current affairs Nuclear War (next week?)

[CI]

CI, the media don't report war news any more. Those days are gone. They aren't allowed to. They're not allowed near the real action unless they go in (sometimes literally) sitting on the side of the tank having agreed to report what they want us to hear. If I thought for a second that what I was hearing on the news bore any resemblance to the reality of what was going on in a war then I might watch it. But it isn't. It is unashamed lies, propaganda and spin from one side of the conflict. You get in serious trouble in America if you journalistically stray away from that, because it is seen as unpatriotic/breach of security or somesuch.

 

What makes you think that, BOF? Genuine question.

The whole wiki leaks situation I guess and the demise of Assange

[BOF]

CI, the media don't report war news any more. Those days are gone. They aren't allowed to. They're not allowed near the real action unless they go in (sometimes literally) sitting on the side of the tank having agreed to report what they want us to hear. If I thought for a second that what I was hearing on the news bore any resemblance to the reality of what was going on in a war then I might watch it. But it isn't. It is unashamed lies, propaganda and spin from one side of the conflict. You get in serious trouble in America if you journalistically stray away from that, because it is seen as unpatriotic/breach of security or somesuch.

 

What makes you think that, BOF? Genuine question.

There are 2 facets to my criticism. One is the almost complete lack of reporting what is actually going on on the ground. The second and more sinister is the intentional mis-reporting of events. There are occasions when the 2 areas are quite blurred.

A current example of the first facet would be the Syrian conflict. You only have to go to the likes of twitter or liveleak.com and search for Syria or some of the alternate news articles pointed to by anonymous to see a side of the story that you'll never see anywhere near Western main media news. As for the second facet. Again, the evidence is online and I remember hearing of journalists being fired for going against their M.O.. I know it sounds like a cop out but the stories are too numerous and the beauty of the proliferation of Western articles means anything that goes against them can be quickly dismissed as conspiracy. However, as with most things, if you choose your sources carefully enough and you read enough from a broad enough amount of locations and sources then you get a better picture of what's actually going on and you soon realise that if you were to limit yourself to one media outlet or even one 'side' of the discussion then you'd be better off not watching at all, because you would not be able to separate the real news from the lies.

The whole wiki leaks situation I guess and the demise of Assange

Wikileaks would certainly be one of the more credible examples the public have of not everything always being conspiracy nutters.

[legov]

Really hate them (the N.Korean govt)

Edited April 16, 2013 by legov

[LondonLax]

 

There are 2 facets to my criticism. One is the almost complete lack of reporting what is actually going on on the ground. The second and more sinister is the intentional mis-reporting of events. There are occasions when the 2 areas are quite blurred.

 

 

 

 

I have a couple of school friends in Australia who have gone into journalism. At what point during their careers would you think they get told what to write about by the American government? Giant conspiracies could not be contained globally, not even within the US in my opinion.  

 

For journalists to be considered a credible source of information they have to verify their reports and cite evidence. Twitter reporters don't have to do anything like that. Just look at the reports on twitter yesterday about Boston. There were all sorts of stories coming up from so called witnesses or experts about the number of bombs, the number of dead, whether a person was in custody or not etc. I have even seen it twitter that there were government spotters on the roof tops and police conducting a terrorist training drill the morning of the race.

 

You can go down all sorts of tangents reading and taking at face value unsubstantiated claims on the internet and they don’t balance against verifiable news stories from actual journalists even if a number of people have retweeted the same thing a number of times.

[tarjei]

There's a good documentary called Peace, Propaganda and The Promised Land that looks into how American news agencys report on the Israel-Palestine conflict VS how the Britsh and other countries does it. They are literally bound to use certain phrases to decribe different events. The difference is very subtle if you look at one story at a time, but the overall picture gets distored over time.

Edited April 16, 2013 by tarjei

[choffer]

If you want to see how the media are used to manipulate stories, I'd recommend seeing The Tillman Story. Docco about an NFL player who gave up his career to join the army after Sept 11th. Was killed in battle apparently and the media (with a strong hand at the back from the US army) turned him into a hero. The family investigated and it turned out it was fratricide. Shows how easily an agenda can change the story.

[BOF]

There are 2 facets to my criticism. One is the almost complete lack of reporting what is actually going on on the ground. The second and more sinister is the intentional mis-reporting of events. There are occasions when the 2 areas are quite blurred.

 

 

 

I have a couple of school friends in Australia who have gone into journalism. At what point during their careers would you think they get told what to write about by the American government? Giant conspiracies could not be contained globally, not even within the US in my opinion.  

