How To Use Corporate Media In The Struggle To End Genocide In Gaza

Wissam Nassar, photojournalist, being a dad in Gaza

I dedicate this post to the fathers of Palestine who have shown the world a stellar example of male parenting in a time of genocide. May their suffering and that of their loved ones cease!

Debate rages in my circles over whether or when to use the corporate media to get the word out. My letter to the editor in the Maine Sunday Telegram today is a case study of the issues involved.

First, the Telegram published an op-ed by Nicholas Fuller Googins, "We are not powerless in the face of Gaza horror." In it he explained why he and other teachers passed a divestment resolution at their union's Representative Assembly. Like nearly any truly democratic body these days, Maine teachers by and large don't want to help fund Israel's genocide which has killed more than 16,000 children so far in Gaza. 

So, they instructed their pension fund MainePERS to divest from any entities causing harm to Palestinians or violating their human rights. (My blog post about the union president's response to this outbreak of the people's will can be seen here.)

Next I noticed a letter bashing Googins and insisting that Jewish parents pull their children out of schools in the district where he teaches in Saco. Here is that letter in its entirety:

Jewish parents should pull their children out of Saco schools if Nick Fuller Googins is the representative of teachers in that district. Mr. Googins, a fourth grade teacher at CK Burns School, penned an opinion piece in the June 2 Press Herald calling for a boycott and divestment of Israel. But nowhere in Mr. Googins’ shallow repetition of today’s liberal cause celebré does he mention the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks by Hamas.

How can anyone entrusted to teach our children fail to acknowledge the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust when terrorists slaughtered 1,200 innocent civilians? Where is Mr. Googins’ outrage over the use of rape and sexual torture on innocent young girls? Where is Mr. Googins’ outrage over the beheading of babies and the taking of children, younger than those he teaches, as hostages?

A supposed educator should not be repeating debunked propaganda from a heinous terrorist organization. Look no further than the stats Mr. Googins cites for the Gaza death toll, which now even the U.N. has acknowledged was inflated twofold because it relied on faulty Hamas numbers.

Nobody wants more innocent civilians to die. But if a teacher cannot put the current conflict into proper context and cannot even acknowledge the atrocities committed by Palestinians against Jews, then that teacher should not be allowed anywhere near our children.

Steven Silver

South Portland

Finally, the letter I wrote responding to Silver's letter was published this morning. Great, right? Actually, not so great.

First of all they chose a catchy phrase from my letter for the headline, which served to eliminate any reference to genocide, Gaza, or Palestine, Israel, or Zionism. 

Letter: Teaching children how to think, not what to think 

I’m writing in response to a letter from Steven Silver, of South Portland, bashing the teacher who wrote the op-ed “We are not powerless in the face of Gaza horror.” As a retired teacher, I can assure Mr. Silver that our goal as educators is to teach children how to think, not what to think.

Since Mr. Silver suggests that Jewish parents should pull their children out of Saco schools if other teachers share Nick Fuller Googins’ views on divesting from Israel over their genocide of Palestinians, I can see that he’s not a very clear thinker himself.

Jewish does not equal Zionist; I have scores of Jewish friends and acquaintances who are opposed to Israel’s violent occupation and land theft in Palestine.

Also, in what school district would teachers all hold the same political views? It is absurd to suggest this might be the case.

Lisa Savage
Solon

 But what was far worse was that they cut my final paragraph:

Finally, Mr. Silver repeats lies about the use of sexual violence by Hamas, lies that were spread early on but have now been debunked due to a total lack of evidence. The New York Times, BBC, and other mainstream media have affirmed this and a little reading will confirm it.

And this is precisely how corporate media work to spread vicious lies and deadly propaganda about the struggle for liberation in Palestine. They repeat lies and then suppress the refutation of those lies, allowing the mass of fairly ignorant corporate media consumers to continue believing the original propaganda trope.

I'm not going to go into the details of the debunking of this particularly malicious lie because you can read the research and reporting others have done on this topic here and here.

My subject today is earned media. In other words, media you don't pay for. I could have taken out an ad or rented a digital billboard truck or hired an airplane to fly over the beach today with messages. But as a retired teacher with limited financial means I instead used the platform of letters to the editor to reach tens of thousands of readers who will likely never see this blog post.

Those who oppose using corporate media make the very good argument that it inevitably distorts our messages. Whether they're covering the shutdown of a bomb factory helping arm Israel, or the disruption of a state level convention of the party currently waging genocide in Palestine, corporate media will tend to omit key information or distort it beyond recognition. Reporters challenged on these points will often blame their editors. As someone who has worked as a journalist, I get this e.g. I did not choose the headline for my published letter.

So why do I still write for them for free, or compose and distribute press releases inviting their coverage of events? In media parlance, I do it for the eyeballs.

If we have really legible, clear messaging at our events this will come through to the audience irrespective of how corporate media workers distort or omit our words and ideas.

Should we also use alternative media to get accurate messaging out? Of course! I mainly write this blog to keep my head from exploding, but a second purpose is to create messaging that  I can control. I follow amazing media workers on social media (another corporate evil that suppresses but also amplifies our messages). I subscribe to multiple publications not on the corporate payroll, and I read or watch and share their content via email and social media. Many of my readers here do the same.

Autonomous as we are, we all make our own choices. If a reporter shows up at an event I'm part of, I'm not going to scold or lecture them. I'm going to thank them for showing up, I'm going to make sure they have a copy of our press release and supporting material, and I'm going to read and share their content unless it is really heinous. 

If there are errors or omissions, I'm going to write them a polite email pointing this out. I have often gotten a correction made to the online version of articles by this method.

Reporters are mostly working class kids trying to make a living. So are many teachers. I'm on their side in the critically important struggle for narrative control.