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

theguardian.com

361–370 of 434 posts

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

#361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Traffic laws are enforced by violence and intimidation.

As is the illegal annexation of the Golan Heights.

Are you seeing the problem, yet?

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

#362
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, but I don't see how that helps - it's still mostly conscripts who didn't really choose to enlist, let alone choose to fight in Gaza, let alone commit any war crimes.

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

#363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see how it’s read that way but people really do seem to forget that billionaires buy media companies as an investment. It’s not a strictly financial investment, either; they get to shape public opinion with them. How many people know that Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post ? How many people know that MSNBC is owned by Comcast? How many people know that Fox News , The Wall Street Journal , and The New York Post…

Why would Bezos / Washington Post be an example of pro-Israel bias?

Well, it's not. It's an example of a billionaire-owned media company.

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

#364

Offending or over-accusing sides of this conflict is a very asymmetric risk. Misrepresent Palestinians negatively and you may eventually get an angry, vague letter - with a quarter of signatories doing so anonymously. Misrepresent Israelis negatively and you get very powerful and well-organised protests. BBC is sadly doing the rational thing of staying clear of suggesting Israel may be doing some bad things. It is a…

> Misrepresent Palestinians negatively and you may eventually get an angry, vague letter - with a quarter of signatories doing so anonymously No, you get "fiery but mostly peaceful" campus protests and every BBC interviewer asking you in the perfectly aggrieved RP tones why you hate children so much.

> you get "fiery but mostly peaceful" campus protests

oh no, not students checks notes exercising their rights.

> every BBC interviewer asking you in the perfectly aggrieved RP tones why you hate children so much

dude you're literally commenting in a thread about how the BBC is complicit in preventing coverage of Israeli crimes because of conflicts of interest.

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

#365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a study about negative bias towards Israel at the BBC. It contradicts your explanation. Do you have a single example of a protest you try to summon here? I very much doubt it.

> Do you have a single example of a protest you try to summon here? I very much doubt it Here's one example. The UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, faced calls to have her visit to the LSE cancelled by various groups, including Campaign Against Antisemitism and Union of Jewish Students. She was also called unfit for office by the US ambassador to the UN. On another occasion, an organizati…

You don't link to why she was called unfit. There are seemingly valid concerns with her ability to be an impartial UN Rapporteur as required for that position.

The Lancet item was a letter, not an article. It is a speculative letter than was then pushed as a 'Lancet article' (something you do in your comment) to give it credibility/authority it does not have.

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

#366
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/bbc-impartiality-trust-isra ... The tagline is "As many question BBC’s coverage, three academics tell openDemocracy why they don't think the broadcaster is impartial", which I think sums up the article accurately. That doesn't seem to add much aside from proving that there are outsiders (impartial or biased, we don't really know) that agree with one side. It shouldn't be surprising…

> However, 1 death = 1 coverage is clearly not how anyone expect the media should operate. How often should the media report deaths? Each time a group of people die? Each time bodies are found? > How many people die in civil wars in Sudan or Congo, compared to how much coverage are they getting? Does that mean the BBC has a anti-Sudan bias? Are you familiar with the saying, “when a tree falls in the forest and there…

A European news agency reporting more about a war in Europe than a war outside Europe is relevance bias, not a pro-Israel bias. I get more weather reports for my state than for outside it. That isn't a bias against the weather in Mexico by my local news.

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

#367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Misrepresent Palestinians negatively and you may eventually get an angry, vague letter - with a quarter of signatories doing so anonymously No, you get "fiery but mostly peaceful" campus protests and every BBC interviewer asking you in the perfectly aggrieved RP tones why you hate children so much.

> you get "fiery but mostly peaceful" campus protests oh no, not students checks notes exercising their rights. > every BBC interviewer asking you in the perfectly aggrieved RP tones why you hate children so much dude you're literally commenting in a thread about how the BBC is complicit in preventing coverage of Israeli crimes because of conflicts of interest.

