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

Open letter accuses BBC board member of having a conflict of interest on Gaza

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 434 posts

Re: Open letter accuses BBC board member of having a conflict of interest on Gaza

#191

Post by tareqak »

YZF wrote: post #128
emseetech wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bob Vylan said "death to the IDF." He didn't call for the death of Israelis. It's the difference between saying "death to the RMP" in Ireland during the troubles versus calling for the deaths of British people themselves. You can disagree with Mr. Vylan or that the BBC should have cut the broadcast but let's not misrepresent the situation.

Pretty much all Israeli serve in the IDF. He called for their death. The mental gymnastics. He chanted for death but he didn't call for the death of Israelis. Right. He also chanted "From the River to the Sea" which is another call for the death of Israelis and he had some other antisemitic content to add to that. But yeah, he's just a great guy and BBC just let him have a stage.

I believe there are religious exemptions for some Israeli Jews that legally permits them to not serve in the IDF. In addition, I believe that Israeli Arabs are not required to serve in the IDF, but some do serve willingly. Finally, there are Israeli conscientious objectors who end up serving a prison sentence in order to avoid serving in the IDF.

Please correct me if I am wrong.

Re: Open letter accuses BBC board member of having a conflict of interest on Gaza

#192

Post by ryeats »

kelnos wrote: post #125
topspin wrote: post #99

Recent BBC World headlines: Gaza doctor whose nine children were killed in Israeli strike dies from injuries (June 2) Gaza now worse than hell on earth, humanitarian chief tells BBC (June 4) Three journalists among five killed in Israeli strike on Gaza hospital (June 5) Four killed near Gaza aid centre, health workers say (June 8) Dozens of Palestinians killed while seeking aid in Gaza, hospitals say (June 11) More t…

Just because you can list a bunch of article headlines that seem to not show bias, it doesn't mean there isn't bias. That takes a much deeper analysis.

It's ~1% click through most just get the news from the headline.

Re: Open letter accuses BBC board member of having a conflict of interest on Gaza

#193

Post by bigyabai »

Aeolun wrote: post #115
jaek wrote: post #5

Sadly it seems like this is indicative of a broader trend in Public Broadcast in the west. In Australia we've seen similar internal criticism of the ABC of an anti-palestinian bias in reporting[1]. It's deeply concerning that these publicly funded media outlets are being co-opted and manipulated by a foreign power. [1] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/26/australias-abc-staf...

How is it possible they influence so much of what happens in western politics, or at least how whole nations respond to their genocidal war anyway?

One theory is that an abundance of American Christians believe in dispensational premillennialism[0], which rebukes orthodox Judaism in the hopes of returning Christ. Many dispensationalists (including Issac Newton[1]) attempted to interpret the Bible as a function of divine will, and argued that the foundation of Israel is directly imperative due to the prophecy of Daniel. This seems to go against the majority orthodox Judaism interpretation that the Third Temple (as well as the return of Christ) is willed by God alone and not predetermined conditions that men can control.

It's a bit out-there, but unfortunately I can't write-off DJT accepting it all at face-value. He's got conspicuous in-laws and an awfully weird track-record writing policy for the Levant. A religious conviction to defend Israel on behalf of his savior seems to slot rather neatly into his internal belief system.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premillennialism#Dispensationa...

[1] https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16878

Re: Open letter accuses BBC board member of having a conflict of interest on Gaza

#195

Post by chii »

molteanu wrote: post #93
engine_y wrote: post #25

I read the article but not sure which pro Israeli editorials the BBC has published. My experience is quite the opposite with BBC having a clear anti war stance.

It's about the careful wording, about who gets to be on the spotlight, about who gets to call the other side a tyrant, an evil state, about saying things like "regime change" and no-one batting an eye. Slowly, but surely, you form an opinion as to who the bad actor is as you've seen or read about its bad behaviour (but not of the behavior of the other party) Most interestingly, it's about who holds the microphone and…

and that's why you don't listen to only a single source of news.

Find multiple, ideally both geographic as well as political alignment.

Learn to discern what is a fact, and what is opinion presented as fact, and learn to read critically - such as question if there would be any omissions, or misrepresentations of facts to make persuasions. Learn to dissect the works, such as dramatic music and literary methods of persuasion, and how it affects the reader's perceptions.

