Soccer Dad

Doing the job the msm won't

With all the discussion about a possible ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, something been missing. Can we trust the international community to monitor Gazas borders and ensure that arm smuggling into Gaza is stopped or, at least, severely curtailed? The answer is no. And it's not Israel's experience with UN Security Council Resolution 1701, it's already happened in Gaza.

Last year, Gaza's border with Egypt was supposed to monitored by a team from the EU. Elder of Ziyon did a little digging. When he heard back from the monitoring group he discovered that there was a significant gap in the arrangement. Stuff like this doesn't interest the MSM, even though it has a bearing on how likely a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas will be successful. (Not very.)

Yet, the media folks are wailing about not being allowed into Gaza. Yaacov Lozowick isn't impressed.

While prominent journalists flown in to Israel to report on the war continue to kvetch about not being able to do their job properly because the IDF isn't allowing them into Gaza, Meryl Yourish sat at her desk in Richmond VA and used the internet. I don't know how much Meryl's time is worth, but she'll forgive me if I assume the time she spent on her bit of investigative journalism cost less than, say, putting up Jeremy Bowen for one night at the American Colony hotel in Jerusalem. Which is kind of sad, if you're a tax paying British person paying the upkeep of the BBC, since Meryl manages to do a far better job than Jeremy.

What did Meryl do? She used publicly available information to show that Hamas likely is deliberately targeting schools. Given the concern the media has shown for people killed by Israel due to the use of schools for cover by Hamas, you'd think they'd at least bit, a tiny bit curious. Wouldn't you?

And then some amateurs realized that a video shown on CNN was likely faked. So how does CNN behave? Do they act contrite? Well, no, they question other people's credentials.

If you're interested in keeping up with what's going on, bloggers Israelly Cool and the Muqata are liveblogging. Backspin is liveblogging the media war.

Jack is putting up regular linkfests that include many MSM and blogging reports. His latest is #13. He has links to all his previous editions, so start there and work backwards.

What he's doing is a lot of work, but today a blogger needed some information and e-mailed a number of us, including Jack. Jack had the answer.(Related items are here and here.)

So why do we blog? Because the MSM have only one way of looking at things. Bloggers have imagination.