One of the answers to this question was given by Said Aburish, an Arab who wrote a book that was published in 1995 called The Rise, Corruption and Coming Fall of the House of Saud. Said Aburish wrote about how the Saudis took control of the pan-Arab press and gained influence over the Western press.
Saudi ownership of the pan-Arab press started in 1979 with the newspaper Sharq Al Awsat, which they edited in London and transmitted via facsimile to printing presses throughout the Arab world. This was followed by the purchase of an old Lebanese newspaper, Al Hayat, which they also edited in London. Women's sports, business and political weekly magazines in London, Paris and Beirut followed. The financial backing given by the House of Saud to its own publications gave them an edge over the competition, which could not afford news bureaux or modern printing presses, and made it easy for the Saudis to pressure others into joining them in return for financial aid. It was a choice between following the Saudi line or perishing...
Saudi Arabia's decision to have its own pan-Arab publications was coupled with an attempt to influence the press in non-Arab countries, through financial and other pressures. Refusal to grant visas to foreign correspondents and not inviting them to GCC or other meetings, threatening to cancel subscription to wire services, and newspapers' and magazines' syndicated offerings or the outright purchase of the loyalty of some British and American journalists who covered the Middle East are the most obvious methods used by the Saudis...The sinister, mostly secret activity of trying to influence Western publications has been relatively successful and part of the reason the ugly deeds of the Saudi regime have not received the press coverage they deserve is that major news organizations do not want to alienate the Saudi Government and because some Western correspondents covering the Middle East take bribes...
At present the Arab press is divided into a Saudi -owned press, a Saudi controlled press, a press controlled by the GCC and other countries friendly to Saudi Arabia who are loath to offend it and a small number of publications which oppose them and are fighting against huge odds. And the Saudis are still buying the loyalty of an increasing number of Western journalists.
But they have not stopped at the purchase or direct or indirect control of Arabic-language newspapers and magazines and pressuring foreign publications or bribing foreign correspondents. They have broadened their approach to ownership to accomodate technological developments which affect their overall purpose. They own Middle East Broadcasting Corporation, MBC, an Arab language television station in London which serves the expatriate Arab community and transmits to the Middle East via satellite; ANA, the Arab radio station in Washington DC; and Radio Orient, the Arabic language radio station in France. in 1981 some of their friends bought 14.9 per cent of London's TV-AM through a highly circuitous financial route and businessmen beholden to the House of Saud have bought into mainline London newspapers and are eager to buy more. Recently they acquired United Press International for $4 million...The Saudi businessman Wafiq Al Said, a close firend of King Fahd bought 35% of London's Sunday Correspondent. Saudi businessman Sulayman Olayan owns 5% shares of the Independent and the Sunday Independent...
I have ascertained that six well-known journalists who write about the Middle East for major London publications are either directly or indirectly in the pay of the Saudi Embassy. ..
In addition to hundreds of individuals and corporations who promote the Saudi image, universities and study centres have not proved immune to the influence of Saudi money. The University of Southern California, Duke University, Georgetown University and the Aspen Institute have accepted Saudi grants which implied non-criticism of the House of Saud. Many Middle East experts at American universities work in departments which are funded by the Saudis...
Nor is having control of the press and placing inexperienced, incompetent Saudi editors in charge enough for the House of Saud, for it has shown signs of wanting to control book publishing (at least two London publishers of books about the Middle East depend on them for their livelihood). Some of my books failed to find Arabic publishers because of fear of Saudi reprisal and one of them was bought by a publisher who, unbeknownst to me, acted for them; he paid a lot of money for Arabic-language rights and then did not publish it. More seriously in 1982 the Saudis objected to a book about the Mecca Mosque rebellion by the Egyptian writer Ahmad Al Hamadi, and went as far as threatening to cut off aid to Egypt in order to have both books confiscated by the Egyptian authorities.
The Saudis punish publishers of anti-Saudi books by banning all their products from their country and get members of the GCC to do the same. No publisher can afford the accusation of being anti-House of Saud and Quartet books suffered for publishing God Cried, a book about the Israeli Invasion of Beirut, because, according to the Saudis, God does not cry.
