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soon-palestine · 6 months ago

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The Palestine exception at CBC After October 7, I dreaded going into work: every shift, the impact of the biases went into overdrive. Even at this early stage, Israeli officials were making genocidal statements that were ignored in our coverage. On October 9, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said, “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel; everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.” Even after this comment, my executive producer was still quibbling over uses in our scripts of the word “besieged” or references to the “plight of Palestinians.”

[..]

On October 20, I suggested having Hammam Farah, a Palestinian-Canadian psychotherapist, back on the network. In an earlier interview he had told us that his family were sheltering in Saint Porphyrius Greek Orthodox church in Gaza City. The following week, I learned from social media that his step-cousin had been killed in an Israeli airstrike on the 12th-century building. My executive producer responded to my pitch via instant message: “Yeah, if he’s willing. We also may have to potentially say we can’t verify these things though—unless we can.” I was stunned. Never in my nearly 6 years at CBC had I ever been expected to verify the death of someone close to a guest, or to put a disclaimer in an interview that we couldn’t fact-check such claims. That’s not a standard that producers had been expected to uphold—except, apparently, for Palestinians.

[..]

In early November, I was asked to oversee production of an interview with a former US official now working for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a pro-Israel think tank. During the interview, he was allowed to repeat a number of verifiably false claims live on air—including that Hamas fighters had decapitated babies on October 7 and that Gazan civilians could avoid being bombed if only they listened to the Israeli military and headed south. This was after civilian convoys fleeing southward via “safe routes” had been bombed by the Israeli military before the eyes of the world. As soon as I heard this second falsehood, I messaged my team suggesting that the host push back—but received no response. Afterwards, the host said she had let the comment slide because time was limited, even though she could have taken the time from a less consequential story later on in the program. The majority of Palestinian guests I spoke to during the first six weeks of Israel’s assault on Gaza all said the same thing: they wanted to do live interviews to avoid the risk of their words being edited or their interview not being aired. These were well-founded concerns. Never before in my career had so many interviews been cancelled due to fear of what guests might say. Nor had there ever been direction from senior colleagues to push a certain group of people to do pre-taped interviews. (CBC told The Breach it “categorically rejects” the claim that interviews were “routinely cancelled”.)

[]

Editing out ‘genocide’ Most shows on the network seemed to avoid airing any mention of “genocide” in the context of Gaza. On November 10, my senior producer pushed to cancel an interview I had set up with a Palestinian-Canadian entrepreneur, Khaled Al Sabawi. According to his “pre-interview”—a conversation that typically happens before the broadcastable interview—50 of his relatives had been killed by Israeli soldiers. The part of the transcript that concerned the senior producer was Al Sabawi’s claim that Netanyahu’s government had “publicly disclosed its intent to commit genocide.” He also took issue with the guest’s references to a “documented history of racism” and “apartheid” under Israeli occupation, as well as his suggestion that the Canadian government was complicit in the murder of Gazan civilians.

The senior producer raised his concerns via email to the executive producer, who then cc’ed one of the higher-up managers. The executive producer replied that it “sound[ed] like [his statement was] beyond opinion and factually incorrect.” The executive manager’s higher up chimed in, saying she thought the interview would be “too risky as a pre-tape or live [interview].”

Despite the guest’s position aligning with many UN experts and Western human rights organizations, the interview was cancelled. (CBC told The Breach “the guest turned down our offer of a pre-taped interview,” but Al Sabawi had said to the producers from the start that he would only do a live interview.) Never in my nearly 6 years at CBC had I ever been expected to verify the death of someone close to a guest. That’s not a standard that producers had been expected to uphold—except, apparently, for Palestinians.

In another instance, a Palestinian-Canadian guest named Samah Al Sabbagh, whose elderly father was then trapped in Gaza, had part of her pre-taped interview edited out before it went to air. She had used the word “genocide” and talked about the deliberate starvation of Palestinians in Gaza. The senior producer told me the edit was because of time constraints. But that producer and the host were overheard agreeing that the guest’s unedited words were too controversial. (CBC told The Breach it “has not ‘cancelled’ interviews with Palestinians because they reference genocide and apartheid.��) By November 2023, it was getting harder to ignore the brazen rhetoric coming from senior Israeli officials and the rate of civilian death, which had few precedents in the 21st century. But you wouldn’t have heard about these things on our shows, despite a number of producers’ best efforts. (By early 2024, the International Court of Justice’s hearings—and later its ruling that Israel refrain from actions that could “plausibly constitute” genocide—forcibly changed the discussion, and the word “genocide” finally made some appearances on CBC.)

