Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community (https://thetfp.com/tfp/)
-   Tilted Politics (https://thetfp.com/tfp/tilted-politics/)
-   -   How much do you trust what the media tells you? (https://thetfp.com/tfp/tilted-politics/143824-how-much-do-you-trust-what-media-tells-you.html)

ASU2003 12-29-2008 06:38 PM

How much do you trust what the media tells you?
 
How much do you trust what the media tells you? They pick out certain news stories while ignoring others, the journalists have to come up with questions and other people have to answer them (who may also be biased). They only have so much time to discuss a certain topic

I'm not sure if they are slanting their stories or making up statistics or not. Maybe they are just getting it wrong and don't know what is going on? Or are they deliberately trying to cause things to happen?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This was talked about 5 1/2 years ago, but has anything changed? Have you adjusted where you get your news from since then?
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/tilted-...ust-media.html
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'll admit that I thought that Iraq had chemical/biological weapons from what I heard the government and the talk shows constantly go on about it. I didn't really think that Iraq was going to use them, but they may have sold them to people who would of used them.

But there was no discussion of Chinese oil contracts in Iraq or very much real investigative reporting on what was going on inside of Iraq prior to the war.
China and Iraq Finalize Oil Contract, as Western Oil Majors Waver
And this happens in a lot of stories. Frontline and some other PBS shows come close to telling it like it is and getting out most of the information.

How would your life change if you didn't watch or read any news? I might have to try that for a month or so next year.

Seaver 12-29-2008 07:32 PM

One of my best History professors taught us a valuable tool in being able to truly understand events in their own time.

"Nothing is ever, nor has ever, been written simply for the sake of being written. Everything was done for a specific purpose in mind."

So regardless of who writes it, I always try to determine the exact slant of the piece.

Baraka_Guru 12-29-2008 10:44 PM

As Seaver has pointed out, all media has a bias. It's best to have an idea what these biases are when taking something in.

The rule I go by: The media is a source of information, not knowledge.

On your other issue: It's often a good idea to participate in a "news fast." It will help you rebalance your thoughts on life. It's amazing what effect the news has on us, especially considering its purpose and our own limited capacity to respond to it. I highly recommend it. As for myself, my news "intake" is very minimal. I generally don't see a need for "fasting."

Plan9 12-30-2008 04:39 AM

I only trust one media source and yesterday's headline was oddly relevant to the thread: Factual Error Found on the Internet

roachboy 12-30-2008 05:19 AM

the position that seaver outlines above is close to the starting point--there is no objectivity---not even normatively--so i don't approach "the media" as if it somehow disappoints by failing to measure up to a fantasy standard. when you talk about "trust" or a violation of trust, you imply some disappointment. and when you make a unified Thing called "the media" which disappoints, you're basically applying an inverted objectivity standard---and arriving a a curiously facile position.

maybe a better formulation is do you approach information sources critically...

that said, i'll write sentences that go in the opposite direction. in general i find television--particularly american television--to be far more problematic than the written press.
general:
tv news substitutes an illusion of immediacy for context--"being there" instead of "being informed." infotainment--which i think a better word for it than "news"---is an advertising delivery system--routine stories are cut to more or less the same duration as advertising segments. this has always struck me as a strange choice.

particular: over the past 30 years or so, it seems to me that television news has been brought to its knees as an infotainment source. it has increasingly become a simple relay system for official opinion management strategies--you know "public diplomacy"---in part through unintended consequences of changes in how that information is gathered--sending a crew to press conferences that provide you with ready-framed factoids and broadcasting prepacking segments save the stations money.

since the thatcher regime in the uk--since the falklands war--infotainment concerning military action in particular has been entirely subsumed under propaganda. the use of press pools and cutting off of independent reporting to the greatest possible extent makes infotainment into an extension of marketing war.

