'The Rest of the Story' in Iraq

[Rogue]

Back to the topic.
Call all information propaganda if you wish. I wish I could get both sides on the evening news (not just about Iraq)
Western press coverage (and US politicians) that only focuses on the bad events does the troops a great amount of harm. Our enemy sees this and they get embolden. They believe if they can just terrorize us enough we will cut and run like in Somalia.
If they saw favorable press coverage of the mission and confident and resolute statements by our leaders on both sides (not Kennedy saying things like this is Bush's Vietnam, Kerry, wrong war, wrong time) we could win this war in half the time. IMO

[Gav]

Shall we give less credence to your link because it is the “New Yorker,” a liberal publication?

Do what you like.

The link I posted had nothing to do with the story you posted. It was just a pieve about the World Tribune as a whole. I did a search looking for information about the World Tribune and found that and other stuff. I noticed straight, away, the extreme bias permeating both that article (with the the creepy stuff that esskreemr pointed out) and when I looked at the site as a whole I realised that it's bias was more than obvious. It smelled of propaganda. Soldier's personal accounts will probably have more credence and I would expect that we would see a range of views - not just the very right wing views promulgatd by that site.

A question to the board:

Why, in [american terms] do right wingers suggest that if it's a liberal source that it is somehow automatically wrong? The reverse is probably true as well. Why the finger pointing? Why not read both sides?

[Rogue]

Originally Posted by Gav

A question to the board:

Why, in american terms do right wingers suggest that if it's a liberal source that it is somehow automatically wrong? The reverse is probably true as well. Why the finger pointing? Why not read oth sides?

A bold attempt at threadjacking.

[Gav]

Originally Posted by Rogue

A bold attempt at threadjacking.

Call it a threadjack, I call it a vaild question.

[Schiavona]

Originally Posted by Gav

A question to the board:

Why, in [american terms] do right wingers suggest that if it's a liberal source that it is somehow automatically wrong? The reverse is probably true as well. Why the finger pointing? Why not read both sides?

Just as people began to distrust the Federal government in the '60s, we (Americans) began to distrust the popular media in the '90s. News stories began to resemble editorials and the slant of these stories were very often of one political extreme or another. We have media watchdog groups that often put out reports that say things such as, "There were 567 news reports on subject X in the last three months, 327 were negative, 162 were positive and 78 were neutral". I've long believed that news reporting should be neutral, let me make up my own damn mind.

Oh, by the way, remember that the Fox News' motto is 'Fair and Balanced'. Sometimes they even seemed to be just that-when compared to CBS

[scrapinpeg]

It is undeniable that the mainstream media (TV news, newspapers) are for the most part left-wing in their editorial policy. That is perfectly understandable given the history of American journalism and the fact that, like academia, the profession tends to attract and reinforce those with similar beliefs.

There's nothing wrong with having an editorial position. Everyone knows that the NY Times and the Washington Post are stridently liberal on their editorial pages. Everyone knows that the Washington Times is stridently conservative on its editorial pages.

The problem arises when editorial policy translates into the way the "hard" news is reported. But, unfortunately, stories are approached, chosen, written and headlined with an editorial bent. TV anchormen editorialize often.

The NY Times and other papers even try to pass off editorial comment as hard news, by placing such items on the front page and within the hard news sections, giving them the heading "news analysis."

Plus, what is reported as news is what is sensational, shocking, and unusual. Car accidents aren't reported, because they're routine. "Good" news from Iraq isn't reported, because it's routine. Fires and bombs and kidnappings and body counts make better copy.

When there is an event attended by a thousand supporters, and there are 10 loud protestors waving signs in a tight cluster, who is going to get the air time? The protestors. They're more photogenic, they're a conflict and conflict is interesting, and being in a tight group they look like a bigger crowd on camera. Of course, the media only shows them, it seems, when the protestors espouse a position similar to the paper/network's editorial policy.

Some stories are chosen because of the bias. Horrible things in country A may be reported, but horrible things in country B are not. The reason often seems to have more to do with whether country A or country B are friends of the US than anything else.

Also, lots of reporters went into the field because they wanted to be world-changers like the reporters in the 60s and early 70s who turned the tide of public opinion against Vietnam and exposed the Watergate scandal. This is going to color their reporting, and even their idea of what counts as "neutral." You get a share of "true believers," world-changers, crusaders and anti-establishment types, too. Like the CBS producer who just got fired, who'd been gunning for the National Guard story for years and was on a crusade to go after Bush. Not uncommon at all.

Back in the 70s and 80s, the blatant bias was not part of the common wisdom. People really thought the news was neutral. But in the 90s, people mostly came to realize that mainstream news is slanted. A radio DJ named Rush Limbaugh saw a market opportunity and exploited it for all it was worth. Fox news did it too, and both became wildly successful. The blogosphere arose in the past few years, and now there are a lot of sources of information out there. And everyone's got an opinion.