But back in late October, I booked an interview with Adel Iskandar, Associate Professor of Global Communication at Simon Fraser University, to talk about language and propaganda from Israeli and Hamas officials. The host filling in that day was afraid of complaints, was concerned about the guest wanting to be interviewed live, and judged him to be biased. Yet again an interview was cancelled.

A secret blacklist? One Saturday in mid-October, I arrived at work shortly after the airing of an interview with the prominent Palestinian-Canadian lawyer and former spokesperson for the Palestine Liberation Organization, Diana Buttu. There had been a commotion, I was told. A producer from The National—the CBC’s flagship nightly news and current affairs program—had apparently stormed into the newsroom during the interview saying that Buttu was on a list of banned Palestinian guests and that we weren’t supposed to book her. I heard from multiple colleagues that the alleged list of banned Palestinian guests wasn’t official. Rather, a number of pro-Israel producers were rumoured to have drawn up their own list of guests to avoid. Later, I was told by the producer of the interview that, after the broadcast, Buttu’s details had mysteriously vanished from a shared CBC database. By then, I had also discovered that the name and contact details for the Palestinian Ambassador Mona Abuamara, who had previously been interviewed, had likewise been removed. It didn’t seem coincidental that both guests were articulate defenders of Palestinian rights. While producers distressed by the CBC’s coverage of Gaza were speaking in whispers, pro-Israeli colleagues felt comfortable making dehumanizing comments about Palestinians in the newsroom. In one case, I heard an associate producer speak disparagingly about a guest’s decision to wear a keffiyeh for an interview before commenting that “[the host] knows how to handle these people.” This guest had dozens of family members killed by the Israeli military in Gaza. It seemed the only Palestinian guest CBC was interested in interviewing was the sad, docile Palestinian who talked about their suffering without offering any analysis or solutions to end it. What they did not want was an angry Palestinian full of righteous indignation towards governments complicit in their family’s displacement and murder. At this stage, I was starting to feel nauseous at work. And then one Saturday night, that sickness turned into anger. I had been asked to finish production on a pre-taped interview with a “constructive dialogue” researcher on incidents of campus hostilities over the war and how to bring people together—the sort of interview CBC loves, as it’s a way to be seen covering the story without actually talking about what’s happening in Gaza. I carried out the task in good faith, writing an introduction leading with an example of antisemitism and then another of anti-Palestinian hate, taking care to be “balanced” in my approach. But my senior producer proceeded to remove the example of anti-Palestinian hate, replacing it with a wishy-washing “both sides” example, while leaving the specific serious incident of antisemitism intact. He also edited my wording to suggest that pro-Palestinian protesters on Canadian campuses were on the “side” of Hamas. I overheard the host thank the senior producer for the edits, on the basis that incidents of antisemitism were supposedly worse. While the introduction of these biases into my script was relatively minor compared to some other double standards I witnessed, it was a tipping point. I challenged the senior on why he had made my script journalistically worse. He made up a bad excuse. I told him I couldn’t do this anymore and walked out of the newsroom, crying.

Truth-telling about CBC That evening at home, the nausea and the anger dissolved, and for the first time in six weeks I felt a sense of peace. I knew it was untenable to stay at CBC. At a team meeting the following week, in mid-November, I said the things I had wanted to say since the start of Israel’s assault on Gaza. I prefaced the conversation by saying how much I loved my team and considered some coworkers friends. I said the problems weren’t unique to our team but across the CBC. But the frequency of Palestinian guests getting cancelled, the pressure to pre-tape this one particular group, in addition to the unprecedented level of scrutiny being placed on them, demonstrated a pattern of double standards. I said there seemed to be an unspoken rule around words like “genocide.” I pointed out that Arab and Muslim coworkers, especially those who were precariously employed, were scared of raising concerns, and that I and others had heard dehumanizing comments about Palestinians in the newsroom. (The CBC told The Breach that there “have been no specific reports of anti-Palestinian and Islamophobic comments in the newsroom for managers to respond to or follow up”.)