i've mentioned this before i'm sure, but a couple years ago i attended a documentary film conference and had the chance to see d.a. pennebaker do a presentation about his work. in the course of that, he noted that folk misunderstand the nature of television--they confuse it with a visual medium--but in fact, it's a talk medium. a paradigmatic instance of this is american baseball coverage, which is radio coverage with images. the assumption seems to be that you, viewer, are too stupid to decipher what is happening in front of you---and that you require a faster rhythm to the tv experience otherwise you will wander off to make a sandwich or do something else thereby missing vital advertising. same applies to infotainment: think about the number of sequences you have seen that "cover" significant events that consist of watching a famous person entering or leaving a hotel---cameras positioned paparazzi style by entrances to hotels provide an illusion of contact with the immediate--but it's the voice over that tells you what you're "really seeing"--the net result of this is a passive relation to an illusory immediate.

from 9/12/2001 until sometime in 2006 i think, the american television apparatus across the board exploited this passivity to sell you first the "war on terror" then, famously, the war in iraq. it was able to do this because the television apparatus acquired a more or less unified political function through it's reliance on press conferences instead of reporting, through it's systematic preference for conservative talking heads in opinion management segments. every fascist order of the 20th century has relied on radio or television to structure consent. every fascist regime has relied on radio or television (in the american case of fascism-lite) to shift collective frames of reference, to set up an Enemy and legitimate actions against the Enemy. treated uncritically in a context where there is no meaningful diversity of viewpoints, these media can be not only unreliable, but dangerous.

want a striking example? think about the role radio played in the rwanda genocide.

the written press is preferable for information, but this too has to be read critically. a first step is not relying on the press from one country--particularly not the american press--as if it either reports situations accurately or, even less, interprets them in their complexity.

i guess the above is mostly about the virtual disappearance of independent reporting.

o yeah--i more or less stopped watching television for a long time--from 9/12/2001 through last january. it's easy. i'd check in on things, but in the main i didn't bother with it. since i've been watching again, i prefer reality shows to "news" figuring that television is mostly about itself and in "reality show" contexts that's at least explicit.

if my experience is any guie, taking a break and then looking at it again will enable you to do what a confederacy of dunces is out there.

thingstodo 12-30-2008 12:44 PM

I question and confirm everything with multiple sources.

ASU2003 12-30-2008 05:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by thingstodo (Post 2577890)
I question and confirm everything with multiple sources.

But how do you know if the sources are accurate? How do you know that they have done the research (sometimes into things that people don't want reporters to find out about)?

Take gas prices, the media says that speculators weren't causing that much of an impact on prices, but I haven't seen too many reports on what caused gas to double last summer and then fall from $4.50 to $1.35. Are they investigating oil companies, refinery outputs, drilling, the amount of investors in oil? ABC news said the fall was because we are driving less, but I see the same number of cars each day. There may be fewer trucks on the road and fewer factories using gas, but they never said that if we use 10% less gas, prices will go down to 2001 levels back in June.

Seaver 12-30-2008 07:30 PM

Quote:

from 9/12/2001 until sometime in 2006 i think, the american television apparatus across the board exploited this passivity to sell you first the "war on terror" then, famously, the war in iraq.
I would support what you were saying until this argument. While the lead-up to the war the media bit on every tiny piece of incorrect-information, post-start the media quickly turned to the opposite.

My example was the "Quagmire: Iraq" crap many in the media spewed when our offensive was slowed for 2 weeks because of a dust storm. It flew in the face of fact when it was the fastest advance of any military in the history of history.... declaring it a quagmire instead.

roachboy 12-30-2008 08:02 PM

seaver---i can't really remember the point exactly when the coverage started to turn--can you?

at this point, i don't feel particular motivation to go back through the plotline of the iraq thing--i opposed it from the beginning, i oppose it now---but there was a point at which things started to come apart in the co-ordination of the press on how the war was presented in the mainstream press. my sense is that things shifted sometime in 2005, but--and maybe because i'm tired at the moment--i keep lining the shift up with katrina.

i think there's another problem with press pooling--quite apart from it's conflict with freedom of the press and the assumption that a free press will by definition be to some extent in political opposition---the problem is that it only works for a short time and ends up generating both an undermining of the credibility of the state itself (because sooner or later the seams start to show in the story) and--maye more importantly--within the press itself. i think it's self-defeating. as much as i'm inclined to think that iraq demonstrates this, i'm not sure...whence the question.

dc_dux 12-30-2008 08:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy (Post 2578022)
seaver---i can't really remember the point exactly when the coverage started to turn--can you?

