Most people with whom I had a chance to speak are puzzled when I ask: "ABC News is a business. What does it sell?"
The easy answer is, of course, advertising. That is, ABC News, out of goodness of their hearts and the best they can, informs us of the developments in the world. They do this free of charge becasue their costs and reasonable profiuts are covered by advertising. This story is presents usually as a wonerful invention --- everybody wins (or, in the language of professional economics, Pareto-efficient outcome).
This is too simple. What drives the price of the advertising? The A.C. Nielsen ratings. Thus, the loop closes: it matters what ABC News reports in bewtween commercials, for that will determine whether we maintain our attention span and stay until commercial, so that ABC can make a buck.
Which is why I submit to you that
Television news broadcasts are in the business of selling public sentiment.You do not need me to notice the uniformity of broadcasts. We all know that the three networks, which are purportedly independent, report almost the same thing. So we ask, why? If some entities are supposedly independent, yet act in almost perfect unison, there must be...
The most simple-minded complete the sentence with the word "conspiracy." But by whom? "Leftists," say some. And, indeed, there is a clear bias in the media. Some other say: "Jews." Indeed, there are many Jewish-sounding names associated with the media (well, there are many Jewish doctors, too; do they conspire to kill our children? But that's another point).
Many people do not know about the A.C. Nielsen (and some other, similar) ratings being broadcast to all advertising agencies in this country and abroad every morning. For these executives, reading them is like reading the Wall Street Journal for finance specialist on Wall Street --- a daily religious ritual. These reports are extrmely detailed, and they translate immediately into the advertising revenues.
Thus, rather than conspiracy we have conformity dictated by purely economic forces. Have you noticed how all gas stations are somehow group at a major exit from an interstate? Have you wondered why you see a Burger King accross from MacDonald's? As stranfe as it seems, game theory predicts this as a stable (equilibrium) outcome.
Similarly, all network news take position next to each other in the space in out minds; they sell the same thing. Just like a Burger King does not collude with MacDonald's across the street, there is no collusion among the networks --- Jewish, leftist, or any other. It is just a stable competitive outcome; pure profit maximization lead to it.
But for this result to obtain, they must be selling a product. What I submit to you, is that they are selling a prevailing sentiment.
Thus, when the public sentiment was with Israel --- a country viciously and repeatedly attacked by hew neighbors, founded by much persecuted people --- the sentiment was with Israel, and it could do no wrong. They have not died, however, which is a big fault in the present-dat ethos of victimhood. Then we noticed that Palestinians, although barbaric in behavior, are without a permanent home for a long time, hence are victims. Hence on the network news they can do no wrong and Israel is a tyrannic state that can do no right. This wekend, the pendulum may haev moved back a little. Conspiracy? Absolutely not! Just a shift in sentiment. If some network does not feed our current sentiment, we shall not watch, their rating will go down today and revenues tomorrow.
This central premise explains prety much everything else. All of a sudden, every sitcom has a homosexual for the first time --- all in the same season. They will all have a same-sex kiss during the same week. On the other hand, it has become "cool" to show patriotism. Regarldess of the individuality of the anchor, this becomes possible ---- and happens on the same day --- by our shifting sentiment.
You can see now that I cannot agree with you supposition: it is not that the news media have an agenda and "filter out information which opposes its prejudices." We have something of an agenda --- a prevailing public sentiment. And they merely feed us what we want. Action movies if this is what sells. Sex and violence. Patriotism. Cooking shows. Springer. Cynical treatment of the government because after Nixon the masses wanted to be saved from the "corrupt SOB politicians."
Once the sentiment shifts, these diappear as soon as they came, and we wonder, "Whatever happened to...?"
In sum, you and many other people think too highly of the media: to have an agendum or prejudice that impute to the media they must have a msssion and, frankly, expertise and brains. The media have no more of that than Ford or IBM. Just like Ford or IBM, they sell a product, but less tangible than cars or computers --- sentiment. They probe for it; look at feedback via the ratings; and, once it is found, run with it until we become nauseated (this may take a generation, as in the case of cynical tratment of the government). Then we signal, by our yawning, that we want a change. They sense it, and... ad infinitum.
WRT the Arab/Israeli question, the truth is easy enough to discern. For a thousand years, Arabs treated Jews and Christians decently in Palestine. As second-class citizens, true - but decently. Then a group of Jews decided that they should have first-class status and Arabs should come second, so they created a racist state in Palestine. After that, all hell broke loose...