Citing Gaza, Media To Call Iran Nukes ‘Crude,’ ‘Homemade’

Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have received arms and funding from Iran, so the similar treatment is doubly suitable.

New York, September 17 – Media outlets expecting to report on the development of Iranian atomic weapons will adopt the same dismissive terminology that they used in minimizing the threat to Israel and impact of rockets from Gaza, an industry group announced today.

The Goebbels Group, which includes the New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, Al Jazeera America, and other prominent outlets, made the announcement in a press release covering the upcoming UN General Assembly gathering of world leaders. The release aimed to clarify issues in journalistic ethics and provide guidance for all reporters, and as such recommended that non-member organizations adopt the same terminology for Iran’s impending nuclear weapons as was widely used to describe the munitions that Hamas and allied groups launched at Israel last summer – “crude” and “homemade” – despite the advanced capabilities and range of many of the missiles, and their industrial manufacture.

Hamas fired thousands of rockets at Israel during 2014’s 51-day war, including Chinese and Iranian missiles far more sophisticated than the locally-made Qassam rockets that once were the staple of Hamas’s arsenal. Nevertheless, many international media organizations hewed to the older paradigm, and referred even to the many Fajr-5 and M-75 weapons as “crude” or “homemade,” belying the missiles’ range and destructive capacity. Rather than alter their terminology in referring to Iran’s soon-to-be-developed nuclear arsenal, Goebbels Group members voted to apply the same nomenclature as in Gaza, since the alternative would force the organizations to restructure their entire narrative paradigm of Israel as Goliath vs. the various Muslim Davids.

“Technically the terminology might not be accurate, but considerations of journalistic ethics supersede pedantic adherence to dictionary definitions,” read the statement. “It has become axiomatic in our industry that threats to Israel be painted as minimal, while Israeli measures to counter or avert those threats be depicted as heavy-handed, disproportionate, and unnecessarily brutal. In keeping with those axioms, it is appropriate to adopt similar language for Iran’s weapons as we employed in minimizing or dismissing Hamas’s capabilities last summer.” The statement noted that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have received arms and funding from Iran, so the similar treatment is doubly suitable.

Goebbels Group representatives boasted in an interview last week with PreOccupied Territory that President Obama himself had addressed their last convention, and that he had expressed views largely congruent with the emerging Goebbels consensus on Iran’s danger to Israel. Dean Baquet, Executive Editor of The New York Times, said he was delighted to discover the president and his organization were on the same page. “My staff and I had a round of fist-bumps when the president said that despite the constant stream of statements calling for Israel’s destruction, the Iranian regime could be expected to act rationally,” he recalled.

Baquet then excused himself, saying he had to confer with his editors on whether to describe Palestinian pipe bombs and Molotov Cocktails in similarly dismissive terms, or to omit mention of them entirely.

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