I said that two decades since the US-led invasion of Iraq, it was widely-acknowledged that the media had failed to do their jobs to interrogate the lies used to justify a war and occupation that killed one million Iraqis—and that as journalists we had a special responsibility to tell the truth, even if it was uncomfortable. A couple of coworkers raised similar concerns. Others rolled their eyes. (CBC told The Breach that it doesn’t recall there was anyone else who raised concerns in the meeting, but audio recordings show otherwise.) The question of why there was nervousness around this issue came up. I said one reason why we were adverse to allowing Palestinian guests to use the “G-word” was because of the complaint campaigns of right-wing lobby groups like HonestReporting Canada. Indeed, in just 6 weeks, there were already 19 separate instances of HonestReporting going after CBC journalists, including a host on our team. HonestReporting had also claimed responsibility for the firing at two other outlets of two Palestinian journalists, one of whom was on maternity leave at the time. All this had a chilling effect. Hosts and senior colleagues would frequently cite the threat of complaints as a reason not to cover Israel-Palestine. During my time there, a senior writer was even called into management meetings to discuss her supposed biases after a HonestReporting campaign targeted her. Her contract was cut short.

This policing of media workers’ output reinforced existing institutional tendencies that ensured CBC rarely deviated from the narrow spectrum of “legitimate” opinions represented by Canada’s existing political class. Certain CBC shows seemed to be more biased than others. The National was particularly bad: the network’s prime time show featured 42 per cent more Israeli voices than Palestinian in its first month of coverage after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, according to a survey by The Breach. Although some podcasts and radio programs seemed to cover the war on Gaza in a more nuanced way, the problem of anti-Palestinian bias in language was pervasive across all platforms. According to an investigation in The Breach, CBC even admitted to this disparity, arguing that only the killing of Israelis merited the term “murderous” or “brutal” since the killing of Palestinians happens “remotely.” Images of children being flattened to death in between floors of an apartment building and reports of premature babies left to starve in incubators suggested otherwise.

It seemed the only Palestinian guest CBC was interested in interviewing was the sad, docile Palestinian who talked about their suffering without offering any analysis or solutions to end it.

I spoke to many like-minded colleagues to see if there was any action we could all take to push back on the tenor of our coverage, but understandably others were reluctant to act—even collectively—out of fear doing so would endanger their jobs. Some of those colleagues would have loved to have walked out, but financial responsibilities stopped them. There had been previous attempts at CBC to improve the public broadcaster’s coverage of Israel-Palestine. In 2021, hundreds of Canadian journalists signed an open letter calling out biases in the mainstream media’s treatment of the subject. A number of CBC workers who signed the letter were hauled into meetings and told they either weren’t allowed to cover the subject or would have any future work on the issue vetted. A work friend later regretted signing the letter because she got the sense that she had been branded as biased, leading to her pitches on Palestine being more readily dismissed.

Smeared as antisemitic In mid-November, after laying out my concerns to my colleagues, the regular weekly pitch meeting took place. It was then that I pitched the two genocide scholars, before having to attend that virtual meeting with my executive producer—where he suggested I go on mental health leave—and yet another meeting with two managers who raised concerns over my pitch the next day. But the most unpleasant meeting with management was about to come. A week later, I was accused of antisemitism on the basis of something I didn’t even say. According to a manager, someone had accused me of claiming that “the elephant in the room [was] the rich Jewish lobby.” (CBC told The Breach that “employees expressed concerns” that what she said was “discriminatory”.) The accusation was deeply painful because of my Jewish heritage and how my dad’s life—and, as a consequence, my own—was profoundly damaged by antisemitism. But I also knew I could prove that it was baseless: I had recorded what I said, anxious that someone might twist my words to use them against me. What I had actually said, verbatim, was this: “I just want to address the elephant in the room. The reason why we’re scared to allow Palestinian guests on to use the word ‘genocide’ is because there’s a very, very well funded [sic], there’s lots of Israel lobbies, and every time we do this sort of interview, they will complain, and it’s a headache. That’s why we’re not doing it. But that’s not a good reason not to have these conversations.” I stand by my statement. HonestReporting Canada is billionaire-funded. In December 2023, HonestReporting bragged about having “mobilized Canadians to send 50,000 letters to news outlets.” The group has also published a litany of attacks on journalists at CBC and other publications who’ve done accurate reporting on Palestine, and created email templates to make it easier for their followers to complain to publications about specific reporters. Other, similar pro-Israel groups like the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) and the Canary Mission employ similar tactics to try to silence journalists, academics, and activists who tell the truth about Israel-Palestine. I told the manager it was telling that instead of following up on the racist comment I had heard from colleagues about Palestinians, I was the one being accused of antisemitism and discrimination—on the basis of words I hadn’t even uttered.