The selling of Jessica Lynch -- about two weeks after the invasion.

roachboy 12-30-2008 10:46 PM

that's right....now i remember. thanks dc.

snowy 12-31-2008 10:39 AM

I learned to read critically throughout my university education, and it's not something I can just put aside when I'm reading a news article or watching a bit of news. I don't trust the media in general because one should always question the intention of the author writing the piece, and the intention of the piece itself. There is always a bias present. I don't watch television news often, unless it's for the weather, because it is as roachboy suggests--infotainment. When I do watch it, it's usually the BBC World News or the NewsHour, which focus more on info and less on entertainment. I generally prefer to get my news through print. I use diverse sources, from a variety of places--local, national, and international. I like to solicit a assortment of perspectives on a topic.

percy 12-31-2008 02:38 PM

I don't believe anything in the news. I especially loathe ed-op writers.

What bothers me more though are the millions of people who except everything as carte blanche just because it fits their believes and then worse, corrupt other people with those same views.

Blind leading the blind really.

But ultimately it is the people who use the media to obscure the truth from being found out that are the worst. And when the lives of people are jeopardized because of it, nothing is real anymore.

Seaver 12-31-2008 03:41 PM

Quote:

seaver---i can't really remember the point exactly when the coverage started to turn--can you?
I say the dust storm before we even reached Baghdad. It was within the first two weeks, don't recall exactly. I do say it was prior to Jessica Lynch, as Dux states... I think they bit on that one simply because it fit into the Lost-White-Girl the media loves so much.

The reason I point out the dust storm was because at the time it was the only true resistance the offensive faced. The entire military was slowed down to a crawl because of a storm which engulfed the entire country. One would obviously say, "wait it out, and start driving once the sand stops".... however we got "QUAGMIRE: IRAQ".

thingstodo 01-01-2009 09:57 AM

[quote=percy;2578261]I don't believe anything in the news. I especially loathe ed-op writers.

What bothers me more though are the millions of people who except everything as carte blanche just because it fits their believes and then worse, corrupt other people with those same views.

QUOTE]

Op-ed writers are all about opinion. that's the purpose and it isn't supposed to be news.

Many people, like my father, use news sources that mirror their beliefs. I say news sources because that's what Foc News is supposed to be but 98% of their broadcasts are op-ed opinion pieces passed off as news! Unfortunately this is just human nature. People do things for emotional reasons and then come up with ways to support their actions.
-----Added 1/1/2009 at 12 : 58 : 41-----
Quote:

Originally Posted by ASU2003 (Post 2577966)
But how do you know if the sources are accurate? How do you know that they have done the research (sometimes into things that people don't want reporters to find out about)?

You don't. That's where you need to think, use common sense, use a variety of different sources and then you can still miss the boat.

Necrosis 01-04-2009 08:55 AM

The amazing sales job of Obama, accomplished by the big three, would make me question their veracity if they reported a sunrise. A majority of the population was convinced an inexperienced community organizer, who voted "present" 100 times in the Illinois senate, would be the new messiah. He will take care of everyone's mortgage, their repossessed cars, and the gas in their cars, all in his first 100 days. Were these people born last week?

Most of the time, it's equally bad what they choose NOT to publicize.


roachboy 01-04-2009 09:34 AM

cnn as resumed it's typical posture on it's knees just outside the briefing rooms set up by whichever extension of the dominant order is engaged in a military action.
the israeli supreme court ordered the idf to allow foreign journalists into gaza a few days ago.
there are some who are actually there, sending reports.
but not those from cnn.
o no.

last night, until i couldn't do it any more because it was making me too angry, there was a seemingly endless parade of idf spokesmodels wedged between "action" reporters who were standing in the middle of a field at the edge of gaza--and a smaller sequence of representatives from outlets like al-arabiya and queen noor of jordan who were confined to some mutant larry king show.

so the idf marketing of war is classified as news while opposition voices are opinion.

way to fucking go.

Seaver 01-04-2009 10:22 AM

Quote:

so the idf marketing of war is classified as news while opposition voices are opinion.
The Palestinians have mastered control of the situation for the Arab news agencies and the Israelis have mastered the control over Western news.