The House of Saud also resorts to violence. Some of the examples given by Aburish are the kidnapping of the Saudi writer Nasser Al Said from Beirut, the assassination in Athens of the critical publisher of Al Nashua, Muhammad Mirri, and the attack of a Syrian journalist by Saudi paid thugs who broke both his arms...
In summary, what we have is a situation where the Western press's ability to report on Saudi Arabia is hampered by the House of Saud's power to control journalists' entry into the country, and by the application of indirect financial pressure on journalistic establishments. On top of that, reporting which supports and approves the House of Saud is facilitated through the Saudis' ability to buy into Western media, bribe journalists and exploit their business and academic contacts.
The ability to influence the Western press comes on top of total control of Saudi internal media and the elimination of opposition within the pan-Arab media.
Some investments not mentioned in the above paragraphs are those of Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdul Aziz Alsaud, the nephew of king Fahd, the king of Saudi Arabia. The prince now owns a whopping $2.05 billion worth of AOL stock -- parent company of Time-Warner and CNN. He also has large holdings in Disney (parent of ABC) and the News Corporation (parent of the New York Post, Fox News, and the London Times). After Prince Alwaleed bought a huge stake in the Fox News Network, a company that hitherto has been one of the Saudis critics Frank Gaffney wrote (Gaffney F., Fox's Saudi Prince, frontpagemag.com 9/30/05):
Al-Waleed is said be the world’s fifth richest man and now NewsCorp’s fourth largest voting shareholder (behind the Murdoch family, Liberty Media and fund giant Fidelity Management & Research Co).
The prince told the London Times he frequently makes calls to bosses of the companies in which he is invested. He said:
If I feel very strongly about something, I convey a message directly to the chairman or the chief executive.
According to The Guardian, during the French riots of 2005, a Saudi Prince with shares in News Corporation boasted to a conference in Dubai that he had phoned Rupert Murdoch and complained about Fox News describing the disturbances as “Muslim riots.” Within half an hour he said, it was changed to “civil riots.” (frontpagemag.com 12/27/05)
Prince Al-Waleed has also given $20 million each to Georgetown and Harvard. in order to untarnish Islam's image in the West. (Georgetown Sells Out to Saudis, frontpagemag.com 12/15/05.
Money continues to be poured into anti-Israel propaganda. Ministers and senior officials from 12 Arab countries met on 6/19/02 in Cairo to discuss embarking upon a $20 million public relations campaign against Israel. The campaign would "target the international community with the goal of refuting Israeli and American attempts to portray the Palestinians' national struggle as an unjust terror campaign." Arab information ministers also discussed expediting the creation of an Arab satellite television station aimed at the international community. "Arab and international media outlets will be asked to make an effort in order to evidence of war crimes committed by Israeli operations, in order to make it possible to put IDF solders and settlers on trial in the international court," it was said at the conference. One wonders why the Arabs don't use that money to improve the conditions of the Arabs living in the refugee camps. Perhaps they fear the refugees would stop their suicide bombing if their living conditions were improved.
Another answer to the question of "Why is there so much anti-Israel bias in the press?" is that the Palestinian Authority bribes and threatens western journalists. The media is threatened by the PA to only publish what is acceptable to them or lose their right to report from Palestinian controlled territory. For this reason many films showing the rejoicing of Palestinian Arabs after the World Trade Center bombing were not shown by the Western media. After two Israeli soldiers were murdered in Ramallah an Italian reporter wrote a letter washingtontimes to the Palestinian Authority denying that his network had filmed the murder blaming the filming on a rival network. He wrote
We emphasize to all of you that the events did not happen this way, because we always respect the journalistic rules of the Palestinian Authority for work in Palestine ...
We thank you for your trust and you can be sure that this is not our way of acting, and we would never do such a thing.
Danny Seaman the director of Israel's Goverment Press Office was interviewed by Kol Ha'Ir in October 11, 02 about Palestinian influence on the media. He said:
At the direct instruction of the Palestinian Authority, the offices of the foreign
networks in Jerusalem are compelled to hire Palestinian directors and
producers. Those people determine what is broadcast. The journalists will
certainly deny that, but that is reality...
Three senior producers,were coordinated with Marwan Barghouti. He used to call them and inform them about what was about to happen. They always received early warning about gunfire on Gilo.
