Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land (2004)

Directed by

Bathsheba Ratzkoff, Sut Jhally

Genre

documentary film

Country

United States

Runtime

1h 20m

Rating

6.6 of 10 from 13 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

This documentary examines how American news media covers the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It argues that pro-Israel advocacy groups have shaped reporting to hide the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.

analyticalcriticalinformationalsoberingprovocativestudiousopinionatedeye-opening

What happens

Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land is a 2004 American documentary film directed by Sut Jhally and Bathsheba Ratzkoff which—according to the film's official website—"provides a striking comparison of U.S. and international media coverage of the crisis in the Middle East, zeroing in on how structural distortions in U.S. coverage have reinforced false perceptions of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict" and which "analyzes and explains how—through the use of language, framing and context—the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza remains hidden in the news media". The film argues that the influence of pro-Israel media watchdog groups, such as CAMERA and Honest Reporting, has led to distorted and pro-Israel media reports. It features Noam Chomsky, Robert Jensen, Hanan Ashrawi, Sam Husseini, and Robert Fisk, among others. In its response to the movie, the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) of San Francisco, a Jewish communal advocacy organization, criticized the film for not discussing the influence of "the numerous pro‐Palestinian media watchdog groups, including FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, which describes itself as 'A National Media Watch Group'), whose spokesperson played a prominent role in the film". A review in The New York Times by Ned Martel found that the film "largely ignores Palestinian leadership, which has surely played a part in the conflict's broken vows and broken hearts. And such a lack of dispassion weakens the one-sided film's bold and detailed argument". (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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