Both know exactly what they are doing to gain influence over those they are seeking support from.

roachboy 01-04-2009 10:26 AM

i dunno--call me pollyanna--but i would expect a news outlet to be something more than a relay system for officially packaged infotainment to sell war. i would expect independent reporting, actual information. maybe that's too much to expect of cnn.

but if that's true, why are they confused with a news network?

and if you actually look at al jazeera, there's reporting happening there.

something is fundamentally wrong with american cable infotainment outlets.

dc_dux 01-04-2009 10:46 AM

While not condoning all of Israel's actions, I gave up on the Gaza Redux thread when, IMO, it became a propaganda outlet for Hamas and the Palestinian position:
rewriting the history of the Middle East for the last 60 years

ignoring the numerous Israeli concessions over those years

ignoring the actions of Hamas since the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza

characterizing Israeli actions as human rights violations while ignoring the human rights violations of Hamas

and generalizing that US new outlets are spewing propaganda while European news outlets are not (the historically anti-Israel BBC is the worst, IMO)
Carry on.

Seaver 01-04-2009 11:22 AM

Or Roach, it could be simply giving correct information to people who want to hear it.

Arab Muslims want to hear about the plight of the Palestinians. They don't want to hear about concessions the Israelis give, they don't want to hear about the PLO/Hamas corruption, they don't want to hear about the breaking of treaty after treaty.

Westerners want to hear about the plight of Israelis. They imagine themselves as if they had to endure rocket attack after attack, after giving up large chunks of land in supposed peace treaties. The majority support (openly or quietly) military action against proclaimed terrorist groups.

It's not infotainment, it's the reporters, news agencies, and demographic all saying what is needed to be said. The news isn't just lazy and saying "this is what we're told so it's news."

ASU2003 01-04-2009 11:54 AM

Is there a correct bias to have on the news though? Haaretz Daily Newspaper Israel, Israeli News Source is going to give you one side of things, Al Jazeera English - AJE will give you the other. It may be impossible for the reporters to get the other side of the story though if they don't have access. But they also use slang like homicide bombers and freedom fighters to make their core audience happy. But this is why I don't trust the news anymore, it's hard to get the whole picture from both sides in the 5 minutes they get on TV to talk about it.

(And I do think Hamas is at fault, but I think this should have been a job for Arab - UN militaries to work together and disarm Hamas/Gaza, not the Israeli military, but that is a whole other topic)

roachboy 01-04-2009 12:52 PM

dc:

Quote:

While not condoning all of Israel's actions, I gave up on the Gaza Redux thread when, IMO, it became a propaganda outlet for Hamas and the Palestinian position
strange, dc...i tried to present arguments that reflected a complicated and often unpleasant reality that did not avoid complexity as it were a problem.

the problems that attend narrative control--for example, the implications of where you choose to start the narrative you tell yourself (or anyone tells themselves) as problems rather than as fait accompli--a propaganda narrative would not do that. and you know it.

that the aftermath of 67 is a fundamental dividing line in the history of israel is self-evident--what distinguishes in the main the historical narratives of the israeli left from that of the right is that the left acknowledges this fact openly and attempts to think it through. the right does not. you may not be a conservative on american politics, but on israeli politics your positions are squarely on the right.

in the thread, i made an error early on in trying to force 67 as a startingpoint--but i backed away from it, particularly once i found an overview of information management strategies that were at play a week ago from the region. so i backed away from it because conflict over narrative functions as a clear political marker and so cannot be set up front. when i made the mistake, i was simply tired of that game--but it's the same game that is at the center of the present information war. and there's no outside of that.

in the thread, positions were countered with other positions, information with information--this is the opposite of propaganda. you know that. like everyone else, i am assembling information and shifting how i see this situation around as a do so.


not once----not once---did i offer support for hamas. i have made it as clear as i can in the context of a message board, with its compressed format--to center ALL of the claims i make on the fate that seems to be befalling the palestinian population in significant measure BECAUSE of hamas and it's actions---where i diverge from you is that i see hamas as IN ITSELF an expression of failure of policy and thinking for which the israeli right is, like it or not, disproportionately responsible.

