Albert wrote:speedboatchase wrote:Alvin Flummux wrote:So the World Central Kitchen personnel were known by the IDF, they gave them their coordinates, and their three vehicle convoy was subjected to intentional attack by the IOF, three times.
Then the IOF turns around and says "Oopsy! Can we have more Hellfire missiles, Mister Biden, pwease?"
Now they're trying to silence Al Jazeera, whose coverage of this genocidal campaign has been illuminating and damning.https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/ ... -netanyahu
Al Jazeera is fine if you know what you're being served up. It is entirely owned by the Qatar govt so whatever they say, goes. First off, it reflects the Qatar Emir's Islamist worldview (good: Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan, bad: Israel, India, France, US, Saudi). His dad was a lot more open to the West, hence the World Cup bid. And Al Jazeera regularly upholds freedoms that will never exist in their own country: freedom of speech (check out what happened to Doha News after they published an anonymous op-ed from a gay Qatari), religious freedoms (no Hindu temples for what is 14% of the population), citizenship rights (not possible for foreigners unless they marry a Qatari man) and treatment of refugees (197 in the entire country). My wife interned there when the Charlie Hebdo shooting happened and the consensus in the newsroom was a shrug and a 'well, what did they expect?'. It represents a viewpoint, which is great for us to have the options of multiple perspectives, but it's important to remember that it represents the only viewpoint legally permissible in its homeland.
So basically we can get biased news from the West (Cnn/Sky News) or biased news from the East (Al Jazeera)? and no in between (AP maybe?)
Yes, correct. Unbiased news sources are largely a myth. Biased news is not the issue in and of itself - perspectives and viewpoints are important, and bias is impossible to eliminate from the equation wherever you are, and whatever you're reporting on. The issue comes when news sources present themselves as fair and unbiased to hoodwink unsuspecting viewers/readers into believing an ideological position is a fact.
Most news sources in the western world tend to take a fairly centrist position, and many are very much beholden to populism and perceived shareholder value rather than a specific ideology. This is prevalent in the United States thanks to changes in licensing laws that led to partial conglomerates forming in the 1980s and 1990s (Clear Channel owned 54% of all US radio stations at one point, I'm not sure what the percentage is for their new name, iHeartCommunications (
).
This is anecdotal and possibly represents my political viewpoint more than anything, but the news-as-propaganda seems much more regular and much more pernicious on the right than on the left, for example, talk radio and Fox in the United States or GB News here in the UK. Their more left-wing counterparts, like Novara Media or Byline Times here in Britain, are a bit less well-known or overt.
With all of this said, I think nitpicking about which news outlet is saying what about and where entirely misses the point - that what's going on at the moment is utterly unconscionable.