Then they shot for TV only the Israeli response fire on Beit Jala. Those
producers advised Barghouti how to get the Palestinian message across
better.The Palestinians let the foreign journalists understand: if you don't work
with our people we'll sever contact with you, you won't have access to
sources of information and you won't get interviews."Today we know, that the entire Mohammed a-Dura incident was staged in
advance by the Palestinian Authority in collusion with Palestinian
photographers, who worked for the foreign networks. In my opinion, that is
the incident that really began the Intifada. Until then it hadn't caught
on.
According to Seaman Palestinian stills photographers are also part of the game.
They always stage photographs, The IDF announces that it is going in to
demolish an empty house, but somehow afterwards you see a picture of a
crying child sitting on the rubble. There is an economic level to that. The
Palestinian photographers receive from the foreign agencies 300 dollars for
good pictures; that is why they deliberately create provocation with the
soldiers. They've degraded photography to prostitution.
In regard to the foreign media Seaman said:
They're hostile,they being the French, the Spaniards, the BBC. The hostility manifests itself in the writing, the tendentious footage, the automatic adoption of the Palestinian version and
the immediate suspicion of the Israeli version. In the course of the siege
on Bethlehem the Palestinians claimed that we killed a monk. No one bothered
to pick up the phone and speak to the Pope's representative to hear from him
that nothing of the kind had happened.
I accuse, particularly the European press. The correspondents reported about every slander against Israel as if it were a fact. The negligence of their coverage contributed to the anti-Semitism that is now making rounds on the continent, and that ought to lie heavily on their consciences.
The Palestinian Arabs are not the only ones to apply such pressure. Iraq used to control the American media broadcasts. Franklin Foer wrote an article in the New Republic called How Saddam Manipulates the U.S. Media (10/28/02). Here are some excerpts:
Like their Soviet-bloc predecessors, the Iraqis have become masters of the Orwellian pantomime--the state-orchestrated anti-American rally, the state-led tours of alleged chemical weapons sites that turn out to be baby milk factories--that promotes their distorted reality. And the Iraqi regime has found an audience for these displays in an unlikely place: the U.S. media. It's not because American reporters have an ideological sympathy for Saddam Hussein; broadcasting his propaganda is simply the only way they can continue to work in Iraq. "There's a quid pro quo for being there," says Peter Arnett, who worked the Iraq beat for CNN for a decade. "You go in and they control what you do. ... So you have no option other than to report the opinion of the government of Iraq."...
Visas are the Ministry of Information's primary tools for controlling foreign journalists. Even correspondents for CNN and the BBC, which maintain permanent offices in Baghdad, must continually apply for visas, which typically last only two weeks. And without visas for their own correspondents, the networks have to rely on local Iraqis to keep their offices running--locals who are even more subject to government reprisals than are visiting Americans.
Another reason for anti-Israel bias in the press is Muslim pressure
in Europe and the United States against the press. For example MSNBC
dropped talk show host Alan Keyes from its prime-time lineup following an
on-line campaign to remove Keyes for his staunchly pro-Israel positions and
replaced him with Ashleigh Banfield, who is considered more sympathetic to the
Arab cause. The replacement will take effect on July 15, 02. The
network says that the replacement was only due to Alan Keyes low ratings even
though they themselves admit his viewership had 38% growth. (The Jewish Week
June 21, 02). However, an organization named Mesora,
checked the Neilsen Ratings, and found that Keyes' ratings are actually
better than Banfields'. When they asked MSNBC about this MSNBC did not
respond. MSNBC also hired Jeff Cohen, who feels the media is too
harsh on suicide bombers. According to Mesora
In addition MSNBC hired Jeff Cohen, founder of www.FAIR.org
Read their material and you will see that Cohen seeks to be fair with the inhuman monsters who shoot 5 year old children at point blank range, and rig bombs to shred the bodies of the innocent. FAIR favors the notion that Palestinian violence can be labeled "retaliation", and that a person who "retaliates" is not responsible for his actions, since he was merely responding to someone else's aggression. FAIR diminishes the responsibility and criminality of Palestinian homicide bombers. Another reason for anti-Israel bias in the press, may be that the growing Arab populations of Western countries are influencing the press in those countries to become anti-Israel and yet another reason may be latent anti-semitism in Western countries.
