I’m honestly not clear what you’re arguing at this point. How credible do you find the alleged recording at this point? I’m saying that the jury’s out. Are you confident that it’s a fake?
My point is that I feel the efforts in this thread to discredit the Channel 4 journalist and the two Arab journalists, as well as what they said, seem to go far beyond the normal or healthy level of skepticism that I would expect one to apply to a report from a reputable journalist from a reputable news organisation.
Quite frankly, I find it extraordinary.
They are top men.
TOP.
MEN.
the channel 4 news presenter is identified and is not a rando. The “experts” that the channel 4 news guy is listening to are indeed “randos” until they are identified. At the moment, we don’t know if they are actual experts, or if they are just self-described “experts” who are just voicing an uninformed opinion.
I can easily find some “experts” who will confidently tell us that the 2020 US election was stolen, and Trump is president. I can report this. Does not make it true.
So Arab journalists are the experts?
Two guys who said (paraphrased) “that does not sound right to me”
Whereas I have no knowledge or expectation whatsoever about the competence of unidentified “Arab journalists” on Twitter who claim that the recording is an “absurd” fake.
My obvious emphasis and the reason for placing “Arab journalists” in quotation marks was the fact that these sources were unidentified .
Alex Thomson is an interesting name for an Arab. I gather he grew up speaking the same Basingstoke dialect of Arabic as Hamas?
There are times when journalists need to protect confidential sources and must leave them unidentified. Why would a source who is merely commenting on the credibility of use of language need to be protected? When there is so much disinformation going around, why would a good journalist cite vague unidentified sources and expect us to take their word for it?
I’m completely open to the idea that it’s faked, but I’m only going to listen to direct evidence from an identified native speaker of the relevant dialect, whose independence and objectivity we can judge for ourselves.
A journalist says that unnamed sources cast doubt on audio just isn’t specific enough to consider. I trust he’ll be bringing those specifics in a full story, with interviews with multiple experts who go on the record to explain their conclusions; when he does so, that’s when I’ll try to figure out if the claim makes sense.
Yes agreed. At the moment it’s just a journalist saying “some guys said”. We need to wait for more details before making a judgement.
Not until I had some other corroborating evidence.
Nor would I. But this isn’t even that level–it’s a Xeet.
…
But I want to hear from, say, a Palestinian linguist who’s willing to go on record.
These days, the job of a journalist (especially a television journalist) is to get more clicks and more eyeballs for the network. This has led to a situation where the “need for speed” frequently overrides a more measured approach, and often can lead to stories being released too quickly before all the facts have been gathered.
That’s just the way it is now, across all platforms and networks.
Sure. That doesn’t mean the people she talks with know what they are talking about or don’t have their own agenda. “Arab journalist” is not the same as saying expert. Ok I presume they speak Arabic. That covers a large part of the world. Are they from Qatar, Kuwait, Algeria? Each region has its own syntax and slang. Are they experts on how people talk in Gaza? Have they been to Gaza? We don’t know. They are anonymous.
And you know her (or the actual journalist) ability to gauge someone’s language skill? I have no reason to doubt the report. Someone said it didn’t sound right.