One of the aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that disturbs people on the right and left, is the distortions of the media. The same is now true for the war in Iraq. I don’t think these distortions reflect inherent biases. Rather, they reflect the limitations of the various media and their relationship to the society in which they are “embedded.”
This article presents and interesting and thorough review of the issues. The Orwell piece mentioned can be found here.
“Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”
I will try harder to follow Orwell’s recommendations in writings for this blog.