Re: Don't forget to blame Reuters

On May 2, 5:01 am, yacova...@xxxxxxx wrote:
On May 2, 5:55 am, Joel Shurkin <jshur...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

No, he is attesting to the fact someone told him thus and thus. That's
what is says, nothing more, nothing less. He has attributed every
paragraph so you know in general terms who is sources are. Could he be
making it all up? Sure. But if he is caught he joins the millions of
other Gazians out of work. Really. You are still working on the
presumption that all Palestinians are liars. Some are. Some aren't.
The job of the reporter is to separate the two--if he can.

The vast majority of reporting about Gaza and anything Palestinian is
NEVER attempting to separate any truth from afalsehood.  There is an
unspoken rule of some weird "equivalence" operating.  Israel does X
and Pal does Y.  Soemhow the two parties are more or less equivalent.

I don't normally respond to Jacko's dyspepsia but here he raises a
valid point, now being debated rather fervently in the profession: the
notion that there are always two sides to every story and every side
deserves equal treatment. In broadcasting the joke is "five minutes
for Hitler, five minutes for the Jews." In science writing, this comes
up a lot. It has taken many of us years to convince editors that there
are not two sides to climate change stories. There is one side: it is
happening and humans are at least partially responsible, and there no
longer is a debate in science about it. The handful of people who say
it isn't so do not deserve equal time any more than flat-earth
proponents do. (Almost all the climate contrarians--all six of them--
take money from the American coal industry, by the way.) Same for
evolution in some instances. The fact that someone out there disagrees
does not make a topic "controversial."

We are trained in American and British journalism to be fair and
balanced (I hate using those words since Fox news cynically adopted
them and destroyed all meaning but forgive me). Balance means giving
both sides a kind of equality. But as Jacko points out, and I have
argued with editors for years, both sides don't always deserve
equality. It is a battle that we seem to be winning but only very
slowly and it is often on a story- by-story basis. I think the British
lag behind us in this debate. Whole forests of trees have died for
American professional journals that are engaged in this discussion and
it is ongoing. In the case of Middle East reporting, this is the main
problem, I think, not bias. Jacko is correct.

We fight the fight and are slowly winning.

j

So, when Israle defends itself and Abbas says "the Israeli actions are
increasing the cycle of violence" that is more Arabspeak to cover up
what is actually occurring.

Nobody takes seriously gang members who complain that police officers
shoot at them while they are in the middle of a violent drug deal.

Western news media DO take seriously all the BS that Aravbspeak knows
and loves. Not all are liars, but ARAB CULTURE has a great deal of
cunning and open lying than does the idealized notions of Western
society that we all assume in the West.

The approach by Israel and Arabs is diametrically different.  NO news
organization ever ever bothers ot learn or address that fact.

Then we have your 15 or so posts further feeding the illusion.

Your posiiton promotes naivete.  We are Jews.  We do not need your
continual Pollyanna-esque defense of the media.  We can all watch BBC
and CNN and see the gaps in their assumptions.

They could and should be more honest about all of this.

That they do not reflects a political agenda, unconcsious perhaps,but
an agenda none th eless.  not a "conspiracy" just an agenda, which
every human has.

Mine is to cut through the BS. Yours is to promote it as "fair and
balanced."

Jacko

.

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