MEDIA BIAS?...who us?

[daenku32]

As I said I disagree with the characterization of the incident. Not the facts.

For the sake of arguement....In Edinburgh is it common for the police to "storm" a bunch of "youths" in a mosque for no reason? Is that how they get their kicks? Or in Edinburgh do the "youths" in a mosque usually have to do something which caused the police to storm them? How does it work in there?

Excatly what part of "after Palestinians stoned police and Jewish worshippers" in the Reuters news implied that the Police started it?

 

[zenith-nadir]

Graham - The latter is more likely poor journalism than malicious bias, IMHO.

Here's the difference. Two sentences;

1) BBC Quote : "Israeli police have stormed the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and fired tear gas after Palestinian youths reportedly threw stones after Friday prayers". What comes to mind? What aggressive act is reported first?

2) Actual chain of events : "Palestinian youths in Jerusalem riot on the Temple Mount after Friday prayers, Israeli police respond with tear gas" What comes to mind? What aggressive act is reported first?

daenku32 - Excatly what part of "after Palestinians stoned police and Jewish worshippers" in the Reuters news implied that the Police started it?.

Same thing. Two sentences;

1) Reuters Quote : "Israeli police stormed the square outside al-Aqsa Mosque, one of Islam's holiest sites, on Friday after Palestinians stoned police and Jewish worshippers at Judaism's Western Wall nearby, police and witnesses said". What comes to mind? What aggressive act is reported first?

2) Actual chain of events : "Palestinians stone police and Jewish worshippers at one of judaism's and Islam's holiest sites on Friday, Israeli police responded with tear gas and arrests.". What comes to mind? What aggressive act is reported first?

 

[demon]

ZN
"THE PALESTINIANS CAME OUT OF al-Aqsa Mosque, one of Islam's holiest sites, AND STARTED A RIOT. END OF STORY. Accept it."

Were you there?
If not, what makes you so certain as to the train of events?
If it had been reported as you would have liked it to have been reported you would have had no problem.
Because it wasn`t reported the way you wanted it to be reported ie wacko Palestinians go crazy with their stones and pointy sticks at poor law abiding Israelis, you get a cob on.

When most people don`t even know what the occupied territories are, or the ratio of Israeli killings to Palestinian killings, or the huge amounts of aid that Israel sucks leech like from the US, or Israeli`s constant flouting of international law and the Geneva Convention do you honestly think many people take you seriously about "typical" anti-Israel bias in the media?
You take a lot of people for idiots around here ZN with crap like this, people on both sides of the Palestine/Israeli/USA issue.

 

[Grammatron]

If you really want to see media bias check out this title.

"Sharon Says Arafat May Be Target, Zionist Police Storm Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound "

From http://www.tehrantimes.com/Description.asp?Da=4/3/2004&Cat=2&Num=013

 

[Mycroft]

Originally posted by Graham
The latter is more likely poor journalism than malicious bias, IMHO.

I think most bias is not malicious, and that's true on any subject. That doesn't make the bias any less.

Originally posted by Graham As regards the former, if throwing stones and rioting are the same thing the Zenith Nader has no complaint since all of the articles clearly state that stone throwing was occuring.

Graham

Bias in news reporting is rarely a matter of factual accuracy as much as it is on emphasis. I believe that on politically charged issues, extra care should be taken.

 

[zenith-nadir]

Were you there?If not, what makes you so certain as to the train of events?

Reuters - "...after Palestinians stoned police and Jewish worshippers at Judaism's Western Wall nearby"

CNN - "to quell Palestinians throwing rocks at police and Jewish worshippers at the end of Friday prayers at the Al Aqsa Mosque.

BBC - "after Palestinian youths reportedly threw stones after Friday prayers."

Tehrantimes - "Stone-throwing by Palestinian youths after Friday prayers at east Beit-ul-Moqaddas’ Al-Aqsa mosque compound, prompted a rare raid by Israeli police"

If it had been reported as you would have liked it to have been reported you would have had no problem.

Yes. If it had been reported like the Tehrantimes reported it;

Stone-throwing by Palestinian youths after Friday prayers at east Beit-ul-Moqaddas’ Al-Aqsa mosque compound, prompted a rare raid by Israeli police, who fired stun grenades, tear gas and rubber bullets on hundreds of Palestinians holed up inside the mosque, an AFP reporter witnessed.