The banality of whitewashing war crimes When I handed in my resignation notice on November 30, I felt relieved that I was no longer complicit in the manufacturing of consent for a genocidal war of revenge. Despite my experience, I still believe in the importance of the national broadcaster to act in the public interest by reporting independently of both government and corporate interests, presenting the truth and offering a diverse range of perspectives. However, I believe that CBC has not been fulfilling these duties when it comes to its coverage of Israel-Palestine. I believe that in the future, historians will examine the many ways that CBC, and the rest of mainstream media, have all failed to report truthfully on this unfolding genocide—and in doing so likely accelerated their delegitimization as trusted news sources. Before resigning, I raised the issue of double standards with various levels of the CBC hierarchy. While some members of management pledged to take my concerns seriously, the overall response left me disappointed with the state of the public broadcaster. After my appeal to my coworkers in mid-November, I had a phone conversation with a sympathetic senior producer. He said he didn’t think my words at the meeting would interfere with my chances of getting the permanent staff job I had long dreamed of. Despite this assurance, I was certain that I wouldn’t get it now: I knew I’d crossed the line for saying out loud what many at CBC were thinking but couldn’t say openly. Indeed, I wouldn’t have spoken out if I hadn’t already decided to resign. As a kid, I had fantasies of shooting Hitler dead to stop the Holocaust. I couldn’t fathom how most Germans went along with it. Then, in my 20s, I was gifted a copy of Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann In Jerusalem: A Report On The Banality Of Evil by anti-Zionist Israeli friends. I’ve been thinking a lot about that piece of reportage when trying to make sense of the liberal media’s complicity in obfuscating the reality of what’s happening in the Holy Land. As Arendt theorized, those who go along with genocides aren’t innately evil; they’re often just boring careerists. To be sure, while there are a number of senior CBC journalists who are clearly committed to defending Israel no matter its actions, many journalists just follow the path of least resistance. The fact that permanent, full-time CBC jobs are in such short supply, combined with threats of looming cuts, only reinforces this problem. I still hear from former colleagues that pitch meetings are uphill battles. Some shows are barely covering Gaza anymore. Being a journalist is a huge privilege and responsibility, especially in a time of war. You’re curating the news for the audience; deciding which facts to include and which to omit; choosing whose perspectives to present and whose to ignore. I believe that a good journalist should be able to turn their critical eye, not just on the news, but on their own reporting of the news. If you’re unable to do this, you shouldn’t be in the profession. I purposefully haven’t given away identifiable information about my former colleagues. Ultimately, this isn’t about them or me: it’s part of a much wider issue in newsrooms across the country and the Western world—and I believe it’s a moral duty to shed a light on it. If I didn’t, I’d never forgive myself. Just as I’m not naming my colleagues, I’m writing this using a pseudonym. Although the spectrum of acceptable discourse continues to shift, the career consequences for whistleblowers on this issue remains formidable. I encourage fellow journalists who refuse to participate in the whitewashing of war crimes, especially those with the security of staff jobs, to speak to like-minded coworkers about taking collective action; to approach your union steward and representative; and to document instances of double standards in your newsrooms and share them with other media workers. It was scary, but I have no regrets about speaking out. My only regret is that I didn’t write this sooner.

#palestine #gaza #free palestine

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the-garbanzo-annex-jr · 11 days ago

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by Bassam Tawil

"Turkey is bombing and massacring Kurds tonight. No protests, no marches, no media coverage, no condemnations from UN, no ICC arrest warrants for Erdogan. Since 1914 Turkey has killed over 1.5 million Kurds. Stop Kurdish genocide." — Hemdad Mehristani, researcher, X, October 23, 2024.

If Turkey has the right to respond to a terrorist attack by bombing dozens of targets belonging to Kurdish militants in Iraq and Syria, why is Israel being condemned for responding to the October 7 Hamas-led atrocities against its own citizens? Just because of the "two-state solution": Michigan and Minnesota?

Not only is Erdogan lying when he accuses Israel of "genocide," but he is also proving that he is a big hypocrite. If he is really worried about the safety of the Muslims in the Gaza Strip, why does he continue to support Hamas, while denying Israel the right to defend itself against Islamist terrorism? If he believes that he has the right to bomb Kurdish militants in Syria and Iraq, why is he denouncing Israel for taking the same action against Palestinian Islamist terrorists?

The complicit silence of the anti-Israel groups on US university campuses towards Turkey's crimes is simply evidence of a staggering racism and hypocrisy.

