Americans who get their news primarily from cable are the only people who believe that Israel is not committing a genocide in Gaza, according to a new survey that examined the relationship between attitudes toward the war and news consumption habits.
The survey puts numbers on trends that have become increasingly apparent: Cable news viewers are more supportive of Israel’s war effort, less likely to think Israel is committing war crimes, and less interested in the war in general. People who get their news primarily from social media, YouTube, or podcasts, by contrast, generally side with the Palestinians, believe Israel is committing war crimes and genocide, and consider the issue of significant importance.
And yet there are still lots of people on here who tell us that western media is not biased, and trot out nonsense like mediabiasfactcheck to argue why we should only consume information from mainstream western sources.
I talked to a boomer fox news watcher recently, and apparently the current party line is that since the US firebombed dresden, what Israel is doing to Gaza is justified. The US even bombed white europeans, so how can you criticize them for killing middle-easterners?
IE, nothing wrong with murdering civilians as long as the US did it first, and to criticize Israel for doing what the US already did is unpatriotic, and the protesters have no right to protest this genocide.
At least the US right is honest about their values, and make no justifications or apologies for civilian murder.
TV will be known as the lead in the pipes that drove Rome mad.
Its sad how effective tv propaganda is. I’m glad social media, despite all its flaws exists now.
Only social media users said they’d be more likely to support a candidate who supported Palestinians (33-19 percent). Just 15 percent of cable news viewers said the same, even though 31 percent of cable viewers agreed that Israel was committing genocide against Palestinians.
Does this mean what I think it means? That roughly half of the cable news watchers who believe that Israel is commiting genocide literally do not care?
No necessarily half but that’s the logical result. theoretically there could be some weird group that doesn’t believe in genocide (part of the 69%) but would still support a pro Palestine candidate. Furthermore, as bad as the destruction of Palestine is many people only consider genocide to literally be the Holocaust and that style of commiting it. I could conceive of some pedants saying there isn’t a genocide but to stop the violence.
Though, I unfortunately think you might be right.
In your scenario, if some of the people who think there is no genocide still supported a pro Palestinians candidate (likely that there are at least some), then the number of people who believe there is a genocide, but still wouldn’t support a pro Palestinians candidate would be even higher. My scenario is actually the most optimistic one.
