Israel is seen as the one remaining imperialist client
state of the U.S. "
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- Gerstenfeld would most like to see a bad news blog covering
Belgium . "If it faced Israel 's difficult position, Belgium would
have disappeared long ago," he says. Benezra would especially like
to cover the French-speaking Canadian province of Quebec . "I may
include it, though I don't know how helpful my blog is," she says.
"At least it relieves some of my frustration."
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- The Bad News Blogs:
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- Bad News from Los Angeles
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- Bad News from The Netherlands
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- Bad News from Mexico
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- Bad News from Britain
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- Bad News from Sweden
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- Bad News from Finland
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- Bad News from France
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- Bad News from Norway
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- http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/950374.html
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