> > you get "fiery but mostly peaceful" campus protests

> oh no, not students checks notes exercising their rights.

Check your notes again. At least part of the "fiery" was not within students' rights. The "not peaceful" was definitely not within students' rights. Harassing Jewish students is not within students' rights; not being harassed by other students is.

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

#368
post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For more on this exact topic I strongly recommend Plato's "The Republic". The entire book is phenomenal, but "book" (chapter) 8 [1] is something that just completely reshaped my world view. There is an occasional reference that will make you think we've genuinely made progress, like casual acceptance of slavery, but when one reads just the political timelines and transitions he speaks of, he sounds like he's describi…

I agree human nature hasn't really changed since Plato's time and technology is the main thing that has. But the tech provides much more information and communication which leads to things like slavery going. Also I think most people are shocked that trench warfare is still going on but the Russian leadership seems a bit behind the times. Apparently Putin spent time during the lockdown reading previous centuries hist…

Russia is neither forcibly conscripting nor are they preventing anyone from leaving the country should they wish.

Ukraine is doing both at an increasingly absurd scale, all the while people wave their flag-of-the-week in their social media profile, either aloof of what they support or seeing no problem with it.

The same was probably, more or less the same, during slavery. People adopting views based on tribe rather than any real thought or even knowledge of what they support. The overwhelming majority of everybody obviously never owned a slave and likely had an idealized view of the institution.

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

#369
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think parent just means that it’s a divisive topic, which means on the internet, that inherently makes it flamebait (and not necessarily through any fault of the reporting). Even on HN (and sometimes, especially on HN). There are some divisive topics that are less prone to flame wars on HN vs. other discussion platforms, but those are fairly limited, and often not political (in my experience).

I feel like it’s wrong to call this topic divisive. It doesn’t adequately address that one side of the divide seems to consistently advocate for condoning genocide in broad daylight.

not sure which side you mean. gaza and israel have had officials advocate for the destruction of the other. that's kinda what makes it an existential total war.

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

#370
post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of expression, freedom of thought, and freedom of receiving and imparting information and ideas. The United Nations was fully aware when making the declaration of human rights that bad actors existed. However the outcome of not having those rights have shown to be universally worse. It is not that one has to accept that we are inevitably screwed. That assumes that no…

Here's the rub: the current polarization and championing of censorship have come from abuse of free speech protections. We've had decades of Fox News and the like declaring things like "War on Christmas" and "War on Christianity" to make people in the majority feel like victims, presenting immigrants as subhumans that take jobs and commit crimes as they invade our country, and presenting trans people as deviant threa…

Trying to solve bad speech by censorship will never work, and there has never been an authoritarian movement that has been silenced by censorship. It do not work. At best it does nothing, and at worst it increase their support and reduce any internal resistance. The purpose of human rights is to create common shared values between people from all political spectrum and create some internal resistance.

It is fairly common belief that lies and propaganda is stronger than truth. However rather than see it as a fundamental part of nature, I would propose an alternative theory. Lies and propaganda is a symptom when social trust in society start to break down. You could ban Fox news or any other right-leaning media and there is little to no evidence that society would be any different.

The idea of free speech absolutism is an concept that people build to attack free speech. Free speech is about valuing and believing that people should be free to hold and express their opinions and beliefs without fear of retaliation. Fear can be created by law, by mobs or by those who hold some form of power like employers, but regardless of method the result is the same. Society need to value the idea of free speech. Absolutism has nothing to do with that. The idea that people should not fear the government for beliefs they hold, but should fear their employer, is inconsistent with free speech as a human right.

If you are looking for something more concrete, I would point towards research that that looks at social trust and its roles in conflicts. There exist a fair amount of research on this topic, some which is left politics and others which is right politics. One major finding are the importance of shared values. What kind of values those are is less important than that they are shared. If they aren't shared, then the next most important part is that they aren't shoved into the face of people who do not share them. Trying to stamp out opposing values, especially in a public and diffused way, has a long history of creating violence, fear and mistrust.

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