Bob Simon 60 Minutes Israel Born Again Christians

After viewing CBS's 60 Minutes segment on "Christians of the Holy Country," I was struck by a question.

My question wasn't how the CBS fact-checkers could let a number of apartment-out incorrect statements be reported, or how they could let controversial statements from the interviewees stand unchallenged. Information technology wasn't fifty-fifty a question near the lack of parity in the interviews.

I wanted to know where the actual substance was. What is it that CBS really "reported?"

http://www.youtube.com/scout?five=ury-qf6lbU8

The construction of the segment is such that it is based around a solitary element of data: the demographics of Christians in the Holy Land.

Solitary, because the rest of the piece consists of Bob Simon speaking in platitudes and broad strokes about the complexities of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict while treating the viewers to familiar panoramic shots of graffitied concrete walls, green-clad soldiers manning border crossings, and the narrow stone alleyways of Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

What's more than is that he never actually attempts to show a specific thesis. He just sort of implies, against a backdrop of pictures and some interviews that at best speak in general terms about the conflict, that the responsibility for the drop in Christian population is directly tied to Israel.

How is it tied to State of israel?

Well, he only utilizes a coherent argument for "why." That is, he elaborates at length about "why" State of israel's ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, might want to stop the segment, and how airing it could damage support for Israel. Then Simon frames the ambassador'south deportment in conspiratorial terms and actually chastises him.

Islamic Move's banner opposite the main Churches of Nazareth. Reads: And whoever seeks a religion other than Islam, it will never exist accepted of him, and in the Futurity he volition be one of the losers - Holy Quran (http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com)

The detailed explanations stop there. In fact, Michael Oren is the only professor to appear in the segment at all.

Simon doesn't actually explicate the mechanics of why Christians are leaving the Holy Country, or how Israel's deportment affect Christians specifically.

That'southward considering such an explanation would require facts. And Simon and his team haven't got many of those.

Which raises another question: How far has the journalistic standard fallen that ten-odd minutes of tired Middle-Eastward clichés authorize as an "investigative report?"

Where are the academic experts on history, demographics, sociology and religion? Where are the charts of facts and figures? Where is any research at all?

If there is just ane complaint allowed of this episode, it isn't an allegation of bias or misreporting of facts — it is the non-reporting.

The sheer laziness of threescore Minutes credible in the segment should exist appalling non just to its viewers, simply should be cause for anger upstairs at CBS'southward management. What is it, after all, that Bob Simon and his team are paid for? It cannot be to only repeat an interviewee's claims as fact and go home, job washed.

The simplest cyberspace search would take constitute that the extremely cursory reply allowed to the Israeli ambassador, wherein he talks about the pass up of Christian communities throughout the Middle East, is the closest the segment gets to the existent story.

Dozens of bylines from news media such as the The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, B.B.C., Telegraph, Earth and Mail, Daily Mail, New York Post etc talk about actual, researched reasons for Christian flight from the Holy Land.

Specifically, in that location is much discussion of Muslim intimidation and violence toward Christians in places like Bethlehem, especially since the area was transferred to Palestinian control.

There is talk of Palestinian governmental corruption and ineffectiveness making the wealthier Christians piece of cake casualty for local criminals, specially when smaller Christian families are challenged past larger Muslim ones in thehamula-, or clan-oriented society.

The articles note how educated and Westernized Christians are more severely afflicted by the economic downturn of the violent intifadas, particularly in the tourism market.

The articles as well note how educated and Westernized Christians are able to immigrate with greater ease to places in the W, places where many of them already have family.

Hamas marchers rally in Bethlehem. Bethlehem Christians report increasing Islamist intimidation and harrassment of their community. (Wikimedia Commons)

Had he searched, Simon might have also found that the "Kairos" document, plugged in the segment as a "beloved and faith" solution to the trouble of dwindling Christian communities, actually praises an ambiguously divers idea of "resistance," calls for boycott of and divestment from Israel, and embraces the sort of replacement theology rejected past the 2d Vatican Quango.

The Franciscan custodian of the Holy Land disassociated himself from the Kairos certificate, and the Anti-Defamation League condemned it.

Simon'south team could also have found that neither a wall, nor whatsoever other office of State of israel'due south security barrier, "completely surrounds" Bethlehem, and that the Orthodox Patriarch's statement that in 1964 at that place were effectually thirty,000 Christians in Jerusalem's One-time Urban center is fiction, since there were less people than that living in the entire Old City.

Had Bob Simon and the squad at threescore Minutes actually reported, they might accept talked about parallels with all the Christian communities imploding across the Muslim-majority Middle E – in places without "Israeli settlements."

They might take also learned that the only land in the Center East to really have a growing Christian population is Israel.

And they would accept seen that numerous other journalists have reported that vulnerable Christian communities are fearful of speaking out against the real threats to their communities and prefer the society-recommended activity of blaming Israel for their plight. Blaming Israel is the option that may prevent, rather than invite, reprisals. Simon and his team may even accept ventured a guess as to why the Coca-Cola franchisee for the whole W Bank, a smart homo no uncertainty, amazingly has never heard of the miracle of anti-Christian violence.

Had Bob Simon performed existent, hard-hitting reporting, he might have used his position as a announcer to actually assist the Christians of the Holy Land. Instead his are just another pair of eyes airtight to their tragedy.

smithundranices.blogspot.com

Source: https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/what-did-cbss-60-minutes-actually-report/