Notice something? The Israeli police didn't "storm" Islam's holiest site F-I-R-S-T. The story is in chronological order. Israeli police responded in a rare raid, which is true, to stone-throwing Palestinians. Funny how the Tehrantimes gets the events in proper order and does not use flowery adjectives like "storm" in fact they tell the truth and call the event a "rare raid" unlike the bias of the BBC or Reuters. Ironic.

 

[epepke]

Tehrantimes - "Stone-throwing by Palestinian youths after Friday prayers at east Beit-ul-Moqaddas’ Al-Aqsa mosque compound, prompted a rare raid by Israeli police"

Interesting that the Teheran Times reported this most accurately.

 

[zenith-nadir]

Interesting that the Teheran Times reported this most accurately.

Thats my point. I don't have issue with the facts, just the way they are characterized and chronologically represented.....obviously a bias exsists at the BBC and Reuters.

 

[Ziggurat]

Let's get something clear about my position on Israel: you've got two sides, both crazy religious fanatics, who both claim the same territory. History says that in this situation, one side will eventually be defeated.

Hey, for once I agree with you. But then you go and ruin it all:

The side with numbers usually wins.

Not in modern warfare. The side that wins is the side with greater industrial capacity. You're an idiot for ever suggesting otherwise. And Israel is miles ahead of the Palestinians on industrial capacity.

If Israel continues to pursue a course of violent engagement, it will eventually be destroyed by sheer numbers, as soon as the U.S. loses interest in playing the Middle East game.

This is a misperception shared by the Palestinians, who do not realize the truth: if pushed to it, the Israelis will utterly destroy the Palestinians rather than be destroyed themselves, and that's completely reasonable. The Palestinians had best wake up to this fact: nothing keeps them from extermination other than Israel's restraint.

If Israel wants to survive, the only course is to seek lasting peace. The violence that is going on there now is the fault of BOTH sides, not just one as you love to portray it.

Israel is indeed not faultless, but pursueing peace will lead to failure, because the Palestinians mistakenly believe as you do that they will win eventually, so they have no interest in peace. If Israel wants peace, it must pursue victory. Because it is only if the Palestinians realize that they are doomed to defeat that they will ever be interested in peace.

 

[zenith-nadir]

Because it is only if the Palestinians realize that they are doomed to defeat that they will ever be interested in peace.

1948 - Arabs lost.
1956 - Arabs lost.
1967 - Arabs lost.
1973 - Arabs lost.
1988 - Intifada #1 Palestinians lost.
2000 - Intifada #2 Palestinians are losing.
1964-2004 - Arab-palestinian terror war against Israel, Israel still exsists, Arabs lost.


The only Arabs that have accepted defeat are Egypt and Jordan, all other Arab nations are still technically at war. Go figure.

 

[Skeptic]

You would like us maybe to think that the Palestinians just appeared out of nowhere and threw rocks for no reason?

Well, there was a reason: the preachers in the prayers told them they should stone the "sons of dogs and pigs" (i.e., the jews) who dare to "desecrate" the holy Arab land with their presence. Stoning the jews is a religious duty.

Why do you ask?

The truth is, the source of the conflict is the utter refusal of the Arabs to live in peace with the jews, or to be satisfied with anything less than "throwing the jews into the sea". Yes this genocidal agression is shrugged off as a matter of no consequence.

As for "seeking peace"--that was tried before. Every single agreement with the "peace loving" Palestinians was broken the moment it was convenient for them, with renewed violence and calls to throw the jews into the sea.

To "seek peace" with the Palestinians is like "seeking peace" with Hitler. The goal is the same (genociding the jews) and the tactics are the same (signing and then breaking agreements, and talking of "peace talks" while waging war). There's no point to it.

 

[rockoon]

The media is mostly apologetic in regards to Israel. The state of Israel is as bad as the Palestinians and I am frankly embarassed that my government pumps so much money into their country without anything of real merit to show for it.

 

[zenith-nadir]

The media is mostly apologetic in regards to Israel. The state of Israel is as bad as the Palestinians and I am frankly embarassed that my government pumps so much money into their country without anything of real merit to show for it.

