cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/15001340
“Such an invasion could lead to horrific massacres and raise scenarios of a second Nakba,” the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights said recently. “After 200 days of horrific genocidal acts in Gaza, the real objectives of the attack are the continuation of the 76-year-long ongoing Nakba and the erasure and genocidal destruction of the Palestinian people in Gaza. Israel is laying the groundwork to fulfill its settler-colonial plan of colonizing Gaza.”
Human rights defenders have warned that Israel may ultimately seek to ethnically cleanse as many Palestinians as possible from Gaza.
They’re not quoting the IDF’s plans for what they called an “ethnic cleansing.” They’re quoting someone who characterized the plans as an ethnic cleansing. I think it’s foolish to assume they meant to imply the IDF was waving around plans for something titled “the ethnic cleansing of Arabs in Rafah.”
Commondreams is a good outlet. Yes, they may editorialize and are not shy about their left-leaning positions, but that doesn’t inherently make an outlet untrustworthy. Fox calling themselves “fair and balanced” and using charged language in their chyrons—for example, I was at the gym and I saw them referring to the Campus sit-ins as “riots” and the participants as “antisemites.” (If I’m remembering those correctly, but it was insanely loaded language of their own creation)—is what leads them to be a problematic outlet. They skew facts, obscure the truth, and heavily edit out anything that doesn’t rile up their viewership.
Commondreams has a mission to give good information that may cater to the left, but they’re a non-profit outlet. And there is an inherent difference between left-bias and right-bias. Right bias has to alter reality to fit their narrative. The established left-leaning outlets like Commondreams aren’t altering and obscuring. They’re highlighting what they see as important information that, yes, adheres to a more left-leaning worldview, but what does that mean in this context? They’re willfully calling out Israel when “center” and right-leaning outlets are beholden to them. They’ll investigate issues that are important to civil rights, privacy, etc. But that doesn’t mean their worldview warps the reality of the topics they cover. They’re just more relevant to progressives/leftists.
Now, there are definitely a lot of terrible, probably non-journalist run outlets that really cropped up around 2016 like those “blue news” Wordpress sites or whatever that used to fly around Reddit. There is a way to be untrustworthy and left/liberal-biased. Definitely not saying it’s impossible. But it’s a different beast when discussing long-established, trustworthy left-leaning sources.
You know how it’s been said “reality has a left-leaning bias?” Well, that’s pretty relevant here. To be left-biased, you still report on facts that speak to leftist people. To be right-biased, it means you’re singling out minority groups, catering to big business in disingenuous ways (because that’s how they operate. They can basically run propaganda as private institutions, and the right-biased outlets unquestioningly run with it.) Left-biased outlets are critical, right-leaning uncritical. That’s a huge difference.
Well said. Like Democracy Now there’s bias in the choices of what stories to report on but the reporting itself is accurate.
DN! Is a great example. They’ll report on the pipeline protests, the genocide in Gaza…they’ll cover things an outlet that’s trying to gain more viewership by catering to “fairness” like NYT, WaPo, CNN, etc. wouldn’t dare touch—or would go out of their way to not take a position on. You’d never catch Amy Goodman bringing on a fossil fue exec to hear their opinions on the pipeline protesters and how they should all go back to work or whatever.
Catering to “fairness,” (the best way I’ve ever heard this problem described) is, assuming the republicans adopted flat eartherism, NYT would run an article saying “democrats and republicans can’t agree on shape of earth.”
That’s ignoring basic facts to cater to a larger audience and not “appear biased.” But one of those positions is inherently wrong. The factionalism of the US political system doesn’t change that fact. Although it does immediately cut your audience in half if you can’t appear to treat the absurd point s somehow equal.
Treating climate change scientists and the spokespeople for Exxon as having two differing points on a debatable topic is catering to fairness. To the point that it turns your reporting into complete fucking trash.
Just making sure I understand this correctly.
What you are saying is its ok for a news organization to push one side of a story, report only stories that support their views, use language that makes it seem more urgent and serious than it actually is, and this is a reputable organization that should be listed to?
And what the other poster is saying is that this is especially acceptable as its the side they agree with?
And this is ok?
To a greater or lesser degree, all news orgs do this.
Yes, most organizations lean one way or another.
The issue I’ve got is that this discussion seems to be saying that it should be celebrated as the be all and end all of this conflict, that you should only be looking at organizations that support your view, and that you shouldn’t look into what bias your organizations is pushing without further analysis and understanding.
Effectively, that it’s more important your views are confirmed than you are informed and accurate.
Who is saying that though? I’m certainly not.
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