In a Middle East Forum (MEF)/American Jewish University (AJU) October 14 podcast (video), AJU’s Rick Richman moderated a discussion of how conservative media covers Islamism in the Middle East, highlighting both strengths and areas for improvement in its reporting and analysis.
Guest speakers: Jim Hanson, author of Winning the Second Civil War: Without Firing a Shot, is chief editor for the Middle East Forum and previously served in the U.S. Army Special Forces conducting counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, and foreign internal defense operations in more than two dozen countries; and David Reaboi, senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy and author of Qatar’s Shadow War: the Islamist Emirate and its Information Operations in the United States.
The following summarizes their comments:
David Reaboi:
Even before the rise of the internet and social media, mainstream media was primarily biased towards the left, particularly in its treatment of Israel. “Since the Lebanon War of ’82, it had been growing progressively anti-Israel.” This trend continued from the first World Trade Center attack in 1993 “all the way up to the first and second intifadas.”
Since 2020, we find ourselves in a “2.0 era of social media” largely “driven by economics.”
As for conservative media, it “amounted to a bunch of magazines and, frankly, talk radio—and that was it.” After America suffered the Islamist attack of September 11, 2001, early bloggers were people who had been “definitely in the center and then moved Right after 9/11 to address the threat of Islamism.” “A lot of those writers at the time were not exactly coming from movement conservatism. They kind of called themselves or thought of themselves as 9/11 neocons, which is mugged by reality. Americans who were not Left-wing, but definitely in the center and then moved Right after 9/11 to address the threat of Islamism.” In response to 9/11, America declared war against terrorism, sending troops to Iraq.
During “the waning days” of America’s long war in Iraq, the public experienced battle fatigue and wanted to “move on.” This mood coincided with the next phase in media—“the market consolidation era”—when internet newspapers on the Right relegated Islamism to a “niche issue” and expanded their coverage to varied news topics.
Against the backdrop of historic events such as the Arab Spring, Brexit, and Donald Trump’s 2016 victory, social media took off with the rise of Twitter’s popularity. Focus on Islamism became in this context the preserve of a particular group of individuals in the conservative media world alongside others who focused on a large variety of issues.
Since 2020, we find ourselves in a “2.0 era of social media” largely “driven by economics.” People can earn their livelihoods monetizing their accounts “by amassing a large number of followers.” Some are “taking money behind the scenes to push a particular narrative” or are paid to give their impressions in accordance with the rules of X (formerly Twitter). The result is that efforts to maximize profits can lead to “disinformation” and the spreading of “fake news.”
The social media phenomenon gained traction with “the complete collapse of legitimacy of the mainstream media.” Much of mainstream media eschewed investigative reporting “from Covid to Russiagate.” Instead of dispelling false or misleading information, in many cases mainstream media contributed to the dissemination of disinformation on social media by amplifying it. For example, it continued to portray President Joe Biden as competent, despite increasing signs to the contrary. Suddenly, Biden is replaced by Vice President Kamala Harris, who herself repeatedly attested to her boss’s abilities and competence, with little pushback from the mainstream media.
The viewing public “notices this and they say, ‘These people in the mainstream media are lying to us, and they’ve been lying to us for quite a while.’” Given the environment of public skepticism, social media became “catnip for conspiracy theories.” The false belief that there “are powerful people controlling everything” as “one giant mechanism” feeds the mentality that if these forces can be unmasked, then “we can fix the problem in a snap.” Rather than “face the reality” of a “quite bleak” unknown, the susceptible cling to conspiracy theories as a “security blanket.”
Podcast personalities such as Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens entered the social media fray, catering to the “disaffected people who are ready to believe anything.”
Podcast personalities such as Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens entered the social media fray, catering to the “disaffected people who are ready to believe anything.” In such a vacuum, “hardcore antisemitism” that hearkens back to the “blood libel days” is easily spread by purveyors of anti-Jewish, anti-Israel hatred.