On August 3, 02 the Association of United States Muslims
(AUSM) issued a communique on announcing that the US Muslims will neither by
nor sell the New York Post, for its numerous anti-Islamic and anti-Arab world
items
In concert with this communique, 500 Muslim merchants active in distributing the press in New York, too, announced on Saturday that they will stop distributing the New York Post for the same reasons.
The media adopts policies of reporting demanded by Muslims. A Freeman Center Broadcast (10/31/02) summarized a Makor Rishon newspaper report from October 25th as follows:
Last week, a senior person from the Reuters News Agency appeared before a
group of Canadian philanthropists from the United Fund. Reuters was
created by the British and it reports along the ideological lines and the
world view of Great Britain even after the fall of the British Empire.
The representative of Reuters admitted for the first time that Reuters
has taken a specific political line whereby the territories of Yesha [the
West Bank and Gaza Strip] are considered Palestinian Lands. He admitted also
that the Reuters News Agency forbids its reporters to refer to
Palestinian terrorists as terrorists, in spite of the fact that such people in
other locations merit the term terrorists in Reuters reports.
For example, the perpetrators of the bombing in Bali, Indonesia were
defined by Reuters as terrorists. In contrast, the perpetrators of the car
bomb this week that blew up the bus at Karkur Junction and that killed 14
Israelis and wounded tens of others were called teenagers. As if a few
teenagers executed a little prank.
It's not clear why Reuters has adopted these policies, and whether or not it was because of widespread Islamic pressure. Why do Muslims apply such pressure? At least some of the roots of Arab anti-Jewish hatred lie in the Koran.
Here are summaries of phrases and quotes in the Koran about the Jews.
There is historical evidence that anti-Jewish doctrines were created by those angry at the Jews for not converting to either Islam or Christianity. Anti-jewish doctrines, in the case of Islam, have resulted in terrible slander and incitement against Jews in Arab countries. This incitement has spread with Muslims who have immigrated to the West. Irvine, a Los Angeles suburb, is one of many American towns that have become centers of anti-Israel/Jewish rhetoric. A religious Egyptian Moslem named Hesham Mohamed Hedayet who lived in Irvine California believed that (The New York Times 7/5/02):
the Israelis tried to destroy the Egyptian nation and the Egyptian population by sending prostitutes with AIDS to Egypt.
On July 4, 2002, he opened fire in an LA airport and killed 25 year old Victoria Hen and 46 year old Jacob Aminov before an Israeli security guard killed him.
Pierre Rehov answered the question of why the press so anti-Israel in an interview with Jamie Glasov (Suicide Killers, frontpagemag.com 12/12/05)
FP: Why do you think such a large percentage of the international media supports Arab propaganda? Why is anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel so cutting edge and fashionable?
Rehov: There are many complicated reasons for that. First of all, let's quickly review this good old anti-Semitism which is crawling nowadays among left wing intellectuals, Jews being represented as the rich and powerful, as opposed to the poor Palestinians. So-said intellectuals love things simple to understand, powerful images, such as Che Guevara being a hero, and Arafat's Kefieh representing a symbol of resistance against oppression.
After the explosion of communism and the USSR empire, communism has been exposed as an evil, intolerant, oppressive and inefficient system. I cannot imagine what must have happened to people who, in good will, saw Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro... or the red Khmers as symbols of their beliefs. They then had to identify with a new cause, a new set of poor to protect and defend with ideas.
A lot of journalists, in very good faith, think of themselves as intellectuals and freedom fighters at the same time. They believe that they are the last real adventurers of this world and they keep deep inside the pride of being the only counter-power to governments. This is healthy, as long as it doesn't become perverted.
In the field, actually, when you have to work in the Palestinian territories, the game itself is perverted. One has to remember that there is no freedom, no security in the Territories.
Journalists risk their life, but maybe less than in Iraq, and definitely less than in most African countries, not to talk about Chechnia or Tibet.
The Israel-Palestinian conflict is for them an easy way to stay, in their mind, the heroes that they believe themselves to be. It is so easy to just stay safely inside Israel, send a Palestinian team to do the work, and then, when everything is set, to appear in front of a camera with a bullet proof vest and a helmet.
