Segacs's World I Know

Posts Tagged ‘media bias’

The CRTC has approved a broadcasting license for English Al-Jazeera in Canada:

I first blogged about this back in 2003, when media monitoring organisations were sounding the alarm about the virulent antisemitic content being broadcast on Qatar-based Al-Jazeera’s Arabic-language station on a daily basis, under the guise of news. The English affiliate doesn’t have quite the same level of bias – certainly, not that much worse than we see regularly from, say, the CBC or the Guardian, or on the other side, from the likes of FOX news. If there’s a demand for the service, and the content doesn’t cross the line, then I have to stand in support of freedom of information.

Besides, this is 2009. Anyone who wants content can get it, regardless of the CRTC’s decision. This decision is really only about whether satellite providers can charge for it, or whether people will have to access it online or through other methods.

I still haven’t forgiven the CRTC for all those years without HBO, though. Segacs to CRTC: this ain’t over, bitch!

A CBC reporter was caught red-handed playing favourites among federal political parties:

A Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reporter who covers Parliament will be reassigned because she inappropriately wrote questions for an opposition legislator, the public broadcaster said on Monday.

The ruling Conservative Party — no fan of the CBC — complained that television journalist Krista Erickson had given the questions to a Liberal member of a committee examining the dealings of a former Conservative prime minister.

Whatever your politics, you have to admit that this is a new low for the CBC. Our tax dollars at work.

Interesting interview transcript from FoxNews on the media coverage from Arab news outlets of the Israel-Lebanon war.

• The London Times reports that Iran is trying to mine Uranium in Africa, with the goal of importing it to make, well, I’ll give you three guesses. (Via IrisBlog).
• Related to the above, Mark C. at Daimnation links to this excellent editorial in the New York Times by a French writer explaining the existential threat to Israel that made the Lebanon war necessary. (Link requires registration).
• The big story making the rounds online, of course, is about the doctored Qana photos, a story that LGF has been all over for a couple of days now. Allison links to Reuters’ (belated) response to this fiasco. (My personal opinion? While I’m sure Reuters will end up with some egg on their face over this one, it won’t be nearly enough, and in fifty years people will still be quoting some of the exaggerations from Qana as fact, just as they’re still quoting the exaggerations from Deir Yassin today. And you know what else? I can’t even bring myself to get worked up about it, because symbols last longer than facts in any case, and innocent civilians were killed in Qana, and even though Hezbollah is deliberately doing much, much worse on a daily basis, the focusing on the conspiracies and exaggerations is going to ring hollow no matter what. But I’ve ranted about this already, so I’ll leave it at that for now.)
• And while the attention of the world is focused on Israel and Lebanon, things in Sri Lanka are getting worse. But is anyone noticing? When will 15,000 people will turn up in downtown Montreal to protest this war? (Oh, right, that’s just reserved for wars they can blame on the J-E-W-S).

On that note, time for bed.

The headline: Half think Harper too pro-Israel.

The article:

[The poll] said 45 per cent agree Harper’s position is “fair and balanced and completely appropriate,” while 44 per cent say it is “decidedly too pro-Israel and is not appropriate.” Eleven per cent say he has not supported Israel strongly enough.

Hmmm, by my calculation, that means that more than half of people think Harper is either “fair” or not pro-Israel enough, while less than half think he’s “too pro-Israel”.

Leaving aside the issue of leading questions, unbalanced media coverage, or, you know, those pesky actual facts, who taught the editors how to do math?

Update: Oh, it gets better: the story is linked from the Gazette homepage with the headline “Harper too pro-Israel: poll”. When in fact, the opposite is true; 56% of people have said they don’t think he’s too pro-Israel. *Sigh*.

Think again:

A group of Israeli journalists on Thursday renounced their membership in the International Federation of Journalists, after the organization’s General Secretary refused to retract his condemnation of the Israel Defense Forces’ bombing of the Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV station in Beirut.

[ . . . ]

The IDF attacked the Hezbollah’s TV station shortly after it began its offensive in Lebanon last week. The IFJ said in a statement last weekend that the strike is “a clear demonstration that Israel has a policy of using violence to silence media it does not agree with.”

Anyone else involved in a war who bombs communications networks is simply following good military strategy. When Israel does it, of course it’s part of the worldwide Jewish media conspiracy to silence opposition voices. Duh.

Some things never change. Anti-Israel media bias is one of them.

From today’s Reuters: Israel rejects Hamas ceasefire call.

From the headline, the casual reader would make the assumption that big bad Israel is at it again, rejecting the perfectly reasonable offer of a peace-loving Hamas.

Hah!

Rocket attacks? Kidnapped soldiers? Terrorist attacks? The fact that any cease-fire offer by Hamas is nothing but a ruse anyway? Well, none of those are even suggested by the headline, and are only vaguely referred to in the text of the article itself.

A better headline might read something like “Israel stands strong against Hamas’s blackmail” or, perhaps, “Israel sees through Palestinian terrorist government’s transparent cease-fire ruse”.

But of course, headlines like that would be called – what else? – biased.

Update: Here’s Meryl with more anti-Israel-media-bias-of-the-week, this time from AP.

That must be the new quote, replacing “if it bleeds, it leads”. Because Meryl wonders how it’s possible that one of the most wanted terrorists in the world was captured and nobody’s talking about it:

The most feared terrorist in Asia, Azahari bin Husin, the man responsible for the two Bali bombings and an attack on the Australian embassy in Jakarta, has blown himself up after being cornered by police in East Java.

Meryl, I see your question and raise you this one: How is it that I only found out about it through reading your blog?

Reuters top stories? Nope. AP? Not a chance. CNN? Andrea friggin’ Yates is a lead story but no sign of the news about bin Husin.

I guess successes in the vastly unpopular War on Terror would be conterproductive. Failures sell many more papers, right? Especially when Bush can be blamed for them.

Let’s examine this morning’s headline: Sharon, Abbas talk as Israel suspends offensive.

Israel suspends offensive???

Sounds like a Palestinian offensive to me:

But in three days, Palestinians have fired 5 Qassam missiles, six anti-tank rockets and a half dozen mortar shells at Israeli military and civilian targets outside its borders. Israel army patrols were shot at five times.

Anyway, it was my understanding of the word “offensive” that it applied to the people trying to attack and destroy a country, not to those trying to defend one.

But silly me, I guess Reuters knows best.

Some stuff makes me too mad to even blog about it, because it just gets my heart rate up. But you can read about it on other blogs. Like Ken Livingstone’s latest spewings. (More here). And the continuing Palestinian terrorism against Israel. And CBC’s gutlessness and the fact that my tax dollars fund it.

Then there’s the stuff in my own life that makes me mad too. Like certain people who I am forced to deal with at work. And certain issues of long distances. And certain issues of lack of air conditioning.

When I’m really mad, sometimes it’s great to listen to some appropriate music.