SMOKERS’ CORNER: LOSING THE PLOT

Illustration by Abro The West’s ’legacy media’ and cultural products might be suffering from what is often called ‘institutional inertia.’ Recently, they have been using old conceptual understandings of a world that is fast being changed by new realities. According to the American sociologist William F. Ogburn, this condition occurs when “mental models” fail to adjust to rapid shifts in the material and geopolitical reality. In the context of the 21st century, this inertia is particularly visible in Western media’s refusal to acknowledge the erosion of long-standing hegemonic narratives, especially those concerning American power, the state of Israel, the emergence of assertive ‘middle powers’, and the reshaping of nations such as Pakistan. The response of Western media and cultural products to the sudden waning of the traditional Israeli victimhood narrative provides a primary example of institutional inertia. For decades, Western media and Hollywood operated within a framework and paradigm that instinctively cast Israel as a vulnerable democratic outpost in the Middle East, surrounded by hostile players that are hell-bent on wiping out Israel. According to the Palestinian-Turkish academic Ahmet Alioglu, this narrative was reinforced by an “institutional editorial logic” that humanised Israeli suffering while rendering Palestinian people as either invisible or viewed only through the lens of terrorism. As global power shifts and narratives evolve, Western legacy media remains trapped in outdated frameworks. Its inability to recalibrate reveals deeper institutional inertia that risks rendering it irrelevant But things in this regard are shifting. Data from the 2024 Harvard CAPS-Harris Polls has shown a stark age-gap in the perception of Israel. The data confirms that Americans aged 18–24 are the first generation to view the Israel-Palestinian conflict primarily through the lens of “oppressor vs oppressed” rather than “vulnerable democracy vs existential threat.” Yet