Jonathan Cook

RINF Alternative News

Here is CNN’s Diana Magney put in a very uncomfortable position indeed for a mainstream reporter. She has to acknowledge the delight a large crowd of Israelis on a hilltop near Sderot are taking in watching missiles hurtling into Gaza. As they cheer in the background of her video report as a missile explodes (see link to CNN below), she has to explain what the noise is.

Notice too how the cameraman avoids panning across to show the celebrating Israelis, despite Magney assuming that we can see them. Can you imagine CNN not leaping at the chance to film Palestinians cheering Israeli deaths? No, neither can I.

This is a narrative the media like to play up in the case of Palestinians, but not when it refers to Israelis.

That may in part also explain her angry tweet against the crowd on the hill, calling them “scum” after they made threats if she did not say nice things about Israel. The tweet, of course, was quickly deleted — presumably after her minders at CNN intervened.

It is a revealing moment, showing the difference between the carefully choreographed, pantomime-like “reality” we are supposed to be shown, and the far more complex and ugly reality on the ground.

(h/t Padraig McShane)

http://edition.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/world/2014/07/17/tsr-magnay-israel-gaza-invasion-begins.cnn.html

Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist based in Nazareth, Israel, since 2001.