Independent Interviewers Expose How Mainstream Media Lets Politicians Off the Hook
Two recent podcasts demonstrated what happens when establishment politicians, whose prepared talking points never stray from what serves as the conventional wisdom about Israel-Palestine, run up against interviewers unwilling to give them a pass.
Two July podcasts hosted by progressive media stars and featuring leading Democratic lawmakers brought home the deep disconnect that exists between the way establishment politicians and media operate and the way both come to speak about the Middle East and the realities that exist in that region.
Late last month, Mehdi Hasan hosted Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) on his podcast “Mehdi Unfiltered,“ while Congressman Adam Smith (D-Wash.) joined Krystal Ball on her program “Breaking Points.” Because Warner is the ranking Democratic member on the Senate Intelligence Committee and Smith is the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, one might have expected more from them. The conversations were respectful, but neither of the lawmakers was prepared for the grilling they received from their respective hosts.
Both programs demonstrated what happens when establishment politicians, whose prepared talking points never stray from what serves as the conventional wisdom about Israel-Palestine, run up against interviewers unwilling to give them a pass. Two observations must be made: one is about the relationship that has come to exist between establishment politics and mainstream media; the other is how Israel-Palestine is playing out in the US.
One can see the incestuous relationship between political and media elites in full bloom at the annual White House correspondents’ dinner. President Donald Trump has painted the media as “the enemy” and purveyors of “fake news,” establishing an adversarial relationship with the mainstream media. He can afford to do so because for the last 30 years far-right Republicans have set up their own multi-platform alternative media. They have their own TV networks, newspapers, social media sites (including Trump’s own “Truth Social”).
The lesson that comes through so clearly in both interviews is the important role being played by new independent progressive media.
In Washington, most politicians (liberal Democrats and centrist Republicans alike) and the mainstream media figures who report on them work and live in close proximity to one another. Their homes are in the same neighborhoods; they send their children to the same schools, attend the same houses of worship, and socialize together. There’s also a “revolving door” factor, as some former government officials leave their posts to become highly paid TV hosts or commentators, and some journalists leave their positions to accept government appointments.
At the White House correspondents’ dinner, “celebrities” from both of these worlds mingle. They throw polite jabs at one another, but their respective jobs require them to use the occasion to be seen and make contacts. This fraternization causes some in the media to temper their coverage—especially as, in the competitive world of today’s media, if a journalist aggressively crosses the wrong officials or breaks from conventional wisdom on a controversial issue of some importance, they may end up losing access to the officials they cover or even losing their positions.
This problem is most pronounced when it comes to media coverage of the Middle East. There’s no doubt that public opinion regarding Israel-Palestine has changed, but this isn’t the case when it comes to the media and political elites. For evidence one can point to polling data, votes in Congress, the number of elections in which critics of Israel have won, and the hundreds of millions of dollars that pro-Israel groups have poured into both defeating what they call “anti-Israel radicals” and attempting to influence the public discourse. But these two shows revealed the impact of the changes in other ways.
For example, when senior political figures from either party appear on major network TV shows to discuss the Middle East, the conversations are usually constrained by the uninformed conventional wisdom shared by both politicians and their interviewers. This is the case for two reasons. First, almost no major network media figures know the history, culture, or politics of the Middle East. For most reporters, that region’s history began the day they got the assignment. Even those who have spent years reporting on the Middle East tend to view it through the conflicts they’ve been assigned to cover or briefings they’ve received from policymakers, who in turn generally have no direct knowledge of the people impacted by their policies. And the stable of experts the networks regularly invite as commentators are largely former government officials who have failed in the past, learned no lessons from their mistakes, and therefore continue to propagate the same views that have defined their sad careers.
It’s much the same when we look at the way lawmakers approach the Middle East. Most are either ignorant about the region or its history or have “willed ignorance”—not wanting to know because the cliches of the conventional wisdom have served them well. Why make things complicated? “Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East,” “Israel is an ally that protects US interests,” or a variation on “Israel wants peace, but the Arabs only want to destroy Israel.”
Regardless of what other Middle East-related issues elected officials are discussing, cliches like these form the backdrop to their thinking. Accepted wisdom shared by politicians and media alike. So when Rep. Smith and Sen. Warner sat down with interviews with Ball and Hasan, they were clearly unprepared to be grilled on: how the US can continue to provide advanced military support to Israel when it uses this aid in violation of international law; whether millions of dollars from pro-Israel super-PACs are negatively impacting our elections; or whether Palestinians should be guaranteed equal rights in Israel-Palestine.
For example, when Krystal Ball pressed Rep. Smith on why he would support a provision that would provide for Israel to co-produce weapons with the US military, he immediately fell back on the very tired cliche that since 1948 Arabs have been trying to destroy Israel. She reminded him of the expulsion of Palestinians and asked if he believed in equal rights and whether that applied to Palestinians’ right to return, he felt compelled to answer in the negative. He did so arguing that if Palestinians had equal rights, then Arabs might become the majority, and Israel would no longer be an ethno-national state.
Smith might have gotten away with these answers on a major network news program, but Krystal Ball was unwilling to accept the false historical narrative that has become the conventional wisdom. As she challenged him, it became clear that Smith was uneasy. He was no longer given a pass allowing him to remain in his comfort zone.
Much the same occurred between Mehdi Hasan and Sen. Warner. When Hasan asked Warner whether he would agree that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza, he awkwardly sidestepped the question with a non sequitur saying that he wouldn’t use that term because he was concerned that it only served to fuel those who want to eliminate Israel by chanting “from the river to the sea!” Mehdi would have none of this nonsense and continued pressing the senator. Equally confounding were the senator’s convoluted evasions when he was asked whether he felt that campaign contributions from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee played a negative role in US politics.
Some evidence of the changing public mood on Israel did come through in both interviews since both lawmakers indicated that they were feeling enough public pressure forcing them to oppose some of the proposed Israeli military aid packages included in the new budget, but then displayed their lack of understanding by falling back on the “new conventional wisdom” of saying that they were doing so only because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the problem and they didn’t want to reward him.
The lesson that comes through so clearly in both interviews is the important role being played by new independent progressive media. They know the issues they cover, their questions aren’t scripted, and they are not afraid to challenge elites.
