#headline bias

[chunmeista-thoughts]

Another way all of these struggles are connected, is the way media decides to automatically exonerate the perpetrators.

It is clear as day, how corporate US media decides to be complicit in the normalization of violence by deciding how it wants to cover things. The bias is in the headlines, and these are just two specific examples.

There is no way that these companies should be getting away with this. There needs to be groups of people to hold a fire to them. If nothing is done, fascists will continue to openly define how events are perceived by the general public in media.

[fuck-hamas-go-israel]

Ethnic cleansing? Genocide? Apartheid?

Throwing around these buzzwords to describe the Israel-Hamas war because you’ve seen them on social media doesn’t make you right, and it doesn’t make you an activist.

It makes you ignorant, intellectually dishonest, and lazy for parroting biased talking points with no concept about what these terms actually mean.

What is apartheid?

Well, it was first used to describe the political system in South Africa and today’s Namibia whereby racism was institutionalised. This manner of governance meant that clear racial segregation would occur, in a manner that benefited the white race and would actively oppress those who had darker skin.

This meant that there were white-only spaces, white people would get prioritised when it came to education and jobs, and relationships/marriages between white peoples and coloured people were illegal.

Is Israel objectively an apartheid state? There are no laws that actively favour one group over the other. There is a sizeable population of Israeli Arabs that can thrive in the same way as the Israeli Jews can. There are laws against discrimination on the basis of gender, race/ethnicity, and sexual orientation.

Palestinians from Gaza are allowed to work in Israel through a work permit system. There are about 150,000 Palestinians working in Israel, most of which live in Israel and some come from Gaza/the West Bank. They aren’t denied rights institutionally.

Is it harder to get a job or education in Israel if you’re a Palestinian from Gaza? Sure, because of different governments. It’s like how it’s a lot easier for you to find a job in your own country (in terms of paperwork and bureaucracy) than overseas. But you’re not denied the right to apply.

Of course, if you have a history of violence, a criminal record, or your family has ties to terrorists, then it’ll be a lot harder to get an approved work permit. But that’s not apartheid. That’s common sense, and a regulation practiced by all countries that minimally desire to protect their own population from danger.

Ethnic cleansing and genocide

These two concepts can go hand-in-hand. Ethnic cleansing refers to the mass expulsion or killing of a group of people based on their ethnicity. Similarly, genocide is the purposeful killing of a group of people solely with the intention of annihilating them.

Famous examples? The Holocaust, of course, where the Nazi regime believed in the superiority of the Aryan race and decided to declare genocide on the Jews, Romanis, the LGBTQ+ community, people with disabilities, people with “Asian features”, and many many other groups. Anyone who they didn’t think was “pure”.

Their aim was to ensure that the Aryan race propagated without having “impure” blood affecting the bloodlines. They even started a eugenics programme called Lebensborn to ensure that more pure Aryan babies were born.

More recent examples? The Rwandan genocide where the Hutus attempted to wipe out the Tutsis on the basis of ethnicity. They mandated that Tutsis mention their ethnicity on state-issued ID cards in order for the Hutus in power to be able to identify them and then kill them.

Or the Yazidi genocide which happened so recently, in which ISIL killed, raped, and sent thousands of Yazidis into conversion camps on the basis of their ethnicity. They also took Yazidi women as sex slaves and raped and tortured them.

Or the Rohingya Muslims in the Rakhine State in Myanmar, and how there was a mass killing and expulsion of them from the country, forcing them to flee to Bangladesh to take refuge, crating the world’s largest refugee camp.

Or how ISIS killed thousands of people from Christian groups in Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and Libya because of their faith, leading the US, EU, and UK to label this as religious genocide and condemned their actions.

Has Israel been practicing ethnic cleansing and genocide on Palestinians all these years?

Well, the birth rate of the Palestinian population in Gaza, the West Bank, and in Israel has been steadily increasing all these years.

So, no. No ethnic cleansing, no genocide. They are free to have as many children as they desire.

The UN Genocide Convention

The United Nations has 5 actions that constitute genocide.

1. Killing members of a target group

Israel is targeting Hamas officials with the aim of wiping out the terrorist group and ensuring that such a deadly attack on Israeli soil doesn’t happen again. I suppose you could call it genocide against Hamas, but they’re killing Hamas because they’re terrorists, not because they’re Palestinian. Shouldn’t everyone believe in genocide against terrorists?