Just so you can make an informed decision here are some recent American foreign aid totals for 2003;

• Israel gets about $2.1 billion per year
• Egypt annually gets around $1.3 billion
• Colombia, the third-largest beneficiary, gets around $540 million per year.
• Jordan gets about $250 million in economic support and $198 million in military financing in FY 2003.
• Peru, Ukraine, and Russia each receive about $200 million annually in economic and military aid.
• Pakistan will get $200 million in economic aid and $50 million in military support.
• Arafat’s Palestinian Authority benefits from $70 million a year in U.S. aid through U.N. refugee assistance programs, as well as an additional $75 million administered to water, housing, employment, and democracy programs.
• Yemen will receive $10 million in U.S. economic support.

But USAID to the Palestinian Authority ceased in 2004 because;

Washington Times - January 08, 2004

Palestinian organizations are refusing to accept U.S. foreign aid this year, rather than sign a pledge promising that the money will not be used to support terrorism.

"This requirement is a worldwide requirement, not just for Palestinians," said Portia Palmer, a spokesman for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). "The majority of the [nongovernmental organizations] worldwide have signed it."

The Palestinian Red Crescent, which has received about $300,000 a year in U.S. aid in the past, refused to sign the pledge and will forgo U.S. funding this year.

 

[davefoc]

ZN there are literally hundreds if not thousands of stories on the web describing the violence and harassment of Palestinians by the Israeli settlers. The IDF seems unable or unwilling to curtail this kind of thing.

Do you see that even if the stories are only partially true that the cause of the stories is that the Israelis are subsidizing extremist settlers to occupy land that is generally not recognized as Israeli and these settlers act as provocateurs. These settlers have religious and economic motivations for maintaining the constant state of hostility between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Until these settlers are removed there can be no just peace. The US has become a co-conspirator in this injustice because it is the US aid that allows the Israelis to continue to lavish huge subsidies on these settlers and huge military expenditures to protect these settlements.

Can you acknowledge at even the most minimalist level that if the situation was reversed and the Palestinians were using superior military force to maintain settlements inside Israel that you'd see that as a grave violation of Israeli rights.

Do you have any comments on any of these stories?
http://www.bobmay.info/oct122002farming.htm

Yesterday I got a call from my friend Alison who works at the Bethlehem Bible College. She told me that her husband George's family farm had been damaged by a group of Israeli settlers. Settlers came in the dead of night and bulldozed a road to and through the family property uprooting small trees, snapping fences, and destroying rock walls.

http://web.israelinsider.com/bin/en...spWho=Article^l2426&enZone=Views&enVersion=0&

Israeli newspaper article discussing the settlements

http://www.wrmea.com/archives/janfeb03/0301015.html

Mary Hughes-Thompson has a new category to add to her résumé: veteran of the War of Olives. The retired TV writer and licensed private pilot arrived home in Los Angeles battered from a severe beating by armed Israeli settlers Oct. 27 on the West Bank.

While it seemed incomprehensible that muscular teenage men would beat an elderly woman, the 68-year-old grandmother said, they did—and they seemed to enjoy it.

http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/israel/hebron6-07.htm

But in the H2 area of Hebron, as in other Israeli-controlled areas in Hebron district such as the Baqa`a valley, it is clear that the majority of physical attacks are initiated by Israeli settlers, and that the IDF has consistently failed in its obligation to protect Palestinian civilians from attacks by Israeli settlers.

http://www.cpt.org/hebron/HebChronology.htm

Cliff Kindy and Jeff Heie are detained for nine hours while accompanying a water tank truck sent by the city government to fill the cistern belonging to the Abu Haikel family. The municipality had stopped delivering water to people who lived near Israeli settlements because Israeli settlers had broken the windshield of the water truck too many times. As a result of the detention, international attention is drawn to the CPT project in Hebron, and the Israeli public demands an investigation into why there is a water shortage in Hebron when the settlements around Hebron have plenty. The arrests also bring CPT into contact with the Society of St. Yves, which offers free legal help to the team and eventually represents several families in Hebron.

 

[zenith-nadir]

So now we are talking about settlers allegedly attacking palestinians and not palestinians rioting on the Temple Mount after friday prayer?

Turnspeak involves taking an incident and then turning things around 180 degrees in order to justify the event. (ie: "Palestinians riot on Temple Mount because "settlers" attack palestinians in the West Bank")

And the "stories" you quote davefoc come from the Human Rights Watch, The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs - which publishes a grand total of 10 magazines a year, Christian Peacemaker Teams AND News and Views from Bethlehem by Bob the Methodist? Those are your credible unbiased sources? Yikes...

