al-Jazeera, Fox & U

Re: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=538662&mesg_id=539030&page=

The truth or untruth of the al-Jazeera report that a young girl was abused by US troops in prison is NOT the subject of this post. The subject is the swiftness and thoughtlessness with which the report was accepted as truth by numerous members of DU, who are knee-jerk skeptics about anything that emanates from the American media. As Jon Stewart once so aptly put it on the Daily Show, al-Jazeera learned eveything it knows about putting on the news from Fox, but too many here give al-Jazeera cedibility based on nothing other than its anti-Americanism. We already know for a fact that doctored video and photos of alleged tortures and abuses are making the rounds of the internet, and there are going to many eye-witness reports that are going to be totally bogus. It's up to us to decide if we're going to be willing fools for all of it, or if we're going to keep our heads and demand a standard of proof before rushing to judgement. That should be the difference between US & THEM.

It's an ITV report.

so hold on to your seats....

the endless lieing, soft balling and spinning makes the country, govt., military and our bonehead press parrots a joke in the world. How sad we have gone so low that al jazeera will be a higher standard in the rest of the world.

It's the real ones that bother me.

And you are so incredibly wrong about why DU watches Al-Jazeera closely. You seem to think Al-Jazeera is chock full of "Anti-Americanism". That's simply not true. I look at al Jazeera because they give the other side's account, it's that simple. It's a part of being open minded. Is there propaganda on al-Jazeera? absolutely. Is there propaganda on Fox? absolutely. Is there propaganda on CNN? absolutely. We are bombarded with propaganda, and to reduce al-Jazeera to simply an outlet for anti-American sentiment is to completely miss the point.

It would be nice to have the luxury of being able to deny the common accusations by al-Jazeera of American atrocities against the Muslim world, but events of late have reduced our leverage significantly.

One common theme is emerging from this administration: "Blame the press - whatever press. Our actions be damned, the fact that our actions ARE KNOWN is the problem, not our actions themselves."

to NOT be surprised by any allegations. The story of the young girl may or may not be true, but what we have already seen from the very beginning of this idiotic group of fools, in charge of this stupid, illegal war, that the world needs no more examples of our barbarity to reach the logical conclusion. In closing, lest you forget, you may very well be one of the many "willing fools" for NOT believing it, and for giving complete trust to that monkey in the White House.

They have more viewers than anyone else in the region. What they report affects opinion over there just like Fox or CNN does over here. Their journalistic standards are sensationalist, but they generally don't just make stuff up. We will find out how much is true over the next few days.

And I've got a feeling it's going to be ugly.

and Dumbsfeld and all of them being treated "unfairly" now,
do you? If at some point fairness and equity becomes the norm
in politics I will consider it. As long as they are not being
tortured or imprisoned without trial, I can't see getting too
worked up about it.

You were told that Al-Jazeera was a perfectly reputable news organization in this post:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=538662&mesg_id=538719&page=

So why do you persist in trying to kill the messengers on this story?

. . . and until they do, you won't believe it? Do you think anyone would have believed the atrocities in the pictures that did surface if they had not seen them? There had been complaints for months by Iraqis about torture. They were casually dismissed as lies and propaganda until the pictures surfaced. So is that what it's going to take for you? A picture? :shrug:

TYY

...girl did not originate from Al-Jazeera. It was ITV. If you're going to throw a fit, please try to have your facts in order.

By the way, Al-Jazeera is correct FAR more often in their reporting than ANY of the captive U. S. mainstream media.

My standard of proof is any story that can be double-checked with any reputable foreign media outlet. What's your standard...whatever the NeoCons tell you?

fact one...al Jazeera reporter was source of story

fact two..."al-Jazeera correct FAR more often blah..blah..blah" totally unsupportable by you or anyone else (maybe the Columbia Journalism Review will conduct a study on this one day, and if it doesn't come out for al-Jazeera, "certain" DUers can dismiss it as just more media whoring)

fact three...as of this writing, the story has not been double-checked with any other reputable source...foreign or otherwise

fact four...unlike most neo-cons, I marched against this war and Vietnam, write checks to Kerry, and am currently working on a book on how critical it is that liberalism survive this dark period

fact five...the book says that one of the great dangers liberals face is when they sink to the level of the Freeper enemy...responses to this post sadly confirm many of my points:
1. bias for what you believe someone has said over what was actually said
2. bias for anything bad about the opposition regardless of factuality
3. bias for terms in black and white (good and evil) against complexity
4. bias for personal attacks over reasoned argument
5. bias for emotion over logic

And can even publish it themselves, if they want to.

Since you can't explain why working for the BBC doesn't equate to professional journalism, your opinions are not particularly impressive.

on any given day, yes, I'd tend to accept Al-Jazeera over our own.

Given the documented reports of abuse and torture in Iraq (and Gitmo and Afghanistan) so far, I'd certainly tend to believe a report like the one in question before I'd even think about automatically dismissing it.

Given the FACT that rapes happen in prisons all over the world, including our own here in the U.S., and also in wars from time immemorial, I don't find a story like this lacking credibility to start with. IOW: What's not to believe?

Further, given the horrendous shame and humiliation that accompanies any rape in that region of the world -- so much so that suicide or death are usually meted out to the victim -- I don't find a report like this lacking credibility because the shame and humiliation and damage are so severe not many would make such a charge lightly. (Similar to "false charges of rape" here in the U.S. -- it happens, but so seldom as to be not worth worrying about or mentioning.)

What I find interesting is your rather heigtened sensitivity to even the ThOUGHT of accepting an Al-Jazeera story at face value. There's no evidence that I know of for a position that automatically dismisses them. Certainly news organizations can and do get things wrong on occasion. Our mainstream media gets it wrong (in the direction of pro-administration bias) on a daily basis, with nary a correction or even follow-up later in almost all cases. I have never seen any similar charge leveled at Al-Jazeera. If things are presented from a Middle Eastern perspective, so much the better. The U.S. may THINK it owns the world and everyone IN the world should see things from our hegemonic point of view and only our hegemonic point of view should be presented, but that ain't the way things are in the real world. Yet.

In a similar vein, while we in the West used to mock and joke about Pravda, there are times these days (and quite possibly more often than not) when it is a far superior source of news about what's going on with the U.S. than American news outlets. Alas, that means no more Pravda jokes.

think that Al-Jazeera isn't credible because it's arabic.

We also know for a fact that US troops are commiting war crimes and that there are more photos of it, so it should be a surprise to nobody that Al-Jazeera is reporting these things.

Funny that you mention "us and them."

they have every right to their perspective...Americano Media are pretty low on the credibility these days. I mean, Iraq is a disaster but we still have cheer leaders out there. Talk about denial.

I would like to see the number of falsehood Al-Jazeera can be proven to have made along side of a list of proven American media falsehoods.
Remember, most of the Al-Jazeera journalist used to work for the BBC-arab media.