 

For journalists to be considered a credible source of information they have to verify their reports and cite evidence. Twitter reporters don't have to do anything like that. Just look at the reports on twitter yesterday about Boston. There were all sorts of stories coming up from so called witnesses or experts about the number of bombs, the number of dead, whether a person was in custody or not etc. I have even seen it twitter that there were government spotters on the roof tops and police conducting a terrorist training drill the morning of the race.

 

You can go down all sorts of tangents reading and taking at face value unsubstantiated claims on the internet and they don’t balance against verifiable news stories from actual journalists even if a number of people have retweeted the same thing a number of times.

No-one is saying to use twitter as a de facto news source. That would be ludicrous and laughable. It's more useful almost as a search engine for links to more reputable articles that lie elsewhere on the net. As for journalists being told what to write. You are steered editorially in a direction by your editor who in turn is steered by his etc etc. It's not as blatant as 'here write this'. It is quaint to think that there's still complete journalistic freedom out there to report on war though. Quaint and scary because people actually believe what they're fed. Even take the Boston marathon of yesterday. Apart from the initial reporting, there's little point continuing to follow that story from here onwards. The real investigaions being done by the FBI & CIA will never see the light of day and we'll only get from them exactly what they want us to hear - which is understandable - but doesn't make it true either.

[LondonLax]

But who is controlling and directing these editors all over the world? I agree that an individual writer will not have total freedom, they have to fit with the publication they are writing for, but there are enough different media outlets from many different countries that you will get a fairly broad and balanced view if you look over them without having to resort to unsubstantiated conspiracy websites.

[BOF]

If the information you are reporting can only come from one source then you are at the mercy of that one source e.g. the Osama bin Laden capture. There's no way the real story is ever getting out, so it is counter-productive to listen to whatever they've decided to feed us. That's not the fault of the journalist but it does undermine or de-value their job at times.

[tarjei]

If you want to see how the media are used to manipulate stories, I'd recommend seeing The Tillman Story. Docco about an NFL player who gave up his career to join the army after Sept 11th. Was killed in battle apparently and the media (with a strong hand at the back from the US army) turned him into a hero. The family investigated and it turned out it was fratricide. Shows how easily an agenda can change the story.

 

Cheers, will have a look

 

But who is controlling and directing these editors all over the world? I agree that an individual writer will not have total freedom, they have to fit with the publication they are writing for, but there are enough different media outlets from many different countries that you will get a fairly broad and balanced view if you look over them without having to resort to unsubstantiated conspiracy websites.

In the documentary I mentioned it was mostly interest groups, think-tank's and orders from above that was putting pressure on editors to word certain things in a specific way, i.e. violence from the Palestinians would always be referred to with words such as 'terrorism' and 'attack', whereas if it was violence from the Israeli side it would be called 'retaliation'. Also stuff like calling it neighboorhoods or settlements as opposed to occupied land as they would call it in the media here and most other places.

Edited April 16, 2013 by tarjei

[LondonLax]

If the information you are reporting can only come from one source then you are at the mercy of that one source e.g. the Osama bin Laden capture. There's no way the real story is ever getting out, so it is counter-productive to listen to whatever they've decided to feed us. That's not the fault of the journalist but it does undermine or de-value their job at times.

Ok sure, I can understand what you are saying there. There doesn't have to be a 'real story' and a fake one though. Quite often the story might be mostly true with some details withheld etc.   

[b23avfc]

Did the nuclear war happen and I am legend?

[peterms]

But who is controlling and directing these editors all over the world? I agree that an individual writer will not have total freedom, they have to fit with the publication they are writing for, but there are enough different media outlets from many different countries that you will get a fairly broad and balanced view if you look over them without having to resort to unsubstantiated conspiracy websites.

 

That's quite similar to a point put by Andrew Marr in a discussion with Chomsky about this subject.  It's split in 3 parts on youtube, 10 mins each.

 

 

 

[Brumerican]

Did the nuclear war happen and I am legend?

 

 

It's next week .

[chrisp65]

I don't think there is a worldwide conspiracy of all journalists. I do think there is an almost overwhelming lack of incisive independent accurate and accessible journalism. Think about it, whenever you actually genuinely know something for a fact, if it relates to a news story was that news story totally accurate. usually not in my experience. Be it a local interest piece in a regional paper or an issue dicussed on Newsnight, there will be errors or signififcant factors simply not discussed. They haven't necessarily been suppressed. They just haven't fitted the narrative and the time slot. That moulds the story in a particular direction. Add into that the editorial 'voice' of some media (Daily Mail, Fox News, Socialist Worker) and how you sift the news for comprehensive neutral information becomes difficult.

