News that isn’t news

Today’s lead ‘dog bites man’ story is the White House announcement that the United States no longer views Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank as ‘inconsistent with international law’. This will come as a vast surprise to practically nobody.

U.S. President Donald J. Trump, pictured March 20, 2019, arriving at Joint Base Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, en route Ohio. So by the time Donald Trump got around to declaring the Israeli settlements in the West Bank legal last weekend, it wasn’t news at all. The commentators did their best to make it newsworthy, asking if this will end the ‘peace process’ (as if it hadn’t been dead already for at least 10 years). There’s nothing the Palestinians can do about it, and nobody else really cares, not even other Arab states.Photograph courtesy White House photographer Shealah Craighead

Opinion

BY GWYNNE DYER

November 25, 2019

LONDON, U.K.—As British newspaper magnate Viscount Northcliffe said: “When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news.” Men don’t bite dogs every day, however, and the news media need ‘content’ every day just to hold the ads ...

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