#turkey #kurds #turkey bombing kurds #turkey massacring kurds #erdogan #turkish genocide #muslims #gaza strip

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a-very-tired-jew · 6 months ago

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Media Manipulation, Bias, Cooperation and its impact

Media manipulation, misinformation, and propaganda are part of conflicts world wide. Every country, government, NGO, and agency engages in these tactics in some way. There is a story to be told from a certain perspective that pushes an agenda. What we, as the consumer of such media, have to do is determine if we're being fed a biased perspective and/or outright lies that we can then parse through. The current I/P war has seen a huge influx of misinformation and propaganda from social media and traditional news sources. The former is expected as we are in the era of influencers and algorithms. However, traditional sources, such as the AP or WashingtonPost, have long been an issue when it comes to coverage of Israel and Palestine.

Matti Friedman wrote about this a decade ago in an article for the Atlantic titled What The Media Gets Wrong About Israel.

Friedman is a former journalist for the AP and throughout their piece details the biased reporting that they witnessed firsthand, the association with terrorist groups, the influence of terrorists on reporting, and the outright corrupt nature of an organization that touts itself as a bastion of good journalism. From the article:

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Most consumers of the Israel story don’t understand how the story is manufactured. But Hamas does. Since assuming power in Gaza in 2007, the Islamic Resistance Movement has come to understand that many reporters are committed to a narrative wherein Israelis are oppressors and Palestinians passive victims with reasonable goals, and are uninterested in contradictory information. Recognizing this, certain Hamas spokesmen have taken to confiding to Western journalists, including some I know personally, that the group is in fact a secretly pragmatic outfit with bellicose rhetoric, and journalists—eager to believe the confession, and sometimes unwilling to credit locals with the smarts necessary to deceive them—have taken it as a scoop instead of as spin.

During my time at the AP, we helped Hamas get this point across with a school of reporting that might be classified as “Surprising Signs of Moderation” (a direct precursor to the “Muslim Brotherhood Is Actually Liberal” school that enjoyed a brief vogue in Egypt). In one of my favorite stories, “More Tolerant Hamas” (December 11, 2011), reporters quoted a Hamas spokesman informing readers that the movement’s policy was that “we are not going to dictate anything to anyone,” and another Hamas leader saying the movement had “learned it needs to be more tolerant of others.” Around the same time, I was informed by the bureau’s senior editors that our Palestinian reporter in Gaza couldn’t possibly provide critical coverage of Hamas because doing so would put him in danger.

Hamas is aided in its manipulation of the media by the old reportorial belief, a kind of reflex, according to which reporters shouldn’t mention the existence of reporters. In a conflict like ours, this ends up requiring considerable exertions: So many photographers cover protests in Israel and the Palestinian territories, for example, that one of the challenges for anyone taking pictures is keeping colleagues out of the frame. That the other photographers are as important to the story as Palestinian protesters or Israeli soldiers—this does not seem to be considered.

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When Hamas’s leaders surveyed their assets before this summer’s round of fighting, they knew that among those assets was the international press. The AP staff in Gaza City would witness a rocket launch right beside their office, endangering reporters and other civilians nearby—and the AP wouldn’t report it, not even in AP articles about Israeli claims that Hamas was launching rockets from residential areas. (This happened.) Hamas fighters would burst into the AP’s Gaza bureau and threaten the staff—and the AP wouldn’t report it. (This also happened.) Cameramen waiting outside Shifa Hospital in Gaza City would film the arrival of civilian casualties and then, at a signal from an official, turn off their cameras when wounded and dead fighters came in, helping Hamas maintain the illusion that only civilians were dying. (This too happened; the information comes from multiple sources with firsthand knowledge of these incidents.)

Colford, the AP spokesman, confirmed that armed militants entered the AP’s Gaza office in the early days of the war to complain about a photo showing the location of a rocket launch, though he said that Hamas claimed that the men “did not represent the group.” The AP “does not report many interactions with militias, armies, thugs or governments,” he wrote. “These incidents are part of the challenge of getting out the news—and not themselves news.”

