How and Why the Coverage of the Israel-Hezbollah War in Lebanon Differs Between America and the Entire Rest of the World

[Ed. note: Update: The New York Times now reports eight (8) Israelis dead from Hizbollah/Hezbollah rockets; an update on Lebanese civilian war dead, however, did not seem to rate a headline.]

In my previous post, I noted how many online newspapers and news services I had to peruse before I found a single one - and that first one was, to my surprise, a Texas paper: The Chronicle out of Houston, if I recall correctly - to mention the Lebanese war dead. Almost all noted that five Israelis had died of Hezbollah rocket fire, but the civilians in Lebanon were apparently not worth noting.

This isn't an individual, unique incident. The war the American media gives us is a much different one that the entire rest of the world sees. American media focuses almost exclusively on Israel, which is why you will hear constantly of Israelis wounded or killed, but not of the death toll each day of Lebanese unless Israel claims some of the dead are Hezbollah guerillas. I've yet to hear one major media outlet here mention how Israel bombed a hospital yesterday, for example, the one noted at Juan Cole's Informed Comment.

Democracy Now today did a very good presentation showing the sharp contrast between American vs. rest of the world handling of this war. For those with access to Free Speech TV, you can see this program again tonight at 7 PM ET. The rest can watch/listen to it by visiting their Web site here. You'll learn all about the Israeli propaganda machine which may be more sophisticated even than the corporate media machine here in the U.S.

Lest you think this is not important enough to bother with, please reconsider. Once you see how news about this war is filtered, your eyes and ears and more importantly, your mind may open to how much else is filtered.. how you see very little of what goes on in this country, let alone the greater world around us.