 

Not related to Korea as I have no direct personal experience (we'll come back to that). But two stories i know facts about. My mother was in the local press for having had a letter returned 10 years after having sent it. It had been on one of those hijacked planes blown up on a middle eastern runway when that was the fashion. I stood next to my mum as she told the reporter all the background. Name, age, who it was to, where it went. when it came back. Nothing deeply technical or tricky. When the story was printed every single possible fact was changed. Her name, age, where it was going, where it got stopped, what was stamped on the return envelope (he even had the photo next to the story that clearly contradicted the text). Anyway, only a puff story, but how does that happen?

 

Personally, there was once a story in the press that named me and several friends as banned football troublemakers The story was rubbish, laughable once I'd calmed down and got the truth circulated. But copies of that article are still out there.

 

There was a Newsnight story about some government spending that had gone wrong. I had direct input into the facts and events of the story, I had spotted the error that had caused the problem. By the time the story hit Newsnight with all the gravitas of the 10:30 BBC 2 slot the timeline of events had been changed. Making it a very different issue. A panel of numpties happily sat there discussing stuff I know at least one of them knew to be bollix! Why not just say, 'you have this wrong'. Was he scared or uncertain? Who knows. Nobber.

 

Anyway, back to North Korea. We had a BBC Panorama secret op to show us closed society Korea. Ooooh look, weird closed society. Sorry, aren't there photo's of Tony's holiday to North Korea on this very site? How did the BBC get into NK? Ah truly sneaky, they organised a trip through official channels. Not actually all that closed then. I'm not saying they are nice people. But 'we' clearly have an angle here.

[tonyh29]

http://www.rightthisminute.com/video/need-vacation-try-north-korea

Edited April 19, 2013 by tonyh29

[peterms]

South Korea issues publicity photograph showing excellent working relationship with USA.

 

[mjmooney]

I don't think there is a worldwide conspiracy of all journalists. I do think there is an almost overwhelming lack of incisive independent accurate and accessible journalism. Think about it, whenever you actually genuinely know something for a fact, if it relates to a news story was that news story totally accurate. usually not in my experience. Be it a local interest piece in a regional paper or an issue dicussed on Newsnight, there will be errors or signififcant factors simply not discussed.

 

Not related to Korea as I have no direct personal experience (we'll come back to that). But two stories i know facts about. My mother was in the local press for having had a letter returned 10 years after having sent it. It had been on one of those hijacked planes blown up on a middle eastern runway when that was the fashion. I stood next to my mum as she told the reporter all the background. Name, age, who it was to, where it went. when it came back. Nothing deeply technical or tricky. When the story was printed every single possible fact was changed. Her name, age, where it was going, where it got stopped, what was stamped on the return envelope (he even had the photo next to the story that clearly contradicted the text). Anyway, only a puff story, but how does that happen?

 

Personally, there was once a story in the press that named me and several friends as banned football troublemakers The story was rubbish, laughable once I'd calmed down and got the truth circulated. But copies of that article are still out there.

 

Very much this. Everyone I know who has ever had any dealings with the press has similar stories (including me, in fact). Yes, maybe trivial things, but it seems they NEVER put it down exactly right. I'm convinced that it's a compulsion among journalists, practically in their DNA, to change things on principle. Maybe to "sex them up", who knows? But when you know that they'll do it on minor stories, you end up being very cynical about the accuracy of the big ones.

[legov]

 

I don't think there is a worldwide conspiracy of all journalists. I do think there is an almost overwhelming lack of incisive independent accurate and accessible journalism. Think about it, whenever you actually genuinely know something for a fact, if it relates to a news story was that news story totally accurate. usually not in my experience. Be it a local interest piece in a regional paper or an issue dicussed on Newsnight, there will be errors or signififcant factors simply not discussed.

 

Not related to Korea as I have no direct personal experience (we'll come back to that). But two stories i know facts about. My mother was in the local press for having had a letter returned 10 years after having sent it. It had been on one of those hijacked planes blown up on a middle eastern runway when that was the fashion. I stood next to my mum as she told the reporter all the background. Name, age, who it was to, where it went. when it came back. Nothing deeply technical or tricky. When the story was printed every single possible fact was changed. Her name, age, where it was going, where it got stopped, what was stamped on the return envelope (he even had the photo next to the story that clearly contradicted the text). Anyway, only a puff story, but how does that happen?

 

Personally, there was once a story in the press that named me and several friends as banned football troublemakers The story was rubbish, laughable once I'd calmed down and got the truth circulated. But copies of that article are still out there.

 

Very much this. Everyone I know who has ever had any dealings with the press has similar stories (including me, in fact). Yes, maybe trivial things, but it seems they NEVER put it down exactly right. I'm convinced that it's a compulsion among journalists, practically in their DNA, to change things on principle. Maybe to "sex them up", who knows? But when you know that they'll do it on minor stories, you end up being very cynical about the accuracy of the big ones.

 

 

The person I apply this concept to the most is my mom.

[mjmooney]

She's a journalist?