But look at Black Saturday. Look at Hamas’ rhetoric. They repeatedly call for the annihilation of Israel and genocide of Jews. When will the media start believing what they say, word for word, instead of trying to spin it into “hmm maybe they want to kill all the Jews because they’re freedom fighters!”

War has collateral damage. Of course the innocent civilians don’t deserve to suffer just because of the actions of their government, but there have been warnings given to the Palestinian civilians prior to Israel striking the areas. There are consequences of attacking a country first, and then having that country attack you back.

2. Causing people of the group serious bodily or mental harm

The UN refers to sexual violence as the prime example of non-fatal harm.

Sexual violence has occurred. Hamas have kidnapped and raped women and even paraded the bodies of half-naked women around. But I f Israel had done the same, it’ll be the first thing appearing on everyone’s BBC push notifications (without even being confirmed as true).

3. Imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group

Many people refer to the blockade that Israel imposed around the Gaza Strip as an example of this.

This blockade was imposed by both Israel and Egypt in 2005. Its aim was to prevent smuggling of weapons into Gaza, and isolate the reign of Hamas to the region. This was to ensure the safety of Israel and Egypt.

Did this blockade pose serious challenges to the Gazan civilians? Of course. But that’s a consequence of having a terrorist government. If you have a terrorist group running your country, don’t be surprised if neighbouring countries are extra careful about who or what they allow in or out of the borders.

Many authorities from other Arab nations have also expressed approval of Egypt’s border restrictions, and even encouraged Egypt to flood the terror tunnels that Hamas has dug under the city. As a side note, other Arab nations have not historically been very kind or welcoming to Palestinians. Syria has killed over 4000 Palestinians, and many Arab countries are now refusing any refuge for Palestinians. But no one cares about that because it doesn’t make Israel look bad. All they do now is use the images of dead Palestinians under the hands of Syria and reuse them to propagate fake news.

The blockade has been labelled as a human rights violation because of collective punishment. Many humanitarian organisations believe that the blockade has caused the Palestinian civilians disproportionate harm.

Contrary to popular belief, Israel isn’t disallowing humanitarian aid from coming through the borders. Fuel, food, hygiene products, clothes, and shoes have been coming through the borders regularly for years. The Gaza Strip also has electricity and internet access and water.

Do all these items reach the Palestinian civilians? Well, there has been evidence that Hamas has been intercepting a lot of the supplies sent by humanitarian groups. This is not surprising since the UNRWA tweeted that Hamas has stole fuel from hospitals in Gaza in order to launch more rockets at Israel (but quickly deleted it after realising that it goes against their agenda to paint Hamas in a bad light.) In addition, the returned hostages have mentioned that there are many aid supplies hidden in the terror tunnels by Hamas. Instead of giving them to the civilians, they are hoarding it for themselves.

There has also been video evidence that some people are reselling these aid items in stores at exorbitant prices in order to turn profits. This has been well-documented for the last 10 years.

Is blockading the region to mitigate terrorism a disproportionate response? Well, it’s like asking if heightened security and stricter border control at airports is a disproportionate response after 9/11. Is being cautious and worrying about the security of your country an irrational reaction to the constant threat of terrorism?

4. Preventing births

Gaza’s population growth rate per annum is about 1.99%, which is the 39th highest in the world! Their population is allowed to propagate freely.

Israel isn’t preventing births of Palestinian babies.

5. Forcibly transferring children out of the group

No, Israel hasn’t been taking Palestinian children and forcing them to convert/keeping young Palestinian girls as sex slaves. Like I said, if this was truly happening, all the news outlets would be so quick to publish the story before verifying it.

Can we trust the UN Genocide standards?

The UN is known for corruption and have been exploiting the Palestinian people by selling them the humanitarian supplies instead of distributing them for free, which they should because these supplies literally are donations.

The UN also has differing standards of what they would label as genocide. For example, they refuse to call what China is doing to the Uyghurs in Xinjiang as genocide, even though the situation does fit many of their own criteria.

Hence, to all of you out there overusing these terms without knowing what they mean, make up your own mind about things. No one can force you to believe anything and no one can force you to change your mind.