I especially like the article you link from IsraelInsider News, but mysteriously do not quote from;

So who are these Israeli settlers? - By Neill Lochery - The stereotypical image of the 180,000-plus Israeli settlers who inhabit the West Bank and Gaza Strip is of machine-gun-totting, Arab-hating Jews, hey, funny, davefoc just did that..., Politically they are characterized, by an increasingly hostile media, as extremist and the major Israeli obstacle to peace.

Anyhow I am not going to validate your turnspeak. On friday after prayers p-a-l-e-s-t-i-n-i-a-n-s, not settlers, rioted on the temple mount.

meanwhile;

"An Israeli woman praying at the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site, reacts as she waits to be evacuated following stone-throwing from Muslim worshippers"

"An elderly Jewish worshipper is helped by an Israeli riot policeman to flee the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site, during a confrontation at the Al Aqsa Mosque compound, in Jerusalem's Old City, Friday, April 2, 2004"

"Jewish worshippers cower against the western wall to protect themselves from stones during heavy clashes between Palestinians and Israeli border police in Jerusalem's Old City April 2, 2004."

 

[Jaggy Bunnet]

As I said I disagree with the characterization of the incident. Not the facts.

For the sake of arguement....In Edinburgh is it common for the police to "storm" a bunch of "youths" in a mosque for no reason? Is that how they get their kicks? Or in Edinburgh do the "youths" in a mosque usually have to do something which caused the police to storm them? How does it work in there?

No it is not common - what is your point?

What is common is the BBC using the phrase "storm" to describe policing actions:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3597443.stm - about the Madrid police preparing to storm the terrorist hideout before the terrorists blew themselves up.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/north_west/3362459.stm - Welsh police and a block of flats.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3279807.stm - Turkish police and a courthouse.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3184368.stm - Czech police and nightclubs.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3118170.stm - US police and a classroom seige.

Therefore it is absolutely apparent that the use of the term "storm" to describe the actions in Jerusalem is entirely consistent.

The BBC article makes it quite clear in which order the events are alleged to have occured. It also reports the other side of the story where it is claimed that the action was unprovoked. It then leaves it up to the reader to draw their own conclusions.

 

[zenith-nadir]

No it is not common - what is your point?What is common is the BBC using the phrase "storm" to describe policing actions:
Therefore it is absolutely apparent that the use of the term "storm" to describe the actions in Jerusalem is entirely consistent.The BBC article makes it quite clear in which order the events are alleged to have occured. It also reports the other side of the story where it is claimed that the action was unprovoked. It then leaves it up to the reader to draw their own conclusions.

Take the first line of the Welsh story for example...

Police have stormed a block of flats in a the north Wales village of Penmaenmawr after a man threw petrol bombs at them.

now lets go over the first line in the Jerusalem story;

Israeli police have stormed the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and fired tear gas after Palestinian youths reportedly threw stones after Friday prayers.

The guy in Penmaenmawr threw petrol bombs, the "youths" in Jerusalem reportedly threw stones. How come the guy in Penmaenmawr did not reportedly throw petrol bombs?

 

[Jaggy Bunnet]

Take the first line of the Welsh story for example... now lets go over the first line in the Jerusalem story;The guy in Penmaenmawr threw petrol bombs, the "youths" in Jerusalem reportedly threw stones. How come the guy in Penmaenmawr did not reportedly throw petrol bombs?

Probably because the throwing of the petrol bombs is not disputed in that case, while the throwing of the stones is, as is mentioned in the original story.

 

[Graham]

Probably because the throwing of the petrol bombs is not disputed in that case, while the throwing of the stones is, as is mentioned in the original story.

Plus, after the fact, it's probably easier to to verify that petrol bombs were thrown than stones, since the latter leave little in the way of residual damage.

I think you're grasping at straws here, ZN.

Graham

 

[Tmy]

"Jewish Blues Brothers impersonators use a stolen wheelchair as mini bulldozer to flatten Palistinian girls Barbie Doll dream house"



Since when is the news NOT biased. You dont the the when/where/hows from robots. More emotional , more bias. Think of 911 and the imbetted reporters. the reporters are wearing flag pins, and saying "God Bless America".

Theres always bias. Like the local newscasters backing the local sports teams.