I refuse to label the mainstream media as anti-Semitic. It's too easy. However, one of the things that I noticed over the weekend was that on most of the "babbling heads" programs, anti-Israel folks can say whatever outlandish (and untrue) things they want about what is happening over there and NOBODY ever challenges them on their veracity. Is that anti-Semitic or is that just intellectual laziness? I have to give O'Reilly credit (despite my basic lack of respect for the man) for at least not letting people get away with that type of thing.

In addition, in that curious disconnect that seems to occur all too frequently, for YEARS the mainstream press has failed to report adequately the endless and never-ending attacks upon Israel. Is that simple fatigue, laziness or anti-Semitism? Yes, we know about the suicide bombers but it seems to be a sort of "Ho hum, another suicide bombing. Let's move on" kind of mention rather than the genuine outrage that this kind of warfare should evoke.

I do not know what the answer is although I could probably throw out a guess that it's a combination of a lot of factors including laziness, fatigue AND anti-Semitism. Unless and until more than just the blogsphere holds their feet to the fire, I don't think much is going to change. They're apparently making money doing same-old, same-old so why SHOULD the mainstream media make any attempt to improve their performance? After all, they have given Pulitzers to plagiarists!

You make some nice points, Gayle. I didn't mean to imply that the MSM is necessarily anti-Semitic. What I was saying is that they're more than happy to oversaturate the news with the Gibson story, while they practically ignore the shooting in Seattle because they are afraid of Muslim reaction. Sorry if this wasn't clear in my post.

Nothing wrong with the editor's, it's the readers who buy the papers that make the decisions on what papers will run. After all, their first job is to sell papers.

It's the AMerican public you have issues with, not the media.

Who requires the most visible discrediting of his anti-semitic views and his public character?: A murdering racist, whose only claim to fame is walking into a building and shooting innocent people, OR a public figure who has talked about his great Christian faith, and how the Holy Ghost guided him in the production of The Passion so that movie could become a vehicle of Evangelism.

Jesus said ""Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because you tithe mint, and anise, and cummin, and have left the weightier things of the law; judgment, and mercy, and faith. These things you ought to have done, and not to leave those undone. Blind guides, who strain out a gnat, and swallow a camel." Count the numbers of words here, then count the words Jesus had to say about murder, "Thous shalt not Kill". There were plenty of examples of murder around Jesus. The Romans were killing people all around him but he picked on those fundamentalist Pharisees about their hypocricy. Maybe Jesus was anti-Semitic or lazy or fatigued? Or maybe, just maybe, he recognized that the leaders where setting a bad example, and that their actions and inactions caused even more people to be led astray.

Hypocrites always get more attention than true believers because their own actions call their words and their true beliefs into question. That critisism has only become more acute since a certain political party has chosen to marry religion to politics and government. In their minds, cristisism of one is now critisism of both.

I'd like for there to be some nefarious reason for the disparity in coverage, like anti-semitism. I'd like even more if Keith were right and teh MSM had recognized that Gibson needed discrediting more than Haq. But I am very afraid that the reason is that nobody really cares on a national level about a murder, even a racially motivated one,in Seattle. And Mel Gibson screaming obsenities and driving drunk makes really good copy.
Gayle, your anti-semitism argument would be a little more secure if more Arabs civilians weren't been killed every year by the Isreali Army than isreali civilians had been killed by suicide bombers. Maybe the MSM is really anti-arab. Personally I think that this kind of thing has been going on over there for so long that it just isn't news any more.

IB - you will need to provide some STASTISTICAL proof of your argument claiming that more Arabs have been killed. Are you including those killed in the wars in 1948, 1967, etc. that were ALL started by the ARABS - because if you are, that just proves that the Israelis have a superior military, capable of self defense!

For those who aren't old enough to remember, since 1948 the Arab policy through the Arab world has been the TOTAL DESTRUCTION OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL AND ALL ITS INHABITANTS - and they have made a point of acting on that. Or don't you recall the Munich Olympics outrage? The kibbutzim working quietly on their collective farms massacred regularly since 1948? Years and years of endless suicide bombings by the so-called Palestinians - some murderous baboon wandering into a wedding or a pizza parlor and just blowing up as many Israelis as he/she could? And then the West (as in Europe) having the brass balls to CRITICIZE Israel when they decided to build a protective fence!

And IB - before you even ask - I am a lifelong, practicing Catholic.

I had hoped that, after World War II, when the reality of the Holocaust was fully revealed, that we would finally figure out that "hating" was a shameful thing. And IB, when WWII ended, I was 4 years old so I DO remember. And in the 61 years since the end of that conflict, have people's better angels triumphed more often? Sadly, I do not think so.

And Pam, I wasn't criticizing anything you wrote. Just expressing my view of things. You know how much I respect you, I hope.