CNN's Disgraceful Propaganda
This segment from Dana Bash on the Palestine protest movement is one of the most shameful things I have ever seen on cable news.
I have covered the U.S. media for a long time. I have watched more hours of cable news than is healthy for any human being. I am under no illusions about the standards by which our biggest networks operate.
So I hope you will believe me when I say that this CNN segment on Wednesday about the pro-Palestine student protest movement is one of the most jaw-dropping, poisonous pieces of propaganda I have ever seen on a U.S. news outlet.
It came from CNN’s chief political correspondent Dana Bash, who has been a fixture on the network for decades, and it is so heinous that it merits a detailed response.
First, watch it for yourself. Then we’ll chat.
OK. There’s so much wrong here that it’s hard to know where to start. For one thing, Bash said things that are simply not true. She said that "pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups were attacking each other” on the UCLA campus on Tuesday night. That’s not true! And everyone knew it wasn’t true by the time Bash said those words. From the Los Angeles Times (emphasis mine):
On Tuesday night, Dickson Court exploded into savagery and chaos. A large, mostly male crowd of masked counterdemonstrators tried to break into the encampment, ripping down wood and metal barriers, spraying bear mace, igniting stink bombs and tossing fireworks near the camp perimeter — and in at least one case inside the camp.
The violence came from a mob of pro-Israel supporters. It was not a “clash.” It was a one-sided assault. Bash lied.
When she wasn’t spreading her own falsehoods, Bash was mindlessly regurgitating other peoples’ spin. She happily co-signed the narrative pushed by New York Mayor Eric Adams and the NYPD that protests at Columbia and City College had been masterminded by shadowy forces from outside the schools. “300 people were arrested at Columbia and City College of New York,” she intoned. “But it is unclear how many were actually students. New York City Mayor Eric Adams warned this morning that professional outside agitators are getting involved.”
That kind of claim deserves to be scrutinized, not immediately passed along as gospel—and, wouldn’t you know, Adams has been completely unable to handle the simplest questions about it.
Hey, why didn’t Bash think to ask even one question about this? I think we know.
But then we reached the most noxious part of this segment, when Bash dropped all pretense and just went for it. And by “it,” I mean “a wildly slanted monologue that I’m astonished was allowed to make it to air.” Emphasis mine again:
Many of these protests started peacefully with legitimate questions about the war, but in many cases, they lost the plot. They're calling for a ceasefire. Well, there was a ceasefire on October 6, the day before Hamas terrorists brutally murdered more than a thousand people inside Israel and took hundreds more as hostages.
[…]Now, protesting the way the Israeli government, the Israeli prime minister is prosecuting the retaliatory war against Hamas is one thing. Making Jewish students feel unsafe at their own schools is unacceptable and it is happening way too much right now.
This was not merely sharing a viewpoint. This was repeating one of the most well-worn lines of pro-Israel propaganda from the past seven months.1 Whatever you think about what Bash was saying, it’s fairly astonishing to see a supposedly “objective” news anchor coming in so fervently on one side of the most hot-button debate in the world right now.
But Bash was just getting started. After playing a clip showing a UCLA student arguing with pro-Palestinian protesters, she said this (emphasis mine):
BASH: Again, what you just saw is 2024 in Los Angeles. Hearkening back to the 1930s in Europe and I do not say that lightly. The fear among Jews in this country is palpable right now.
Um, excuse me Dana, I think you do say that lightly. Because what the fuck are you talking about?! Even the clip Bash was using to illustrate this “point” made a mockery of her contention, given that it shows a bunch of people standing around silently in broad daylight while one student makes a speech in front of them. The student claims that he isn’t being let onto campus, though you can still see plenty of people strolling by in the background with no trouble. And whatever is going on in the clip, there is no sign that this kid is in any physical danger—let alone the kind of danger found in 1930s Europe!
It’s not only an unbelievably over-the-top thing for Bash to say about what is happening in this country. It’s not only at odds with discernible reality. It’s not only a slanderous smear of student protesters, many of whom are Jewish. It’s also a prime example of a dreadful pattern we’re seeing these days, in which prominent people deploy the horror of the Holocaust with reckless abandon to score political points. (They do not appear to realize that all this does is make people take antisemitism and real violence against Jews less seriously.)
The segment ended there, thankfully. So what are we to make of it?
First and foremost, it is indefensible on its merits—as journalism, as opinion, as analysis. It deserves its place in the cable news hall of infamy.
Perhaps the most important thing about this segment, though, is that it exists at all—that it was deemed acceptable for Bash to air something so clearly biased and incendiary about such a sensitive topic. CNN executives would have lost their minds if Bash compared pro-Israel protesters to Nazi sympathizers, or even if she used disputed terms like “apartheid” or “genocide” to describe Israel’s behavior. But this kind of unhinged screed against the pro-Palestinian movement is apparently just fine. People supporting Palestine get to be written off as violent, Nazi-like extremists without a second thought, and CNN viewers tuning in for a supposedly fact-based look at the world get told that this is objective reality.
It’s just shameful. It’s so, so, so shameful. Bash and CNN disgraced themselves with this segment. The one good thing to come from this is that we know exactly who they are now.
You all know this by now, but to reiterate: the idea that “there was a ceasefire on October 6” belies both the constant lower-grade violence regularly meted out by Israel, the rampaging settler violence in the West Bank, and the inhumane everyday brutality of occupation, siege, and apartheid that has defined life for Palestinians for decades.
I taught college political science courses for 43 years, and I've lost all faith in the "mainstream media" and their coverage of American government, and especially of U.S. foreign policy. Has no one at CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post or the major TV networks learned anything from the Vietnam War, the invasion of Iraq or the continuing violence in the Middle East? Thank goodness for the insightful coverage of commentators like Jack Mirkinson. Dana Bash is only the latest talking head to mindlessly parrot the lies and biased talking points of the national security state. If, God forbid, President Biden loses the election in November, it will be because he insists on carrying his 20th-Century Cold War mentality into the 2020s. And no one in the mainstream media is doing anything to warn him about the impending catastrophe.
2+2=5, we’ve always been at war with Eurasia, the fascist beatings will continue until morale improves. Etc. We know this song and dance and it’s not working and they’re increasingly desperate. They’re emptying the cupboard trying every dirty trick they can. Outside agitators! Invoking the Holocaust! Antisemitism is at an all time high! Israel is the middle east’s only democracy! But what about the hostages?!? Don’t believe your lying eyes and ears those ‘clashes’ were actually both sides fighting and not state-permitted violence by one side! And on and on and on. Hence why you have disgusting screeds like the type covered here, because it’s all they have left. To crib a legal aphorism, they can’t bang on the law, they can’t bang on the facts, so all that’s left to do is to bang on the table because they’ve got nothing left.
The antisemitism part is what enrages me the most though. It’s true, this Jew has never felt less safe in this country. But not because of anything the Palestinian protesters are doing (because they’re right and courageous and brave and so obviously on the right side of history) but because of the bloodthirsty and psychotic zionists and their cronies and bad faith allies who are all gleefully utilizing the brutal mechanisms of the police state in an effort to quash those who voice dissent. That the zionists don’t understand that those same tools will one day be used against them (or ‘us’ meaning Jews writ large) when the inevitable backlash comes around is terrifying.