The price to pay, though, is that you then have to send only the kind of news that Palestinians want you to spread. You end up on prime time with this simplistic image of a poor Palestinian kid throwing a stone at a tank. Nobody then wonders, what is this kid doing on a battle field ? Where are the parents? Who is this guy hiding behind him with a kalachnikov? Would the kid be there if this was really dangerous? How old is the soldier facing him? Perhaps only two years older... etc.
Once a journalist told me: "We have 30 seconds to tell this prime time story called "Intifada Al Aqsa." The story was written by Palestinians and Israel plays the bad guys. Write your own scenario and the media will buy it.
According to Lee Kaplan in an article titled The Saudi Fifth Column on Our Nations Campuses (wnd.com 4/5/04)
the Saudis have steadily infiltrated American educational institutions, using vast infusions of money to turn the American educational system against US support for Israel and in favor of the Saudi vision of a global Muslim state in which not only Jews but Christians and all infidels will have subordinate status to the followers of the “true faith.” At the same time they look to affect American policy in the Middle East and public opinion in the US in a way to aid their Wahhabist goals..Over the last 30 years the Saudi royal family has contributed upwards of 70 billion US dollars to infiltrate worldwide institutions with propaganda against the West and Israel...
One wonders why a theocratic totalitarian regime where 30% to 50% of the population is illiterate, and where PhDs teach that Jews use the blood of gentile children to make matzoh, would take such interest in the American educational system instead of their own. Yet the money the Saudis are pouring into our universities and colleges as gifts and endowments is alarming: King Fahd donated $20 million dollars to set up a Middle East Studies Center at the University of Arkansas; $5 million was donated to UC Berkeley’s Center For Middle East Studies from two Saudi sheiks linked to funding Al Qaeda; $2.5 million dollars to Harvard; $8.1 million dollars to Georgetown including a $500,000 scholarship in the name of President Bush; $11 million dollars to Cornell; $1.5 million dollars to Texas A&M; $5 million dollars to MIT; $1 million dollars to Princeton; Rutgers received $5 million dollars to endow a chair as did Columbia which tried to hide where the money came from. Saudi largesse included UC Santa Barbara; Johns Hopkins; Rice University; American University in Washington, D.C.; University of Chicago; Syracuse University; USC; UCLA; Duke University; and Howard University among many others.
By creating new Middle East Studies Centers and such endowed chairs on campuses across the US, the Saudis are able to influence the curriculum taught to the next generation of American students about the Middle East situation as taught at Saudi-funded madrassas both here and abroad. That curriculum is decidedly anti-Western and full of incitement against Christians and Jews. Based not on truth as much as the agenda of the totalitarian regime in power, it “molds” the next generation to hate Israel and to hate America as an “imperialist” or “racist” nation.
Saudi money sets up these academic departments with anti-American and anti-Israel agendas, but U.S. taxpayers underwrite the programs themselves. This is done through Title VI funding mandated by Congress. ..
most Middle East Studies departments let their students slide by with minimal Arabic instruction. The focus is on research articles that serve the worldwide cause of jihad when they have any contemporary relevance at all. It goes also for “outreach” programs to secondary schools that are little more than propaganda efforts against Israel and the United States.
Co-mingled funding for Middle East centers goes into stipends, scholarships and fellowships for Arab students to support them in their work as activists spearheading Muslim and Palestinian groups on campus. While handpicked Arab professors and sympathizers “reeducate” the student body to the proper “point of view,” these student activist groups carry it forward by creating an atmosphere that permeates campuses with anti-American and anti-Israeli propaganda. A tour of any major campus will reveal the noted presence of professionally produced flyers posted against Israel and “Zionists” (the new euphemism for Jews), or against American policy in Iraq, and "film festivals" and lectures devoted to crude attacks on alleged Israeli "massacres" and other alleged atrocities.
Daniel Pipes wrote an article titled Become a Muslim Warrior (Jerusalem Post 7/2/02) in which he shows how Islam is being preached in American Public schools.
The American Textbook Council did a study of how history text books portray Islam (The Washington Times 2/7/03) and found that
When any dark side [of Islam] surfaces, textbooks run and hide... Subjects such as jihad and the advocacy of violence among militant Islamists to attain worldly ends, the imposition of [Shariah] law, the record of Muslim enslavement, and the brutal subjection of women are glossed over.