what i did do is foreground the 18 month siege of gaza. this was and remains an ugly misguided action. it is no surprise that you do not like addressing it because it is a brutal, ineffective, misguided action. but to foreground it is simply to state the facts. the line between analytic narrative and propaganda runs straight through this--erasing facts because they are uncomfortable is not analysis--it is a falsification of reality. and *that* is propaganda. that's what it is--selling your views first, bending reality around them, excluding what is dissonant, foregrounding what fits.

because of the assymetry in force that's involved with this conflict, i have--and i acknowledge this-downplayed the missles that hamas has launched a bit--i see this as implicit in the phrase that i've used consistently--that hamas chose to play chicken with the israelis at the end of the last truce--and they fucked up by making that choice. the consequence of that decision is befalling not only hamas but the civilian population in gaza--and this is significant measure because of the siege--the borders are sealed and you know it. the civilian population cannot flee. you know that too.

there is a fundamental distinction between arguments that you do not like but cannot refute because the information is not on your side when you cannot yourself control the narrative parameters and propaganda.

i'm actually quite offended personally that you went in the direction you did in the post above.

i don't expect agreement--but i do not expect this--particularly not from you.

i'll respond to other posts later.

dc_dux 01-04-2009 03:00 PM

rb....no offense was intended....it was simply my opinion of many of the post (not just yours).

But if you want examples:
Characterizing a blockade as a "siege" sounds to me like propaganda, particularly w/o mentioning that several of the checkpoints on the Gaza border with Egypt were controlled by Egypt (not Israel) ....or a failure to acknowledge that Israel allowed humanitarian aide at various time during the blockade (the UN World Food Programme had been coordinated emergency food deliveries into Gaza for months, only to have it not delivered to those in need because of fear of being attacked by Hamas militia - whose goal is to use the blockade for political purposes) ....or that the blockade would have been lifted with one simple action by Hamas - an end to the four years (since the Israeli unilateral withdrawal) of indiscriminate rocket attacks into Israeli civilian areas.

Listing casualty counts w/o indicating that the vast majority were Hamas militia and not innocent civilians or that many of the civilian deaths resulted from the Hamas human rights violation of using them as human shields is intellectually dishonest, IMO
I could offer more examples (suggestions of Israel's unwillingness to accept a two state solution, misinformation on new settlements) but whats the point.

roachboy 01-04-2009 03:40 PM

dc--thanks for the first line above.

i don't want to blur the threads together, so will only say a couple quick things:
a) i posted a pretty extensive analysis concerning egypt and it's border with gaza. the situation is complicated, but two things are evident--mubarak will shed no tears if hamas is smashed because of the links to egypt's internal political opposition (which mubarak has waged a police war against for some time)--but at the same time if civilian casualties get too high, this de facto acceptance of the israeli action is likely to come apart.

i was initially baffled by egypt's actions and tried to figure out what lay behind them, given available information.

there are 7 entry points into gaza, however. israel controls 6, egypt 1---let's not be silly about pointing at egypt alone to explain the consequences of siege.

2. on casualty rates---i also posted to the thread earlier in the week, during the bombardment, that the numbers were problematic as a base for determining much because no male over 18 is being counted as a civilian.
i saw a press conference given by a un representative on wednesday night during which a donnybrook erupted about this---the obvious question is what the hell do you mean that no male over 18 is a civilian--the response was that under current circumstances it is not possible to make determinations about that category, so "civilian" right now means women and children.

a little while ago, the united nations reported that over 20% of the casualties so far have been civilians so defined--women and children.

to my mind, the operation as a whole is unacceptable--these numbers are unacceptable. that's why i post the numbers without qualification---when the differentiation is announced (men vs women/children) i post that.

within the category of males over 18 you, dc, have no idea how many hamas and how many not-hamas people are dead or wounded. no more than anyone else does.

that's the reality of the numbers.
you can prefer to believe as you like, but know that you are basically projecting when you do it. i do not pretend to know how many hamas how many not-hamas--but the women and children who are ONLY dead or wounded because of the siege---that's unacceptable.

i'm happy to defend the usage of the category siege, or talk about anything else with this--but in the other thread.

