CREATIVELY COUNTERING MEDIA BIAS AGAINST ISRAEL

Bloggers try to counter anti-Israel media bias with bad news on other states (Haaretz)
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.

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).

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.

"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.