According to the study the Council on Islamic Education, formed in Orange County, Calif., in 1989, has sent publishers guidelines and definitions for words for the textbook treatments and protests if texts offend Muslim sensibilities. According to the report:
For more than a decade, history-textbook editors have done the Council's bidding, and as a result, history textbooks accommodate Islam on terms that Islamists demand
The report noted that the Council on Islamic Education, which influences California public schools with materials and classroom speakers, is not listed as a nonprofit group and is funded by private donors. Mr. Gilbert, the director of the American Textbook Council said that:
My efforts to find out where the money comes from have met a stone wall,
The JTA says textbooks used in public schools
across the United States "are highly critical of democratic institutions
and forgiving of repressive ones." The books also "praise and sometimes
promote Islam, but criticize Judaism and Christianity and are filled
with false assertions." (Saudi Arabia's Tentacles, New York Sun,
11/3/2005)
One such book is the "Arab World Studies Notebook." The JTA reports that
it suggests that Jews have "undue influence on U.S. foreign policy" and
that its country section omits any information on Israel and only refers
to "Palestine." The book writes that the Koran "synthesizes and perfects
earlier revelations," namely Jewish and Christian. According to the JTA
the two organizations behind the book - the Arab World and Islamic
Resources and the Middle East Policy Council - receive funding from
Saudi Arabia: AWAIR from the state-owned Saudi Aramco oil company and
MPEC directly from Riyadh. According to MPEC's Web site it has
"conducted Workshops in 175 different cities in 43 states," which "more
than 16,000 educators have attended."
The American Jewish Committee published a study in February criticizing
the book and urged "school districts across the nation" to ban it.
On Thursday 12/19/02 PBS aired a pro-Islam propaganda piece about Muhammad. George Neumayr described the piece as follows (Pledge Week Islam,The American Prowler 12/20/02):
While he wasn't a "21st century" advocate of feminism, one of PBS's propagandists conceded ... he came pretty darn close... What about his polygamy? Well, don't start jumping to conclusions. It was not a symbol of heavy-handed patriarchy -- PBS's usual interpretation of polygamy -- but a kind of jobs program/welfare system for widows.
Yes, Muhammad was a "warrior" but only a "defensive" one. Yes, he presided over a mass execution of Jews but this wasn't "anti-Semitism per se." "Most scholars of this episode agree that neither party acted outside the bounds of normal relations in 7th century Arabia," PBS helpfully adds on its web page...Is PBS the magisterium of Islam? It trots out experts who say confidently that warring on the infidel is "contrary to Islam." How would PBS know? ...At one point in the documentary, a go-to-PBS.org-for-the-real-meaning-of-jihad bubble appeared on the bottom of the screen. If you go to it, you will search in vain for Islam's understanding of jihad, but you will find PBS's. Jihad is a self-improvement concept, according to PBS. Yoga, writing checks to NOW, eating right -- that' s jihad for PBS.
You see, PBS's grasp of Islam far exceeds that of Muslim sheiks who call for holy war. They just don't understand their own religion as purely as PBS producers do.
If PBS's Islamic theology is correct, then Islam stands as one of the greatest misunderstandings in history. For a religion not of the sword, as PBS insists, Muhammad's followers wielded it quite frequently. Those who lived with Muhammad and listened to him somehow concluded -- who knows, perhaps from seeing him war himself -- that spreading Islam by force of arms was okay. Silly them. Laboring under this misunderstanding, they went on to conquer parts of Italy, Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Russia, the Balkans, North Africa, the Middle East, Persia, Christian Byzantium, and India. What a misunderstanding! Under the tutelage of Bill Moyers, they would have seen that Islam justifies not imperialism, but only "defensive warfare" and only the "improvement of one's self as the 'greater' jihad," as PBS's webpage puts it.
At least one of the funders is Saudi, The Arabian Bulk Trading, Ltd. Such funding may be responsible for the virulently anti-Israel and anti-Jewish nature of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of the University of London. Gavin Gross a student at this school was threatened with disciplinary action for standing up against anti-semitism on campus (UK Student Warned to Stop Protesting Jew-Hatred, frontpagemag.com 6/27/05). Gavin Gross gave examples of the anti-Jewish propaganda there one of which I quote below: