Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 1001 posts

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#391

Post by screye »

NewJazz wrote: post #79
brabel wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU has banned many Russian and Belarussian news sources since the invasion of Ukraine. The USA seems to not have followed through (as far as I know - as Russian news sites seem to be available).

Is Qatar a belligerent in the war? Belarus has allowed Russia to use their territory as a point from which to launch both ground assaults and missiles into Ukraine. Hard to say the same about Qatar and Hamas. If Al Jazeera were an Iranian publication the comparison might be more similar. Israeli news reports and analysts say Qatar has sent more than $1 billion to Gaza over the past decade. Qatar sent that aid through…

Qatar plays both sides. They have friendly relations with Hamas, Houthis and Iran.

AlJazeera is known to be untrustworthy on matters of the middle east. Just as BBC is untrustworthy on matters of UK international politics and the NYT [1] can't be trusted on US foreign policy matters.

AlJazeera, NYT and BBC are weapons of mass propaganda just like Globaltimes or RT. The main (and admittedly stark) difference is how often these weapons are deployed.

[]1 https://www.theguardian.com/media/2004/may/26/pressandpublis...

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#392

Post by _lvbh »

DEADMINCE wrote: post #382
belorn wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know that people in general seems to react strongly negative to government censorship, but I can not avoid seeing it through the light of recent trends of post-truth online censorships that blasted the internet during the last decade. Popularity of censorship is something that seems to go in wave, and outside the US there seems to be more acceptance to government censorship as comparative to platform censorship. In…

Honestly, I kind of think censorship would be a positive thing when applied to people lacking education. Where to draw the line is the issue, but at the least maybe people who didn't finish highschool or get a GED or equivalent shouldn't be exposed to conspiracy theories that they then act on.

What a dystopian idea. I understand the reasoning but that is an extremely slippery slope for the rich to control the poor

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#393

Post by VagabundoP »

Beefin wrote: post #116
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people would say “genocide in gaza” is exactly what the television should be saying.

its not a genocide by any definition.

“It will be several years before the court in The Hague will hand down its verdict, but we must not look at the catastrophic situation purely through legal lenses,” said Goldberg. “What is happening in Gaza is genocide because the level and pace of indiscriminate killing, destruction, mass expulsions, displacement, famine, executions, the wiping out of cultural and religious institutions, the crushing of elites (including the killing of journalists), and the sweeping dehumanization of the Palestinians — create an overall picture of genocide, of a deliberate conscious crushing of Palestinian existence in Gaza.”[1]

[1] https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240430-yes-it-is-genocid...

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#394

Post by m000 »

Beefin wrote: post #162

for anyone reading and wondering what qatar's intentions are with their media arm, they're the largest foreign donor of US institutions: https://tikva.so/qatar it's not coincidental that these are where all the protests are, and suddenly college students have access to thousands of $ of camping gear... they're also aggressively anti israel/jew: https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-793560 they employ high jo…

> and suddenly college students have access to thousands of $ of camping gear...

Students paying $65K/year in tuition fees can also afford a $100 tent? Must be covert Qatari funding for sure. /s

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#395

Post by YZF »

afavour wrote: post #15

I’m not sure about “dark day for the media” but it does feel like a dark day for Israel. Once you’ve established that the government can unilaterally ban a voice for reasons of “national security” you’ve essentially given them a free pass. As Americans living post-9/11 will know, “national security” is a deliberately elastic term that can cover anything required in the moment.

I agree this is not good for Israel. A democracy is partly measured by its ability to tolerate voices it does not approve of. Israel should be stronger than this. I agree that using national security as an excuse is a slippery slope.

This is mostly a symbolic move that will make very little difference. Likely it will push Al Jazeera to be more anti-Israeli but I'm sure they can make up (pun intended) for their lack of physical presence in the region. People that want to consume that content in Israel will have no problem (many already get this via satellite).

A by the way is that this can still be challenged in the courts. If Al Jazeera chooses to go to the supreme court I imagine there's a pretty good chance that the decision will get overturned. They might intentionally decide not to do that because that outcome will put Israel in a positive light.