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Back in 2021 the IDF destroyed the AP's building because Hamas was using it as a base as well. The AP denied all knowledge of Hamas being in the building, except Friedman and other journalists had previously established that there was a relationship between the terrorists and news outfit. The insistence on denying Hamas's actions for fear of reprisal and to continue the "moral failure" narrative is part of AP's m.o. This standard of avoidance regarding Hamas's actions, couching them in a comparison of "Hamas is bad, but look how much worse Israel is!", justify, or even reduce the horrid nature of them has been part of the formula for years. It explains why we see so many of the major news sources tell the same story in the same manner when it comes to this area. Talking about Hamas, PIJ, and other groups and their bad actions is taboo. Another quote from earlier in the article stands out that highlights this rhetoric. "In these circles, in my experience, a distaste for Israel has come to be something between an acceptable prejudice and a prerequisite for entry. I don’t mean a critical approach to Israeli policies or to the ham-fisted government currently in charge in this country, but a belief that to some extent the Jews of Israel are a symbol of the world’s ills, particularly those connected to nationalism, militarism, colonialism, and racism—an idea quickly becoming one of the central elements of the “progressive” Western zeitgeist, spreading from the European left to American college campuses and intellectuals, including journalists."

Many of us have talked about the antisemitism that is baked into most cultures, and a Jewish journalist documented through their own experiences how that is an inherent part of a "trusted" international news source. The fact that it was/is "in vogue" to paint Israel and its actions as the "moral failing of Jews" and hold them responsible for all the "evils" of the region while handling terrorist groups with kid gloves is abhorrent. It's antisemitic and a continuation of age old conspiracies. Every decade we say this is an issue, and every decade you forget or brush it aside.

#jumblr #leftist antisemitism #antisemitism #activism #israel #palestine #AP #Journalistic bias #Antisemitism in journalism

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tanadrin · 2 months ago

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Was there anything actually juicy in Clinton's emails? The media behavior reads like half an attempt to appear more principled b/c of the criticism they got in 2016, and half an attempt to swing the election for Trump because he's better for their business.

not super juicy. i do think there's a differential in how the media covers trump vs other candidates (even other republicans) bc he's so bizarre and they don't know how to handle them, but i don't think it's as calculated as "he's better for their business"

you have to remember that conservatives have spend decades screaming about how the media is unfair to them and biased in favor of liberals and bc media figures want to be the important biased neutral arbiters of democracy (bc that is how they perceive themseves) and they want to try to preserve access to political figures, they have spent a lot of time and effort trying to perform neutrality. this doesn't work of course--there's a reason why the right eventually spawned its own media ecosystem; no amount of bending over backwards to both-sides issues like global warming will appease basically dishonest actors--but it has produced this weird asymmetry where they report on trump like he's a much more normal candidate than he is, reported on his administration like it was a much more coherent realization of policy goals than it was, and sane wash a lot of statements that are either simply incoherent or are menacing and deranged. and they reassure themselves that he can't possibly mean the menacing and deranged things, or that if he does he won't be able to realize them, and after all wasn't the first trump term pretty OK after all?

obviously, i think this is a mistake--the first time around trump was impeded by his own incompetence and that of the people under him, and the fact that, not really knowing what to expect, some actually sane people ended up attached to his administration. i don't think that's likely to be quite the same in a second go-round. but normalcy bias is powerful. it affects a lot of people who aren't journalists, too. and even if you think he isn't likely to succeed, i think the responsible way to report on someone declaring that they are going to attempt to deport millions and seize direct control of major cities and shut down media outlets that offend them is to report that they intend to sdeport millions and seize direct control of major cities and shut down media outlets that offend them, not to try to interpret their pronouncements through the lens of anodyne "economic policy" or w/e. if the flagship outlets of media were really making a rational risk-benefit calculation on whether a second trump term would be good for them, they would be much more strenuously opposing him, because he has promised a scorched-earth campaign of revenge against them, you know?

but actually a lot of the dysfunction of american political coverage is the result of a social incentive structure that's been slowly emerging for more than forty years, driven in part by the incestuousness of the beltway media-political environment and the self-conception and ego of media figures. honestly i think it started as the conspiratorial right moved into mainstream conservative and republican politics in the last three decades of the 20th century. in order for that conspiratorial attitude to really take hold, you had to creative a social structure that isolated people from the broader political consensus, to get them to stop trusting shared sources of authority and information, and that resulted in sustained attacks against the supposed flagrant bias of american news media as a whole, and this process accelerated as distinct right-wing outlets like fox were established. but it was a frog-in-the-pot situation, and many republican politicians were willing to take on this new style of rhetoric that seemed to win votes (and no doubt many believed it to some extent, since it flattered their preconceptions).

but eventually the break became too great--birtherism, the tea party, qanon. mainstream republican politicians realized they'd called up something they couldn't put down; but it was too late to right the ship. trump is the avatar of all that conspiracism and rage, and he took over the republican party. but the tectonic social forces that produced him have been slow and kind of indirect, and a lot of people are still coasting on attitudes and approaches to politics that are ten, twenty, thirty years out of date.