But at the very least, do your due diligence and educate yourself before spouting tired buzzwords. Repeating misinformation doesn’t help anyone and can be very harmful.

[lesbianralzarek]

why does every article reporting on idf war crimes go "hamas, who started the war on october 7th with their brutal terrorist attack slaughtering innocent israeli civilians, has condemned the idf's use of-"? like, nearly verbatim every single time. we know about october 7th. we know by now. half the time, hamas isnt even relevant but they gotta find some way to sow doubt and numb any potential compassion responses. will you get fired if you show sympathy for murdered palestinian civilians without first adding a disclaimer saying its all their fault for being born in gaza? if you call "palestinians under 18" children? if you use the words "murdered" or "brutal" or "massacre" for acts that didnt occur on october 7th? if you call a spade a spade? why are israeli reports front page news without proper fact-checking but palestinian reporting is always "allegedly" even when theres video evidence? why does the idf not get the hamas treatment of reminding everyone that theyre biased before treating their words as law, like they havent been caught bold-faced lying again and again?

[saythenameritwika]

Say the fucking name, Seventeen! Seventeen KILLED it at Glastonbury yesterday. Carats, remember the date 28 June 2024 because Seventeen made fucking history!

I went into the stage slightly nervous because I was worried about how the locals would react. However, my doubts were gone as soon as Seventeen started performing. Knowing them as well as I do, I know they were NERVOUS af to perform in front of 200k people, but when they were on stage, no one could tell. They were as confident and charming as ever when they performed, and it made me so happy that they enjoyed the stage as much as we did. As for the locals, we can see a LOT of them turning into Carats after the performance. It's hilarious.

Their setlist was also perfect. You could tell the crowd grew to love them in that 1 hour. Every single song made the crowd scream and cheer and clap. It makes me really happy that till this day, people of all ages can enjoy the masterpiece that is Seventeen's discography. Lee Jihoon, who hates it when we call him a genius, is a MAESTRO.

The fact that the local British people get to witness SOS being performed for the first time ever is something to be extremely jealous of. What did the Brits do to deserve this? 😭

Jokes aside, saying I'm proud would be a fucking understatement but I'll say it anyway. Seventeen, I am so BEYOND PROUD of you. You have made HISTORY just like you always wanted, being the first k-pop group to perform and HEADLINE Glastonbury. But I know you're not stopping here, right? You have so much more to accomplish, and I will ALWAYS be here, right behind you. I fucking love you my 13 and I always will. Even after the last "say the name," I'll always be a Carat. 🩷🩵

[itspileofgoodthings]

like. Nina listens to Taylor, moderately keeps up with the front-facing aspects of her life, enjoys her quality, has her minor critiques, recognizes her place in the current culture, can set her down and do other things when she wants to, and most importantly knows who Taylor is through her art.

[therealgchu]

a lesson in media literacy

checking out google news today, and screenshotted this:

so, how does one read this? not by reading the headline, but by looking at who the news agency is, and what sort of language they're using.

the first thing an historian is taught is to look for bias in text. there is no such thing as objective reporting; everyone uses biased language and terms, and has an agenda. it's the historian's job to root out that agenda. that said, let's analyze each:

-NBC is a network in the US (we have 3 major ones: CBS, NBC, and ABC). their news wire service, NBC News, is generally thought of as pretty objective for reporting. they generally just report the news, as it happens. the wire service generally stands apart from the news programming (like NBC nightly news, MSNBC, etc.), so no commentary, just report the news as it happens.

the language the headline uses connotes some special connection between biden and israel (which is true). it also explicitly avoids using netenyahu's name, which is also purposeful, and instead uses israel, thereby making it less personal, but also playing to the sympathies of pro-israeli sentiment. also, they explicitly use the term "war" instead of something like "conflict" or "military incursion". war has a very specific connotation, and is fairly unusually sharp language.

-The New York Times, the once lauded bastion of progressive reporting, has now has become something of a sludgy mess, and beholden to corporate greed. once again, the headline de-personalizes the issue by not using netenyahu's name; nor does it mention anything about war or military action or conflict. this might as well be a shopping cart scuffle in a whole foods parking lot, for all that the NYT seems to care.

