quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: You misunderstand. He recognizes that you are saying that an unbiased network doesn't exist, and believes you are doing this to essentially shrug off Fox's egregious, harmful practices as equivalent to everything else out there (as opposed to much, much worse than normal.)
He can believe whatever he wants. Samprimary is taking past interaction he has had with me to assume this, instead of taking my response at face value. He can certainly do that, but he would be wrong.
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Then what was your point? You were responding to me talking about fox news to ask "what network is truly unbiased?" .... why?
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Actually, the saint remark was directed at a perception of the criticism of Lyrhawn's remarks.
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I wouldn't say that Al Jazeera is "run" by the Qatar foreign ministry. Funded by them and the royal family, yes. They don't generally chose to exercise as much editorial control as they could. And a lot of the people who work there aren't even from Qatar or even the region.
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quote: They don't generally chose to exercise as much editorial control as they could.
this is going to sound extremely pedantic, but the point needs to be made nonetheless:
rupert murdoch doesn't choose to excercise as much editorial control over Fox News as he could. Or, for that matter, the CCP also doesn't exercise as much editorial control over Xinhua as it could.
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: I wouldn't say that Al Jazeera is "run" by the Qatar foreign ministry. Funded by them and the royal family, yes. They don't generally chose to exercise as much editorial control as they could. And a lot of the people who work there aren't even from Qatar or even the region.
This is the sort of remark that others have justly been criticizing. Is there some reason* to assume that the government and royal family** of Qatar are somehow such greater patrons of integrity, a free and active and independent media, and other generally very rare values on the governmental level that they should get a pass on this?
Just off the top of my head, from what I know about Qatar in passing. How's their coverage on migrant worker rights, for example? In any country, particularly their own of course. I believe Qatar has been described as an 'public prison' or some such by foreign ministries of some of the governments of many migrant workers, but I may be misremembering. I further wonder, since Qatar uses some form of Sharia law in some of their legal system (again, or did last I remembered), what's their reporting record on, say, women's rights in the United States? Or in the Arab world?
*There's a ton of incredulity injected into this word that likely doesn't show up in this context. This kind of trust and faith given to an institution such as a national government is more or less unheard of outside of the strongest partisan allies.
**I'm trying not to faceplant on my keyboard, the idea that any royal family, not just an Arabic royal family, is to be given this kind of slack.
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Look, I ain't sayin' I'm not a fan of AJA. I am, in fact, particularly when put up against most American media. However, to me this is much more an indictment of the morally bankrupt and generally vapid quality of American media than it is a ringing endorsement of the journalistic integrity of AJA. Journalistic integrity, by the way, being something best measured by your integrity in reporting things close to home.
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I know a bit about Qatar as we have a campus there. My boss, in fact, has spent considerable time with the Sheikha Moza bint Nasser. Certainly Qatar has the problems of inequality in both income and wealth issues and gender inequality that most Arabic countries have but they are far more benign than most. They have a commitment to western education - especially for women who because of tradition often don't go abroad to study. The Sheikha particularly is an intelligent, powerful woman.
Our professors teach journalism over there - often in partnership with AJA.
Do you think that it makes headlines in The Guardian when Rupert Murdoch influences editorial decisions?
Of course there is a trade off when the press is supported by the government as opposed to being owned by private citizens and required to make a profit. I think that AJA and the BBC and NPR do a far better job with far less interference than most of our for-profit network news.
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: but you just can't, you just can't match up with the fodder and material that the american right wing just hurls at the daily show.
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To put in my two cents, I think AJA is very flawed. It's also one of the best, if not the best news services around.
A lot of what was described in Samprimary's link to AJA has previously come up and are serious defects. Particularly in the cases where journalists in the Middle East resigned in response to non-coverage of the suppression of protests during the Arab Spring in only Bahrain, the championing of the Muslim Brotherhood, Libyan, and Syrian rebels, and Wikileaks exposure of their non-verbal agreement to remove coverage that the United States dislikes among a few.
That they should still be considered heads and shoulders above, particularly the US media, but a lot of media around the world should not be interpreted as a ringing endorsement but a simple acknowledgement that there is something terribly wrong with modern media, particularly when it comes to editorial control of foreign correspondents and foreign coverage of news events.
That's my two cents.
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: ... How's their coverage on migrant worker rights, for example? In any country, particularly their own of course.
On this narrow issue, I think they're actually doing an ok job. They're currently running a very good series on illegal immigrants entering the US. They also had a decent series on migrant workers working on the World Cup in 2022.
They even referenced things like Amnesty International and United Nations reports on the poor state of migrant workers rights without being all like "pshaww, foreigners, what would they know?"
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quote:Originally posted by Mucus: Particularly in the cases where journalists in the Middle East resigned in response to non-coverage of the suppression of protests during the Arab Spring in only Bahrain, the championing of the Muslim Brotherhood, Libyan, and Syrian rebels, and Wikileaks exposure of their non-verbal agreement to remove coverage that the United States dislikes among a few.
I wish that more journalists here would care that much.
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"I should have said a legitimate legal case of rape. I was speaking legally. When the female body has an understanding of that there is actionable legal transgression against their person based on state and federal code defining rape, that's when it shuts down. It has tiny lawyers instead of an immune system."
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: I still think AJA is pretty solid.
They spend a lot of time talking about the problems in America, which I suppose could be construed as anti American rhetoric, but these are issues that are desperately in need of some sunlight.
America has a ton of problems, but we spend most of our time ignoring them. Has the needle really moved so far that even talking about our problems is considered anti American rhetoric?
Lyrhawn,
I would say rather 'a media outlet run by the Foreign Ministry of Qatar can do American journalism with more integrity and excellence than the American private sector, largely, has been able to'.
I think this has all the virtues of being true while maintaining the necessary really scathing elements of the criticism, but without the idea that Qatar is a saint.
I don't have a problem with that statement.
I think it serves more as a critical note of domestic journalism than as a genuine positive comment on AJA, which is I suppose what you were going for.
But I like to think I'm a pretty good judge of the media and I'm pretty aware of what's going on in America and the world. I read AJA regularly. I watch less regularly now that I have AT&T instead of Comcast. And I personally think they have great, solid coverage.
They cover a wide variety of subjects. They do a lot of mini-documentaries. They spend a lot of time talking about very serious issues in America that don't get talked about a lot with any serious level of inquiry.
It's a news source for people who actually want to be informed and not entertained.
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