dc_dux 01-04-2009 03:58 PM

rb...the larger issue, related to this thread, is that the Israel bias that you see in the US media is matched by the Palestinian bias that I see in the European and world media.

roachboy 01-04-2009 04:10 PM

dc--it's not an israeli bias in the american press--it's narrower than that---what you typically get is the position of the israeli right fobbed off as representing the whole of israel--which is self-evidently does not. if you compare what you watch or read in the states with haaretz, which i read pretty regularly, the narrowness if obvious. and it is only from the right viewpoint that there is no particular distinction between the views of the israeli left and those of the range of palestinian groups.

in the international press, i see a much wider range of positions on the israel/palestine conflict than i ever see in the states. some outlets are more obviously pro-palestinian, most are less so--but in the diversity of political viewpoints from the region there emerges a sympathy for the palestinians as an oppressed people. this is different from support for fatah or hamas or anyone else. and this sympathy is shared across a wide political spectrum, which includes significant segments of the israeli population.

it's just like that.

i see the narrowness of the american press viewpoints on israeli politics, both domestic politics and with reference to those to do with occupation, an indication of the extent to which the american press willingly and willfully echoes the politics of the american state.

if we find that the obama administration breaks with the policies of the republicans on israel--which they undoubtedly will, even as i don't have a sense of how or in what direction--and if cnn suddenly starts modulating it's (collective) editorial viewpoint, which passes off as news, that'll prove the point.

i maintain that we are collectively extremely poorly served by television infotainment in general, and by the cable "news" outlets in particular.
which does none of us any good.

Seaver 01-04-2009 04:26 PM

One theory I held, and wrote on, in College is the social differences in the news media locations.

In most Arab countries, the people are completely separate from the government, not so in America and most Western Countries. They can justify and identify with the plight of the average Palestinian from their government's action (PLO or Hamas).

We are used to the democratic style of life in which WE ARE the government (the level of which varies, but none the less). We can not as easily separate the plight of the underdog from the aggressive and treaty-breaking tactics of those who were voted into power (the legitimacy of which is questionable).

For example, in Egypt or Arabia the majority of the people hate their own government and have no power of reform within. They see themselves in a much more similar fashion as the Palestinians, for which one can argue the degree of said amount. We can get our Representatives on the phone within a couple hours, and if we don't like him we have full right to mobilize and vote him out of power next round. They can not, thus have much more sympathy for the Palestinians than we form.

ASU2003 01-04-2009 06:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dc_dux (Post 2579635)
But if you want examples:
Characterizing a blockade as a "siege" sounds to me like propaganda, particularly w/o mentioning that several of the checkpoints on the Gaza border with Egypt were controlled by Egypt (not Israel) ....or a failure to acknowledge that Israel allowed humanitarian aide at various time during the blockade (the UN World Food Programme had been coordinated emergency food deliveries into Gaza for months, only to have it not delivered to those in need because of fear of being attacked by Hamas militia - whose goal is to use the blockade for political purposes) ....or that the blockade would have been lifted with one simple action by Hamas - an end to the four years (since the Israeli unilateral withdrawal) of indiscriminate rocket attacks into Israeli civilian areas.

Listing casualty counts w/o indicating that the vast majority were Hamas militia and not innocent civilians or that many of the civilian deaths resulted from the Hamas human rights violation of using them as human shields is intellectually dishonest, IMO
I could offer more examples (suggestions of Israel's unwillingness to accept a two state solution, misinformation on new settlements) but whats the point.

It's the media's job to inform the people of these things, not be the judge. But they need to spin things so to not alienate it's viewers plus not pissing off advertisers that pay the bills, and that is the problem. Very few news shows would explain Hamas's refusal to negotiate (and why it did), then show the suffering and attitudes of the Palestinians still in Gaza City (and the rockets randomly hitting Israel).

I don't know the back story of all of the decisions and events in the history of the Hamas/Palestinian - Israel fight. There seems to be a lot of reactionary violence against each other for something the other side did. But making a four hour documentary with the history of both sides would be a great idea for an unbiased news reporting company.

dc_dux 01-04-2009 08:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy (Post 2579668)
....
i maintain that we are collectively extremely poorly served by television infotainment in general, and by the cable "news" outlets in particular.
which does none of us any good.

rb....my point is that the European media is no better.