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brf-rumortrackinganon · 5 months ago

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https://x.com/lyokangirl/status/1800137471067603338?t=aOY0BrrgBo2CnqzAQrtY4A&s=19

The whole thread 🤔🤔🤔

Disclaimer first: I looked at this tweet when I saw anon's ask super early this morning. The original tweet that started this thread has now been deleted but it was a tweet containing this image from Matta of Fact's instagram stories:

Here is a screenshot with the twitter thread responding to a tweet that posted the above screenshot. I've redacted all the usernames (personal policy) but if you go to the URL in the anon's ask, you'll see them.

(I cut the thread in half so the images would be bigger. Start on the left with the yellow user.)

If it's too difficult to read:

Yellow works close to the hospital in Matta's story (the MD Anderson Center in Houston, Texas), which is probably the best hospital for cancer treatment and research in the world and treats people from all over the world. She thinks it's unlikely that Kate is in Texas getting treatment because she's been spotted in the UK but if she is getting treatment from the US, then strict medical privacy laws prohibit medical staff from talking about her (HIPAA) but it's curious no one else (ie other patients and hotel guests - the St. Regis mentioned in the reddit screenshot is a luxury hotel chain) have seen her.

Red is talking about how Kate and the BRF don't have the same expectation of personal privacy or a social contract here in the US that they would in the UK. In other words, UK media largely doesn't run pap/bystander photos of the royal family when they're not working. That's not true here in the US. Not only would American media print those photos, most Americans wouldn't have any problem taking those photos of Kate in the first place, especially if they can make a quick buck or get social media clout.

Blue is worried about Kate and thinks this means the worst because she's trying to read between the lines. Yellow is trying to talk her out of panic.

I don't think this is true, for a number of reasons.

First, I don't trust Matta as a source. Never have, never will. She started out incredibly biased in favor of the Sussexes and while it looks like she's moved her coverage to become more neutral, I still can't shake her start as a Sussex Squaddie. As Maya Angelou said "when someone shows you who they are the first time, believe them."

Second, if it comes out that Kate, the Princess of Wales and the future Queen has abandoned the NHS or British care, she - and the BRF - can kiss the NHS charities, patronages, and support goodbye. Yes, the NHS is currently suffering and there's a whole bunch of controversy, but the royal family has stood by the NHS since the beginning. If it got out that they don't personally support the NHS...well, there's no putting that toothpaste back in the tube.

Third, yes, MD Anderson is considered one of the best, if not the best institution for cancer treatment and research in the world. They're part of the cancer moonshot initiative. People come from all over the world to use their facilities. And they send their people out to consult and teach all over the world as well. Kate, and the BRF, isn't risking her NHS support to fly halfway around the world. Especially if she's immuno-compromised, especially if she doesn't feel she is well enough or healthy-looking-enough for public engagements. Those doctors are coming to her.

Relatedly, Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace have been used as operating theaters and medical treatment spaces before. There's no need for Kate to go halfway around the world to a hospital when literally the hospital can come to her at Windsor Castle.

Now, is it possible she could've gone to Texas anyway? Yes, very much so. But my theory is, if she went in the first place, she went only once, to learn about her cancer and what her treatment options were, and then she went back to the UK. Why do I say this?

Because simply put: she has three school-aged children and kids talk. If Kate was spending all this time in the US, those kids would've said something to someone in that school community and it would've gotten out. After all, if someone's leaking Charlotte's cricket team schedule to social media, someone's going to leak any gossip they've heard about or from the children.

At the end of the day, you can believe whatever you see and however you interpret this. For me, I choose to believe the palace at their word over nameless internet strangers and a gossipmongerer. Maybe that makes me naive but it is what it is. The palace, and William, have said that Kate is doing well and is focused on her recovery and her family. We have no reason to believe that she's anywhere except where they've said she is: with her family in Windsor. We have no reason to believe her health isn't improving and that she isn't recovering because it would have been all over William's face the last few days (the man does not have a poker face at all) and it simply wasn't there.

I know people miss Kate. I know they'd like reassurance from her personally but that's not Kate's priority right now. Her priority is reassuring her children and being with them, as it should be. Let's give her the time, space, and privacy to do what she knows is right for her, and her family, and who knows. Maybe she'll surprise us in the coming weeks.

