We really do need to pay more attention to how our own minds operate, and how we are both consciously and subconsciously effected by Media Propaganda.
A Chinese friend recently wrote to me to complain about a new workmate. He wrote lots, but in relation to the content of an article that I wish to draw to your attention, please allow me to quote just one line from my friends email:
- Then she said:"Did you hear of Cats, the Russian musical?" I told her Cats was an English musical written by the most famous musical composer Andrew Lloyd Webber. But she just won't agree with me.
Sometimes we really do need to stop and take a 'reality check'.
Recently, my regular newsletter from Women for Israel's Tomorrow contained an interesting article that pointed out that the World's Journalists and Media Organisations, suffer from a New and as yet not formally recognised Medical Condition.
The article, entitled: Obsessive and Compulsive actually made for interesting reading. The Readers comments on the original website were also interesting.
Let me just present a little of what was contained in the article. I have taken great liberty here to rearrange the material. I hope that the original author whose name did not appear in the article, does not mind.
Here goes:
In the past 20 years the 24/7 cable news, internet and social networking sites have revolutionized the way we receive information.
In January 2009, when Israel launched operation Cast Lead, to root out rocket fire from the Gaza strip, the media covered every minute. There was no shortage of information that often presented Israel as the aggressor and perpetrator of all the violence in the region.
While a tiny country was trying to secure its borders from rocket attack the world was going through major challenges.
* The Ethiopian military withdrew its troops from the Somalia civil war. This ongoing conflict has killed 300-400 thousand people since 1991.
* Indian Army continued to battle Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed militants in the disputed Kashmir region. This ongoing conflict has seen countless civilian massacres and terror attacks.
* The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a Sri Lanka terrorist group, launched major offensives around the northern part of the country including the bombing the state department of defense. 80 thousand people have been killed in the country's civil war, including 8000 this year alone.
While the media was predominantly reporting only on the conflict in the Gaza Strip as a prime example, the world was going through universal struggle.
Now the point of revealing all of this about the media, is to point out that this concentration of media coverage on Israel, is actually the result of a psychological disorder. The writer explains that:
- Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a mental disorder that causes repeated unwanted and intrusive thoughts.
- OCD is caused by one part of the brain being unable to receive information from the other.
The author calls this new disease: "Obsessive Compulsive Israel Disorder or OCID."
- Just like OCD stops the flow of information from one part of the brain to the other, OCID, stopped the flow of the rest of the important events going in the world.
My point in presenting the OCID article, is to point out that we live in a very technological age, and information flows fast and free, but often we do not take the time to put that information into perspective. For this reason I have written many articles on the issue of Truth and Media. For Instance:
It's very easy to 'take sides' in an issue, and it is very easy to be persuaded of a cause, but at the end of the day, unless it is our specific purpose to blind ourselves to the truth, it is encumbent upon us to do our best to look at every situation from as many persepectives as possible.
To put it in the words of the Article Title previously mentioned, we need to make sure that we are not 'obsessive and compulsive' in our political and social judgements.
Read the full story on OCID
R.P. BenDedek
Email: rpbendedek@hotmail.com
R.P.BenDedek is the pseudonym of the Author of 'The King's Calendar: The Secret of Qumran' (http://www.kingscalendar.com/), and is a guest columnist at Magic City Morning Star News. An Australian, he is currently teaching Conversational English in Baotou, Inner Mongolia, China.
Articles on the Middle East Kingscalendar
"The King's Calendar" is a chronological study of the historical books of the Bible (Kings and Chronicles), Josephus, Seder Olam Rabbah, and the (Essene) Damascus Document of The Dead Sea Scrolls.
