RIGHTbert

Bias in Arab Media?

A reader asked.....

In an effort at "multiculturalism" and under the guise of recognizing 911 and media bias, a student at our school wrote in the school newspapaper that students have "too narrow a view and should go to aljazeera.com and palestine-daily.com to see why other countries hate us and why on 911 2001 people on the other side of the globe were running in the streets of the country in joy becuase the U.S. felt the violence and destruction that plague their countries."

He sites these news media as highly respected and unbiased and that American media is pro-American and pro-Israel with too narrow of views.

Can you help me out with this one?

Can you guide me to instances of aljazeera and palestinian papers being truthful, respected, etc.? I don't think they are, who owns and runs these?

The reply....

I can't comment on the ownership of the papers you cite.

The thing about bias is that it exists to promote a point of view or an agenda. The papers cited are Arab and sell their news to an Arab population wanting something closer to home than the BBC or SkyNews(Fox). They sell a point of view desirable to their local consumers.

I will argue that the writer in your school paper correctly directs readers to other than known and trusted sources. There is a vast difference between knowingly seeking out conflicting viewpoints and swallowing the package they deliver.

We suffer in America from severely biased organizations that are received daily into our homes. Both Reuters and the Associated Press have decidedly antiwar agendas and both provide the American masses in small town papers. Many of these small papers surrender their news gathering ability totally to these wire services. While the internet provides daily feeds m directly from the military command in Iraq, the papers choose to take the events filtered through the biased wire services. Dan Rather taught us that network TV news is totaly unreliable and often out right untruthful. He is no more.

The internet provides far more than a person can absorb, but continuous sampling with in-depth research on specific issues is beneficial. A sampling of the opposition is not a completely bad thing. It must be noted that the recent events in Lebanon were totally managed by Hezbollah. An individual known on the internet as Green Helmet Guy was present at each and every press event. He not only managed the event but actually staged false events. He apparently seeded bomb craters with new furry toys meant to show the deaths of children.

Here is a link: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1681197/posts

Reuters published an unknown but massive quantity of photo shopped pictures.

Here is a link: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1680949/posts

You used the term multiculturism. There is a difference between multiculturism in America and being a citizen of the world. Many today seek American isolation when the exact opposite course is unfolding. To develop a world view, it is necessary to sample thought across a very wide spectrum. To sample and to learn is not to agree.

Thanks for your question