#brf #waleses #theories #rumors #treatment

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liberalsarecool · 1 year ago

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The biased lens of media coverage.

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semidecentpoet · 9 months ago

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What gets me ab western mainstream news coverage of the genocide in Palestine—besides the obvious lack of morality—is that it’s, frankly, shit journalism.

(For context, I’m a journalism major with a focus in print reporting. This is literally what I’m going to school for.)

(Forgive me if this is slightly disorganized. Harder to write when I’m pissed.)

My instructors tell me ab the importance of active voice over passive voice all. The. Time. There’s a difference, for example, between “More than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed” and “Israel has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians.”

More recently, I’ve had instructors tell me to be more skeptical of official sources (e.g. police), fact-check their claims and get alternative sources whenever possible.

But, from what I’ve seen, a lot of outlets seem to just take Israel’s word as fact without searching for further evidence. For example, when Israel made that claim—with no real evidence—ab the 40 beheaded babies and it was everywhere. And then they said they can’t confirm shit, and now these outlets have to backpedal.

And of course, on top of the blatant misuse of language (beyond just active vs passive voice) and the false/unsupported reporting, there’s the lack of reporting.

I don’t see western mainstream outlets quoting the assholes who call Palestinians “human animals.”

I don’t see them pointing out the sickening abundance of social media posts of Israelis celebrating the genocide, of IDF posing in front of the rubble of what once was Gaza or with the undergarments of the Palestinian women and girls they raped.

I don’t see them setting their headlines ablaze with the countless historic holy sites Israel has destroyed, mosques and churches alike that were some of the oldest in the world. (But when Notre Dame was on fire—)

I don’t even see the context of the more than 75 years of Israel’s bullshit leading up to now.

Where is the coverage of the entire families Israel have wiped out? Where is the coverage of how Israel treats its hostages? Where is the coverage of the Palestinian people’s injuries, physical and mental, and the reason for the lack of proper medical aid?

Countless children in Gaza have to undergo amputations in unsanitary environments without anesthesia. Where’s the coverage?

Who is asking Biden the important questions? Like, if you’re trying so hard for a ceasefire, why has the United States vetoed United Nations resolutions for an immediate ceasefire three times since Oct. 7? Why a temporary ceasefire instead of a permanent one?

How ab Israel’s attack on Rafah during the Super Bowl?? Rafah the designated safe zone?? While airing a $7 million ad?? During what is arguably the most famous and most-watched sports event in the U.S., which has given billions of dollars in support of Israel’s genocide?? How are these outlets not blowing up????? This is a U.S.-funded slaughter during a national event???? Is this not newsworthy enough for you??????????????

Maybe they include some of these things in their articles. But when and if they do, is it a full-fledged story or just a brief?

Is it toward the top of the page or buried lower? (Journalists typically use the inverted pyramid style, which means the most important information in a story is at the top.)

I understand that, as journalists, we have to be objective. But this is not objective reporting. It is clearly biased in favor of Israel. If it were any other country, any other people under siege, this would all look a lot different.

On the topic of objectivity, I’ve heard a few arguments along the lines of, “We can’t pick a side.” But is there truly more than one side to this crisis?

One instructor of mine has said that “both sides” is a false dichotomy, meaning there are rarely ever exactly two sides to any given issue. Sometimes that means there are more than two sides, and sometimes that means there is really only one.

Coincidently, an example he gave of only one side was the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. Even though there are assholes who say otherwise, it was real. It happened. It was wrong. There’s no other way to look at it.

Ik that journalists bending objectivity and imposing morality in reporting is a relatively recent and controversial debate within the media industry.

But.

If we do some actual goddamn reporting—take the numbers and the quotes and the experiences caught on video and add them all together—we start to paint a pretty clear picture of who is the victim here. And who is responsible for the atrocities.

Just bc our government supports Israel does not mean Israel perspective is on equal footing with, much less more important than, Palestine’s.

When Palestine’s death toll is roughly 30 times that of Israel’s, there’s only one side.

This is some pretty shit journalism.

I’d look forward to hearing from other journalists/student journalists what they think ab coverage of the genocide.

Personally, I’m a little heartbroken that some of these outlets I’ve looked up to and dreamed ab being a part of someday have been so lacking in their coverage—to say the least. Especially since journalism is so important and is supposed to be a major means of holding people in power accountable for their actions.

Life’s bitter irony, I suppose.

Free Palestine.

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