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

theguardian.com

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

#261

Post by t-3 »

trashtensor wrote: post #198
chii wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

Even when a source is unreliable, probable half-truths and lies are still valuable information when read critically and juxtaposed with many sources. Observing and noting when different factions agree and disagree on basic facts can be highly enlightening even when it's impossible to make a judgement on whether either side is right or wrong and to what degree. Identifying and recognizing the use and proliferation of canned phrases is also very helpful in constructing a mental map of the global journo-political landscape.

Also, highly credible organizations will be wrong sometimes and vice versa. One is never enough.

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

#262

Post by jhanschoo »

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…

Sure, as a consumer, that is what you should do. But the issue at hand is that the BBC and its employees hold the BBC to a journalistic standard that it does not meet (according to those employees).

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

#263

Post by dvdplm »

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…

This is the kind of comment that at first glance seems measured and well-phrased. I’m sure it depicts a common situation in journalism too, after all they’re just humans like the rest of us.

The problem here is the enormity of what is actually going on in Gaza: a slaughter and a terror campaign we haven’t seen the likes of since Pol Pot. It is not two sides in disagreement, each jostling for attention on roughly equal terms, each somewhat right and somewhat wrong. Two years in, we’re well beyond that and the only thing that matters is that one side is sadistically slaughtering the other and the world is pretending it’s not happening.

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

#264

Post by jhanschoo »

ithkuil wrote: post #72
aaomidi wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That definition of Terrorism would make Israel a terrorist state.

I guess it's hard to define words. Surely terrorism has this vague meaning of doing very evil and violent things. But a picked up a random dictionary and it says: "the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims". I struggle to understand what political aim Israel is pursuing when using unlawful violence and intimidation. If you believe that Israel is perf…

Based on that definition alone, the occupation of the West Bank and the discrimination against its original people breaks international law, is enforced by violence and intimidation against civilians, and from the unlawful settlement in it, seems to be in service of the political Zionist aim of settling the region, let alone Gaza.

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

#265

Post by atmavatar »

int_19h wrote: post #233
atmavatar wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Banning it though is a really bad move Why? With how confidently you state that, I'm rather curious what reasons you have.

Because free people should be able to decide for themselves what to read and listen to. If you want a longer answer, George Orwell penned an eloquent one all the way back in 1944: https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...

The problem is, we've seen how that ends up: you get bad actors masquerading as news (e.g., Fox News, Info Wars, OAN, etc.) and people flocking to low information, high entertainment vendors over good faith (if sometimes or even often flawed) traditional news (e.g., Associated Press, Reuters, BBC News, etc.).

As such, you end up with a large cohort of people believing immigrants eat their pets, vaccines have microchips in them and are more harmful than the diseases they protect against, 5g towers cause cancer, chemtrails are a thing, and trickle-down economics benefits working people.

Now, I may ultimately accept the idea that no matter what we do, we're always inevitably screwed, and even the smallest attempt to curtail speech will always end in an even worse outcome (like how there exist some infinities larger than others), but even I get a little uncomfortable being that nihilistic.

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

#266

Post by t-3 »

ars wrote: post #213
mikelitoris wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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

#267

Post by dvdplm »

ithkuil wrote: post #72
aaomidi wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That definition of Terrorism would make Israel a terrorist state.

I guess it's hard to define words. Surely terrorism has this vague meaning of doing very evil and violent things. But a picked up a random dictionary and it says: "the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims". I struggle to understand what political aim Israel is pursuing when using unlawful violence and intimidation. If you believe that Israel is perf…

Sadism for some, sure. For most IDF personnel I guess it’s more about “operational expediency”: if the population is terrified they’ll listen to your evacuation orders and show up to your aid distribution/killing fields on time. Finding terrorists one by one is hard work; tossing a bomb on a whole building is quicker and safer.

Terror is just a tool in the end.

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

#268

Post by hliyan »

rixed wrote: post #111
hliyan wrote: post #28

I'm starting to realize, very belatedly in life, that we suffer from an end-of-history illusion in politics and political economy. I used to think we live in a golden age because a hundred years ago, democracy broadly replaced monarchies, market economies replaced feudalism and other coercive systems, and with it went many of the old, indirect mechanisms of subjugating large populations (e.g. moral imperatives throug…

What is this "end of history illusion", if not the belief that there is a "decent end state"? There will always be reasons to oppose any current equilibrium for improvements, and that's ok.

The "end of history illusion" is not the belief that there is a decent end state, but the belief of each generation that that state has been reached, and that they were to first to reach it.

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

#269

Post by hliyan »

dluan wrote: post #39
hliyan wrote: post #28

I'm starting to realize, very belatedly in life, that we suffer from an end-of-history illusion in politics and political economy. I used to think we live in a golden age because a hundred years ago, democracy broadly replaced monarchies, market economies replaced feudalism and other coercive systems, and with it went many of the old, indirect mechanisms of subjugating large populations (e.g. moral imperatives throug…

It's math. You can model what happens in n-player repeated games of incomplete information, and you'll realize we're far from any stable point. And it's not even that hard to understand that the narrative of "end of history" benefits the people who get to say that and uphold that narrative.

Concur, but from a control systems point of view. Any system that does not define upper/lower limits and does not address feedback loops, are prone to oscillations, and if the size of the system grows over time, the oscillations can become progressively more violent.

Our socioeconomic/political systems currently do not define any hard upper or lower limits on its primary driver (economic power) and does not address feedback loops (e.g. more capital availability -> larger scale -> more economies of scale -> more market share -> more capital -> more scale).

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

#270

Post by nandomrumber »

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...

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Isn’t military service in Israel compulsory?
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