lemm.ee

4 points

6 months ago

Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, India, Iraq: The controversy is that some government attacked Al Jazeera for its reporting and/or took away their press credentials or ability to operate. It’s noted that it’s banned from operating in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan and the UAE.

Australia, Bangladesh: Can’t completely make head or tail of what happened but it sounds like government people getting mad at Al Jazeera for their reporting, not some disinterested party saying that some reporting Al Jazeera was doing wasn’t true

Israel: I found, for the first time, some pretty credible allegations of them doing something wrong, including among other things one story from February 2015 that actually seemed like something they reported wasn’t true.

At that point I stopped reading the list. But I had to go 8 countries down before I found something where it actually sounded to me like they definitely did something wrong, and 9 years back before I found one story they reported that was actually completely untrue (as opposed to just a bias you have to keep in mind when reading).

Question. If an Israeli or American paper:

Celebrated the release of someone who had killed a bunch of Arabs
Published a story about Arab atrocities that turned out not to be true
Published only one side of the story about an armed conflict, where really both sides needed to be presented

Would that mean it’s a joke and anyone who reads it is ignorant? 'Cause they do that shit all the time. I don’t think so; I think they can still be a good paper, you just have to keep in mind the bias that they have.

report

[ - ]

WamGams@lemmy.ca

1 point

6 months ago

I would have to know what specific allegations you are making against other media sources before I answer that question.

report

[ - ]

1 point

6 months ago

Sure thing. We can start with:

Published only one side: This is a pretty good overview
False story: 40 beheaded babies

report

[ - ]

WamGams@lemmy.ca

1 point

6 months ago

Well I notice Fox is a common denominator in both stories, and I do believe people who get their news from that source are generally guillable at best and uneducated at worst.

But I also think all sides are equally capable of getting things wrong, which is why we need independent journalists (such as those aligned with Bellingcat, for instance) to have reporters on the ground.

report

[ - ]

1 point

6 months ago

It’s not Fox; it’s MSNBC, the Wall Street Journal, Fox, NPR, Reuters, the New York Times, and Joe Biden.
“All sides are equally capable of getting things wrong” was exactly my point here. Your second paragraph, I very much agree with. Does that mean that your whole assertion that Al Jazeera was dangerous evil terrorist garbage is retracted now? I would say that they are roughly speaking a mirror image for the New York Times or similar “Israel is fine, please look away from this dead baby at this story about Hamas instead” minded paper. Or is the New York Times also dangerous and evil? Or does it work in only one direction, or how?

I mean, if your mindset is that Israel is the good guys and Hamas are the bad guys, and so a bias against Israel is an offensive thing and you don’t want to stomach it in your news organizations, then fair enough. You can say that if you want. But I think some people will try to present that as the “objective” viewpoint and the mirror image viewpoint as the “terrorist” viewpoint. That’s not really a requirement I have for my news (in either direction) – like just tell me what happened, filter it through whatever lens is how you think it is, and let me sort out from a few multiple sources and make sense of how I think the overall picture is. As long as someone’s not outright lying, it doesn’t bother me. And I feel like if Al Jazeera were making up facts on any kind of regular basis I’d have heard of it, and the fact that so many authoritarian governments want to ban them kind of makes me like them.

report

[ - ]

WamGams@lemmy.ca

1 point

6 months ago

Besides NPR (which itself does not do international on the ground reporting) which of your sources are state funded? Specifically which of them are funded by a right wing theocracy?

None. That is the difference. Fox News might overtly hate gay people, but are they funded by people who have courts which prosecute homosexuality?

We should prevent that sort of stuff at home and disavow it abroad. Especially if we are leftists, no?

report

[ - ]

1 point

6 months ago

You didn’t really answer the question.

Does that mean that your whole assertion that Al Jazeera was dangerous evil terrorist garbage is retracted now? I would say that they are roughly speaking a mirror image for the New York Times or similar “Israel is fine, please look away from this dead baby at this story about Hamas instead” minded paper. Or is the New York Times also dangerous and evil? Or does it work in only one direction, or how?

Someone could say that the New York Times is funded by a mindless money-driven machine which seeks only profit, and all its coverage needs to be defined in that light, and so we can safely discard anything it has to say. I wouldn’t say that. But it does make arguably an equal amount of sense to discarding Al Jazeera because they’re funded in part by a theocratic monarchy. I would say we should judge them primarily on their output and journalistic standards.

report