Economist Stuff

The folks at The Economist aren't Zionists, but at least they try to do journalism well. Here's how they report about the construction issues in Jerusalem. Do they put it as I would? No. Is it a reasonable approximation of facts and views of both sides? Yes. Would that all journalism was remotely like this.

Though of course they do inadvertently display their own subjective position, and explain why it's all wrong, in a single sentence:

Race, religion, creed and sometimes even gender are supremely relevant if the Holy City, a complex web of separate Jewish and Arab districts, is ever to be divided peaceably into the capitals of two states, Israel and Palestine.

A pretty good explanation of why it can't happen, I'd say.

Then there's this column about the Eurocrats who rule - or not - from Brussels. They're not evil people, nor is their project particularly malicious as large-scale human projects go. Yet they're deeply wary of nationalism, and skeptical of allowing the general public too much a say in the running of things, which is to say they aren't fully democratic. This description easily fits much of the left these days, certainly the far left in Israel; it also goes part way to explain why these people are fundamentally not on Israel's side: a nationalist project in which the electorate disagrees with the educated, secular, self-anointed elite.

Of course, it doesn't explain why they think Palestinian nationalism is such a fine thing.

Finally, the pundit on the UK - Bagehot - is leaving his post this week, and summarizes three years of political punditry. In his understated English way, he's mildly dismissive of how journalism works these days (bloggerism, too).

Political commentators, in other words, have concerned themselves with what will happen; what has happened; and what should happen. Few have addressed what is happening—that is, whether policies work and how the country is changing. The commentariat is mostly too cocooned to ask. Bagehot has sometimes been guilty of this myopia himself.

One reason for it is that the British newspaper business cultivates provocation rather than consideration. The crowdedness of the market means people feel a need to yell to be heard; for all their virtues, political blogs and the internet have intensified the competition and the shrillness, making analysis ever more instant and intrusive.