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#396

Post by lukan »

forty wrote: post #375
Hoasi wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. It’s undemocratic. It’s also unwise strategically.

I know the whole radical free speech theory where everyone should be able to see all discourses and make their own informed opinion. The thing is, the facts are that propaganda and fake news are super effective. Probably a failure of western democracies to develop critical sense of their citizens, or the lake of preparation to the quick rise of social networks. And now far right are rising in Europe too, of course dr…

"Short term I think I'm okay if we don't have RT in France."

You do. On the internet. An increasing amount of people are getting their (fake) news now exclusivly online via "alternative" news sources like RT. Banning one of those sources on television will just mean further entrenching of those people. ("see, they don't want the truth to spread" ...)

" I'd be happy if there were more money to fund school and lessons for children to understand how those fake news work."

And aside to lots and lots of crap in the curriculum, there would be enough school time avaiable to teach more of criticial information analysis and media skills. But partial banning of one source seems like the more comfortable solution. Except that this might really hurt us in the long run, if the next source that will be banned, won't be enemy propaganda source, but just a legitimate critical newspaper for example. But secret service will say the enemy funded and influenced them, so off they go.

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#397

Post by bink »

jay-barronville wrote: post #344

As Americans, we’re constantly told, “Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.” The narrative is always that they’re “our greatest ally” because we share similar values to them. Well, one of our values—in fact, a constitutionally protected one—is press freedom. Al Jazeera has been the only media/news outlet in Israel that offered the Palestinian perspective and they’ve shut it down. As a rule, you’re probably…

Of course the US just voted to ban TikTok for vague national security reasons, so maybe we do have a lot in common.

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#398

Post by Rebelgecko »

subliminalpanda wrote: post #345
quonn wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They will not be banned. There is zero evidence for this. There is a big difference between banning what can only be described as a fake news outlet controlled by the adversary government of Qatar vs. banning the most important or second most important independent newspaper in the country. When _that_ happens then the completely unjustified outrage in many comments here will be justified as that would indeed be an un…

On what basis in Al Jazeera a fake news outlet?

As someone who was only familiar with Al Jazeera's English reporting (and thought it was pretty good), it was eye opening to check out their Arabic website translated into a language I speak. Maybe Google Translate was erasing some nuance, but I saw a huge number of controversial, disputed, or downright false claims that were reported uncritically as facts.

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#399

Post by crazygringo »

jdietrich wrote: post #315
pydry wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are interviews with Hamas spokespeople. It isnt the opinion of al Jazeera being presented. There's nothing more shocking than the stuff Ben Gvir (security minister of Israel) does or says. The second interview even references his calls to burn women and children as, yknow, a bad thing. "memri" doesnt seem to consider that valid context, that is probably because it is a state propaganda outfit acting on behalf o…

It's not an interview if a spokesman is allowed to say whatever they like without being challenged. It's not an interview if you broadcast a pre-recorded speech without comment. Ben Gvir is awful, but that doesn't change the fact that Al Jazeera's Arabic service is not impartial and is not acting as a legitimate journalistic outlet.

99+% of interviews in American media aren't trying to challenge the interviewee. They're just trying to gather information from one side, and then they generally try to get a token representative quote from the other side at the very end of an article, but sometimes not even that.

So you seem to be trying to hold Al Jazeera to a vastly higher standard than mainstream US media, at least in this particular regard.

Simply reporting without comment on what important/influential individuals and groups are saying, and adding basic objective context, is a large part of mainstream journalism.

Pushback is often limited to the opinion pages.

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#400

Post by Cheer2171 »

quonn wrote: post #390
datenyan wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a solid basis for considering something to be "fake", let alone to be banned. I could say that I have read and compared the BBC to Truth Social, and decided that BBC is "fake news"; that doesn't mean it's actually true.

> I could say that I have read and compared the BBC to Truth Social, and decided that BBC is "fake news"; that doesn't mean it's actually true. If you decide that 2+2=5 that indeed doesn‘t make it true. I have merely said that I found that 2+2=4.

[flagged]
Post reply on HN