Twitter, now X, became saturated with activity that included “foreign state actors” who inject “pro-Islamist narratives or chaos-centered narratives into the conversation.” Qatar, for example, is active in propagating anti-Israel, pro-Hamas, and anti-American content. Qatar is “pump[ing] millions of dollars into this country via a loophole” to influence public opinion. Doha is “paying off tons of people” in media and talk radio, and even investing “a big chunk into the conservative site, Newsmax.”
The online problem is compounded by bots from Iran and other malign foreign actors such as China and Russia, where “you don’t know what’s real, you don’t know what’s fake.” These bots generate “massive antisemitic, anti-Israel accounts with a crazy amount of likes and retweets.” Since 2015, online networks from these foreign adversaries have been flooding the internet with anti-American and pro-Islamist propaganda. “It’s confusing and it’s a wild time, especially if you log onto social media, it can be absolutely dispiriting.”
Despite the flood of Islamist propaganda on the internet, the fact remains that Republican Party “voters and the institutional apparatus” are against antisemitism and are pro-Israel. Sources of balance and journalistic integrity exist in reputable online conservative news magazines. Examples are Tablet, a “place for heterodox, super smart, wonderful coverage of the region,” The Scroll, Tablet’s Substack’s daily news coverage, and Bari Weiss’s Free Press, to name a few.
Jim Hanson:
“An egregious example of an influence operation that was largely perpetrated in non-standard media is the idea of Gaza genocide.” Online accusations of genocide distorted “the actual realities on the ground to further that narrative.” Multiple pages created by Islamist actors, including Qatar and Iran, populated Google searches, some picked up by mainstream media. “The enemies of Israel started a war, caused a reaction, and then benefited from that reaction.”
Hamas wanted civilian deaths to mount to “generate the idea that Israel is committing a genocide against their people.” The viral output pushed by the terror groups and their Iranian sponsor were “just sucked up by the major outlets.” The narrative suited journalists’ needs, repetitively quoting from the Gaza Health Ministry, a Hamas-controlled institution, for its reportage on civilian casualties. Legitimizing Hamas obscured Israel’s war waged against the terrorists who perpetrated October 7, and the mainstream media along with “everyone who did, committed journalistic malpractice and malfeasance.”
Rational thinkers should “want the best ideas of the Left and the Right to fight it out in the public square and let people decide for themselves.”
Much of the problem is predictable, given that the people who occupy powerful positions in media, both on the Left and the Right, were trained in U.S. universities. Most campuses are “hotbeds of Leftist radicalism and Islamist thought” where anti-Israel views about the Jewish state are taught through a biased and distorted lens. The result is an “echo chamber where this information goes flying in, and it’s amplified and redistributed and creates a reality of its own because there is no genocide in Gaza.”
The general corrosive effect is that “anyone who passes through four years of American higher education comes out either toughened if they have the ability to wear enough armor to avoid this, but more than likely influenced into thought patterns and ideas that do not in any way reflect the history of the region or the reality of the current time.”
To address online challenges, the X platform is changing its algorithm. Initially, its model was initiated “to create a more engagement-based” exchange to encourage people to communicate by replying to posted information with comments. The model was faulty because X did not perfect its mechanism to be capable of determining “who was who.” That crack in the system enabled lies and propaganda to become widespread. People interacted with comments in a way that would “generate revenue for them but was not furthering the conversation.”
The positive trend in social media is that there are now “credible voices” that include X’s Upward News. Podcasts provide alternatives for Gen Z, who get their information online rather than from mainstream media. These voices create a more “balanced playing field in the information space.” Rational thinkers should “want the best ideas of the Left and the Right to fight it out in the public square and let people decide for themselves.”
Scrutinize and vet credible voices in order “to evaluate, and then dig into yourself and look at both sides of any issue and find the reality that you accept based on your evaluation of that, not based on their attempted indoctrination of you. And I would say that’s a good state of play and a path forward.”