[Larrison]

Gav writes:
>>A question to the board: Why, in [american terms] do right wingers suggest that if it's a liberal source that it is somehow automatically wrong? The reverse is probably true as well. Why the finger pointing? Why not read both sides?<<

Hmmm.. I don't think that's the case. It's not that it's automatically wrong, if a liberal (or conservative) source reports something. My perspective is that if you can identify a piece of information coming from a source that has seems to have demonstrated a slant on how they report news, then you have to weight the credibility of that source in how you interpret the news item. This goes for any source -- liberal or conservative.

Thinking this through, this goes to sub genres in the news -- whether the reporting is sports, international news, political news, entertainment news, etc where I may weight a source's credibility based upon how they have treated past news stories in this genre against how other sources have treated it.

Why not read both sides? Why not indeed! If possible, and its an imporant issue to me, then I'll go read multiple sources and viewpoints. However, in the "main stream media", which is where most people get the vast majority of their news, there seems to be a fairly consistent editorial perspective between about 90% of the main media outlets -- whether it is national news radio, newspaper, magazine, and network and cable news. The one network who seemly provides a different approach to the news seems to be the Fox News network. (Note I'm not saying they are better or worse, but different.) [See aside 1, below]

But the news from any of these sources is typically highly processed and edited, primarily because this is a corporatized, mass-news media -- they don't have the time, space, or inclination to give in-depth news reporting given their need to compete in a mass media market. You know you're not going to get the full story, just an edited/ processed summary long on "story" and probably light on "information".

If you have access to good internet connections, or are willing to accept other less credible news sources (at least in my view) such as talk radio such as Rush Limbaugh or Al Franken, then you can get different perspectives and potentially additional information on a news item. But you'll have to filter that, depending upon how they treat similar news items in what information they emphasize and how they interpret facts. In particular, I think the rise of the internet and the ability to parse and sort through multiple news stories and multiple sources is an excellent way to dig for more information on a news item. But.. you're going to have to do the sorting and interpreting yourself between conflicting perspectives and news sources, and won't get it nicely bundled and abstracted as you would in a main stream media news item.

[Aside 1 -- I think the corporatization and homogenation of the main stream media is part of why Fox News has been successful, regardless of its position. Optimally, I would like to set a variety of sources, from all perspectives. But with the national competitive "media" markets, the main stream media had seemed have gone into one set of editorial perspectives and formats -- probably driven by organizations duplicating what a competitor had done and been successful at. Now when Fox came on the scene, they offered a product different than their competitors, which all looked and sounded alike. This gave them immediate product differentiation, which in a competitive market gave them an advantage in attracting viewers -- just because it was different. Note I have not said anything about any editorial positions they have taken to this point -- just that they were different, which is I think the basis of their success. And, by positioning themselves as more "balanced", they because somewhat attractive to other networks, which have been trying to match this with the inclusion of more "conservative" commentators and different perspectives, rather than the regular mainstream copycat old-style editorial perspectives on the news. And when CBS and ABC shoot themselves in the foot with the Memo-gate stories and other items, that only helps differentiate Fox in the market.

Personally, I really don't like Fox news -- its one of my least favorite channels to watch for news, on the infrequent times I watch news. Primarily this is their production values, not editorial content -- its just physically painful for me to watch due to some of the ways they present things, not on any particular editorial way they present the news.]

[achilleus]

Originally Posted by L.O.A.S.

Someone please explain the above statement to me.

Originally Posted by Rogue

In other words you need to be on drugs to figure it out.

Not really.

The quote is a simple analogy. Holding a snake is a dangerous proposition. It is flexible, and can twist, turn, and bite the person holding it.

The point of the article is about the Bush Administration using propaganda to further their own ends, and how this has and can backfire.

Specifically, the article was referring to the administration's use of torture, and how they are attempting to change the definition of it, but given that this thread was talking about propaganda, and it's use in the military, I thought it was appropiate.

[esskreemr]

The soldier mentioned in this post: http://www.fencing101.com/vb/showpos...0&postcount=19

was on Dennis Miller last night apparently. I didn't get to watch it but her mom was on the radio today (she's local). Addie Collins is also doing something for American Idol. I predict a book about the "other" stories in Iraq. The ones where soldiers are rebuilding roads, distributing food, ie the ones we really don't get to hear much about.

Dennis Miller link:
http://www.safesearching.com/dennism...st/index.shtml

[Svidrigailov]

Originally Posted by Gav

I heartily agree.

Although I've read that the US army is more influenced by the incomplete writings of X [damn long term memory loss has struck again - can't remember his name; 19th centuary guy I think -if anyone wants to enlighten me I'd appreciate it].

you might be thinking of Alfred Meyer Mahan, naval strategist of the 19th century...