-The National Review is a right-wing, conservative, libertarian magazine that was started by william f. buckley jr. you may remember him from such hits as thinking kissinger was amazing, and we should bomb brown people. their headline is purposefully inflammatory, stating that it's biden's proposal (which it's not), to save hamas (which it isn't). their headline is explicitly meant to rile the conservative base in an election year, not to report the news.

-The Times of Israel was founded by david horowitz, a renowed journalist. he was especially well known for his support of yitzak rabin and the peace process during the 90s. notice, he's the only one that names netanyahu explicitly, as he's a known critic of bibi.

so, what does this all mean? that's for the reader to decide. i'm only providing context on how whacky and bizarre journalism is, and always has been, frankly. to quote a much better writer than i, "truth is a three-edge sword: your side, their side, and the truth in between."

so, keep this in mind as we barrel head-long into the summer media blitz of an election year while there's war in the middle east (though, to be fair, when is there not war in the middle east), war in ukraine, houthis rebels are trying to shell NATO ships, and we just had a president convicted of felonies.

[bisexualalienss]

the political climate is so weird that parents probably would be mad they made us watch cnn’s 5 things in history class

[cherryblossomshadow]

North Carolina—and Iowa?

by Mary L. Trump

Excerpts:

On Saturday night, Ann Selzer, a pollster with a stellar reputation who specializes in the state [of Iowa], released a poll that has Kamala Harris up by 3 points.

Here is the history of Selzer’s polls since 2012. The actual election results are in parentheses:

2022 Senate: R+12 (R+12)

2020 President: R+7 (R+8)

2020 Senate: R+4 (R+7)

2018 Governor: D+2 (R+3)

2016 President: R+7 (R+9)

2014 Senate: R+7 (R+8)

2012 President: D+5 (D+6)

The result shocked the political world. It also reminded us that the Supreme Court’s Dobb’s decision continues to have serious electoral consequences for the party that is determined to turn women into second-class citizens.

Iowa has one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the country. Beyond that, the state has been losing OB-GYNs since before Roe v Wade was overturned. And, in the wake of the decision, it’s been losing medical providers of all specialties.

.

In response to Selzer’s poll, Nate Silver, another pollster, that it was “incredibly gutsy to release this poll.”

Cohn recently admitted that “it is much safer, whether in terms of literal self-interest or purely psychologically, to find a close race than to gamble on a clear Harris victory.”

“When their results come in very blue, they don’t believe it,” Cohn wrote. “And frankly, I share that feeling: If our final Pennsylvania poll comes in at Harris +7, why would I believe it? As a result, pollsters are more willing to take steps to produce more Republican-leaning results.”

These comments are staggering:

Cohn and Silver see a close race because they want to see a close race.

This morning, The New York Times ceded the most valuable real estate on its front page to Nate Cohn, and ran his piece with this headline:

“Some Surprises in Last Battleground Polls, but Still a Deadlock”

And so it goes.

[samaspic31]

You can’t make this shit up you click on an article about how hamas hostages were treated (for the sake of checking yourself on bias and with the intention to verify it with multiple sources) and the headline will be « return from the horrors of hamas » and then the text is actually « they treated me rather well just didn’t have much food and i was in danger due to Israeli airstrikes” You know the shit the government claims necessary to rescue them. This world is bullshit

[ladymazzy]

Unconscious bias training is ‘nonsense’, says outgoing race relations chair

From the article;

'In a wide-ranging interview, the sociologist and cultural activist said he was proud of the role that his institute had played in putting institutional racism on the national agenda several decades ago, but was dismayed at the rise of terms such as unconscious bias.

“We made arguments to the state even when we’re on platforms alongside them saying this was nonsense. It’s racism we want to talk about, it’s systemic behaviour we want to talk about, institutionalised racism we want to talk about, not unconscious bias or racial awareness,” Prescod said. “It’s the stuff that kills that we want to talk about, the stuff that stunts lives that we want to talk about, the stuff that deforms lives that we want to talk about.”

The outgoing chair pointed to the increasing concern of a school-to-prison pipeline in the UK, where young minority ethnic children excluded from schools are forced into pupil referral units where they are groomed by criminal gangs – a clear example of systemic racism, he claims. “To talk about unconscious biases is an obvious sidestepping of the matter. And it’s also wanting to let people off,” Prescod said.

[uboat53]

The "lab leak" theory of Covid-19's emergence is getting some new traction lately due to the release of a new government report, but I wanted to take a look at the science side of determining where a disease comes from.