All of this was taught in highschool literary criticism classes - just on old books and such, rather than modern material. But the same exact lessons could've been applied. Except people merely either half-assed those classes and use cliff notes, or just straight skipped them - leading to today's world where most adults are unable to critically examine the media they consume.

Re: Open letter accuses BBC board member of having a conflict of interest on Gaza

#196

Post by memonkey »

dmix wrote: post #112
molteanu wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's about the careful wording, about who gets to be on the spotlight, about who gets to call the other side a tyrant, an evil state, about saying things like "regime change" and no-one batting an eye. Slowly, but surely, you form an opinion as to who the bad actor is as you've seen or read about its bad behaviour (but not of the behavior of the other party) Most interestingly, it's about who holds the microphone and…

In a meta sense, yes, but in practice it’s mostly just a large collection of journalists and editors, real humans, working in a chaotic information space where there’s a large variety of angles and sources being put out at all times depending on the context. It’s equally easy to cherry pick this sort of thing to build a narrative of some ulterior agenda. Especially given the high pace that news demands in the social…

> What gets covered could simply be who a journalist happened to talked to the past week or what is trending on social media that will get clicks.

Do you believe this with regard to what is happening in Israel/Palestine?

The chaos of information and what is truth is only bubbled up when 1) there's very few journalists in the area or 2) all the journalists are being killed or 3) there's no journalists and only special interests.

Consider that even if it was a "narrative" which at this point is controlled by social media, as it stands it seems to be: "these people are evil, they should be killed, sorry not sorry about the babies" or "these people are committing genocide, this bad."

Re: Open letter accuses BBC board member of having a conflict of interest on Gaza

#197

Post by TimorousBestie »

YZF wrote: post #156
creatonez wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

As a point of fact, at least one “flour massacre” does exist: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flour_Massacre

Here is a news article where the IDF is quoted directly, admitting that troops opened fire on “dozens of people” at that location at that time: https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/08/middleeast/gaza-flour-mas...

Re: Open letter accuses BBC board member of having a conflict of interest on Gaza

#198

Post by trashtensor »

chii wrote: post #195
molteanu wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's about the careful wording, about who gets to be on the spotlight, about who gets to call the other side a tyrant, an evil state, about saying things like "regime change" and no-one batting an eye. Slowly, but surely, you form an opinion as to who the bad actor is as you've seen or read about its bad behaviour (but not of the behavior of the other party) Most interestingly, it's about who holds the microphone and…

and that's why you don't listen to only a single source of news. Find multiple, ideally both geographic as well as political alignment. Learn to discern what is a fact, and what is opinion presented as fact, and learn to read critically - such as question if there would be any omissions, or misrepresentations of facts to make persuasions. Learn to dissect the works, such as dramatic music and literary methods of pers…

> and that's why you don't listen to only a single source of news.

> Find multiple, ideally both geographic as well as political alignment.

Easy to say in the abstract, harder to do when many "credible" sources toe the line and the ones that don't are discredited as "state sponsored news" or worse.

Re: Open letter accuses BBC board member of having a conflict of interest on Gaza

#199

Post by mikelitoris »

Aeolun wrote: post #115
jaek wrote: post #5

Sadly it seems like this is indicative of a broader trend in Public Broadcast in the west. In Australia we've seen similar internal criticism of the ABC of an anti-palestinian bias in reporting[1]. It's deeply concerning that these publicly funded media outlets are being co-opted and manipulated by a foreign power. [1] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/26/australias-abc-staf...

How is it possible they influence so much of what happens in western politics, or at least how whole nations respond to their genocidal war anyway?

The simple truth is there are a lot of zionists in powerful positions both in terms of governmental and monetary. Open wikipedia and look up cabinets and powerful people in US government since WW2. Pay attention to their ethnicity; even if half are zionists, that's a lot of people. Edit: people downvoting this, first part of the comment is just facts, second part is plausible speculation. Why are you downvoting?

Re: Open letter accuses BBC board member of having a conflict of interest on Gaza

#200

Post by CoastalCoder »

propagandist wrote: post #87
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The self-described mission of the Centre For Media Monitoring is "Promoting Fair And Responsible Reporting Of Muslims And Islam", so they might be slightly biased...

[flagged]

I'd think this is more an example of a "genetic fallacy" rather than "ad hominem".

I.e., impugning the argument based on who presents it.

Post reply on HN