Particulaly the BBC, which you often cited as a credible source.

I would urge to read up on the Balen Report (if you can find it since the BBC blocked its release) and other numerous examples of BBC bias in its Israel-Palestinian coverage over the years.
-----Added 4/1/2009 at 11 : 42 : 54-----
More:
BBC fights to suppress internal report into allegations of bias against Israel

Documenting BBC Documentaries: A new bbcwatch report finds an overwhelming anti-Israel bias in BBC documentary films.

mixedmedia 01-04-2009 08:48 PM

here's an idea...don't follow the media...problem solved.

funny thing is, you still somehow know what's important...

love, mixedmedia - tv media-free since July 2005 and counting

roachboy 01-05-2009 05:20 AM

actually, dc, i do not usually cite bbc materials.
i mean, i use bcc as a source more than i would use, say, cnn or time magazine--but it is nonetheless not a source that i particularly like or favor when trawling for information.

and i'm aware of the balen report and of critiques of that report---maybe when i have more time, we can talk abut this. right now, however, i'm pressed.

for what it's worth, my attitude toward bbc, particularly in its radio news format, is that while it is far better than any of its american counterparts, there are areas on which their coverage is simply problematic.
i used to simply disregard anything bcc broadcast about northern ireland for example.
so this is not new.

i am far more inclined to cite the guardian--but i do not rely on a single press outlet, nor do i rely on exclusively anglophone press outlets. critical reading is unavoidable, and often the simplest type of critical reading is juxtaposition of sources---this is most useful if you are trying to feel your way into an issue/area that you are not familiar with--recently, for example, i have tried to work out something of what's happening in the eastern congo (former zaire) and found it necessary to bounce around amongst a wide range of source material simply to get around wire service reports (which reproduce everywhere it seems) and acquire at least a convincing illusion of grain in the information. this simply takes work, which requires an allocation (formal or otherwise) of time to do it in. that's all.

dc_dux 01-07-2009 03:00 PM

rb...we have a new foreign correspondent from whom we can get the truth!

Quote:

Joe the Plumber to be Israel-Gaza war reporter

Joe the Plumber has found a new job: Intrepid Middle East war correspondent.

America's most-famous plumber since Watergate is apparently heading to Israel as a war correspondent for a conservative Web site so he can let "'Average Joes' share their story" during the onging war with Hamas in Gaza.

McClatchy blog: Checkpoint Jerusalem
-----Added 7/1/2009 at 06 : 05 : 13-----
And to think I never head of Pajamas TV.

roachboy 01-07-2009 03:08 PM

wow.
just wow.

it's not possible to make this kind of stuff up.
when i looked at the blog, i thought it had to be a joke---but apparently it isn't.
good that our boy joe already knows what he's going to find in his investigations.

Quote:

Samuel J. Wurzelbacher says he'll spend 10 days covering the fighting and explaining why Israeli forces are mounting attacks against Hamas
thanks for posting that, dc.
yikes.
are you subscribed to a joe-the-plumber feed?

loquitur 01-07-2009 03:17 PM

Looks like Joe is cashing in as fast as he can because he doesn't know how long the market for a glance at his shiny pate will last. (I know about shiny pates; my pate is growing more exposed by the day!)

Seaver 01-07-2009 04:58 PM

French TV claims photos from 2005 showed damage from Israel's Gaza operation - Haaretz - Israel News

Quote:

French public television network France 2 on Tuesday revealed they had aired photographs that allegedly showed destruction caused by the Israel Air Force during Operation Cast Lead, which were in fact taken during a different incident in 2005, one in which Gaza civilians were killed by an explosion caused by militants in the Strip.
Another stunning example. The News shows dead Palestinians on TV and report them to be casualties from IDF planes, when they were from 3 years ago and killed by Hamas.

One could also point out the poorly photoshopped clips from the Lebanon invasion back a few years ago.


All times are GMT -8. The time now is 05:22 AM.

Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
Search Engine Optimization by vBSEO 3.6.0 PL2
© 2002-2012 Tilted Forum Project


1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360