Specifically, I want to look at the accusation that, because it's taken so long to figure out the origin of Covid-19, there must be something nefarious going on.

Obviously we can't rule it out, but the fact that it's three years later and we still have no certainty as to the origins of our pandemic virus is nothing special in science. It took 20 years to figure out where HIV came from, 5 years for MERS (maybe), 14 years for SARS, and we still have no idea where Ebola originated about a half century after its emergence.

So the caution I want to give to everyone, as a scientist, is this:

Don't jump to conclusions just because we haven't found a definitive origin for Covid-19 yet. This kind of thing takes time, often a decade or more. Focus on the actual evidence in front of you instead of how long it's taking or what you don't know yet and remember that the people who are telling you to do otherwise aren't trying to find the truth, they're trying to push a political agenda.

As I mentioned, I'm writing this because of a large to-do over the Department of Energy joining the FBI in assessing that the "lab leak" theory is more likely than the "natural origin" theory. Of course, it should be noted that most other government agencies involved in understanding the issue disagree, favoring the "natural origin" theory, and that even the Department of Energy has "low confidence" in its assessment (the FBI, for its part, has "moderate confidence" in its assessment).

I do note that most news sources reporting this story aren't reporting those caveats or, if they are, they are burying it several paragraphs deep. As I said: politics, not science.

If you're interested in some background information about this, here's some good starters on SARS and MERS:

And here's some good information about how we find the origins of novel human viruses as well as past examples of it:

[voleuxe]

fixing tags (in theory) dwbi

[insecuregodcomplex]

don’t take a headline as law

[heritageposts]

twitter link to the video (in it, you can hear these fascists loudly screaming "are they white?" and "they're white, they're white! they're english!" before letting the cars pass).

remember how the american and british press stirred up an absolute panic about the non-violent, pro-palestine campus protests? how they endlessly slandered the students as antisemitic extremists, creating justification for the violent police crackdown that would soon follow?

compare that now to how they're covering (or not covering) the fascist pogroms in the UK, where, for the past few days, violent white supremacists mobs have been terrorizing muslims, migrants and other non-white communities, forming mobs to intimidate and violently attack anyone they perceive as non-white and non-British.

the hotel shown in the video above is now the second hotel housing asylum seekers that these fascist mobs have attempted to set fire to, and yet, the harshest words the majority of the UK press is willing to use to describe them, are "far-right rioters, "anti-immigration protesters" or, if you're the BBC, just "protesters."

here's from skynews (UK), with the almost comical framing of "anti-fascists (left)" vs. "people protesting"

again, if you compare that to the headlines they were running during the campus protests...

this goes beyond some racist "bias" in their reporting: you can draw a direct link here between the UK media's coverage of palestine, and the fascist mobs willing to burn asylum seekers alive.

obviously there are other factors at play, but the genocide denial, the portrayal of arabs and muslims as terrorists and antisemites (which again, gets projected onto britain's migrant population and asylum seekers as a whole), the overall dehumanization and othering of the palestinian people — all of this has been feeding into, and stoking up, the racism and islamophobia that's now boiling over, and erupting into nakedly fascist violence.

[whats-in-a-sentence]

"Exterminating the Natives in Australia" war the headline in London's Weekly Review. "Australian Vengeance " in the Bradford Daily Telegraph. The Nation in Dublin took a broader view under the headline "Colonial Humanity and Civilisation":

When a man because his skin happens to be black can with impunity be shot dead with a rifle for an offence punished with a few weeks' imprisonment, when committed by a European, civilization has evidently sunk to a very low degree in the individual guilty of such a deed. But when armed men in the Government employee surround and shoot down scores of unarmed and defenceless wretches, for the pettiest of larcenies, the crime becomes national and affects the character of the entire population.

"Killing for Country: A Family History" - David Marr

[themfp1]

Year End Journalism Mayhem Recognition: The Townhall Heckler Awards – Media Industry Division

By:      Brad Slager As we flip the calendar, it is customary to look back at the prior year before wadding it up and properly tossing it into the non-recyclables bin (because there is so much we do not want circulating once again). Here at “Riffed From The Headlines,” it has been a year of compiling the worst and misbegotten in the media landscape – and, wow – has it been a truckload of…