There is no doubt that in today's short-attention span world of social media keyboard warriors that most people read a headline, look at a picture, and then maybe read just a bit of an article. If that article turns out to be "too long" they may form their opinion based solely on what the picture and / or title happen to be.
This is a real problem today as it seems more and more people get sucked into a particular programmed way of thinking and rarely read beyond the sites that various social media outlets and their choice of "friends" determined what is actual news. Out of the news stories that most people will have access to, I think only an intellectually dishonest person can argue against the fact that most media outlets have an agenda, and their agenda, unfortunately, isn't for you to be informed.
Example one - Palestine cut off during Covid
Now when someone looks at this how they feel about Palestine is going to influence how they choose to interpret this. The "free Palestine" or "anti Israel" people are going to feel a sense of anger, while the people on an extreme right-wing side might be feeling a sense of "good riddance, the Palestinians are trouble makers!" or something along those lines.
However, if a person just reads the headline they will not be privy to some very essential items that are contained in the article such as.
- The Palestinian Authority approved these actions. It was NOT an unilateral decision
- Products are still allowed through the blockades
- The PA has their own checkpoints as well at the same locations
- The PA and Israel have been working together to combat the spread of Covid-19 with a joint committee
But most people out there wont even read the article and if they do care about it, they might seek out op-ed sites that have a biased slant towards their own beliefs anyway and those sites are going to conveniently omit any of the above information and instead just focus on the manufactured outrage inside of fringe communities.
Example 2: Israeli military are the aggressors
The headline intentionally leaves out the fact that the Palestinians were the ones driving the car. The wording is vague enough that some viewers would assume that the Israeli soldiers did the ramming. You had to dig pretty hard in order to find out that the drivers of the car also had the car loaded with Molotov cocktails and had recently used them in a nearby fire-bombing.
The Israeli soldiers only opened fire after they were intentionally rammed and injured. The occupants of the car were not "brutally executed," they were shot because they attacked soldiers - which is what happens when you ram your explosive laden car into armed soldiers.
Example three: Who was doing the stabbing?
This one from NBC news is terrible for a number of reasons: Their capitalization is all over the place and completely defies all journalistic or grammatical standards. Also they are, if you bother reading the article, hiding the fact that the violence that resulted in the American tourist (not American Tourist) getting killed was done by a Palestinian that went on a 20-minute stabbing spree in Jaffa which killed one and wounded several others. It's very strange about how they seem so dedicated to a particular political cause that they intentionally leave out the most important information in the headline. They use creative language in the body of the article as well so that it is very difficult to identify who was actually doing the stabbing at all.
2 of these 3 articles are from a while ago and one of them is rather recent. It just goes to show that the media hasn't been interested in telling a real story in quite some time. Instead they want to suck people into a certain way of thinking and I have a difficult time imagining why they would do that. Since clickbait titles that appeal to a certain political bias seem to be working out for a lot of different media outlets, I wouldn't count on this changing any time soon. People need to wake up and stop being spoon-fed information and if you truly care, find out the real story on your own. The media has ceased to be "news."
Disclaimer: I am not trying to make any sort of pro-Israel or pro-Palestine argument here - I am merely pointing out that the media, for the most part, is completely full of it
Oh no doubt. I remember headlines where they were talking about something bad that a Democrat had done but they listed his name as Rep. First name Last name in the efforts to convince the public that he was a Republican even though he wasn't. No where in the article did they indicate that this person was actually a Democrat and since he was a state senator or something minor, there was no reason that anyone would look.
yes, this tactic of using Rep. any time it is a Democrat involved is extremely common. However, if it is a Republican involved, the news is very careful to identify him / her as such.