IMHO, News 24 is the least best option. Sorry.
I don’t know the answer to this, just asking; If anyone can broadcast whatever they want in the US, why did Murdoch have to become a US citizen before he expanded his empire ?
This thread is a good example of everything that’s going wrong with the SDMB these days.
December posted a perfectly reasonable OP. It may be wrong, but it asked a reasonable question, backed it up with cites, referenced the appropriate previous threads, etc.
Of the next ten responses, only two even marginally addressed the OP. The rest were snarky comments and cheap shots at December.
december: "(Note to Mandelstam – he’s more homolib than homocon, but I admire your word coinage.) "
Not my coinage, december. This very interesting cover story from The Nation was subtitled “Attack of the Homocons.” Sullivan was one of the main subjects.
Although I sort of see your point, I doubt most GLB people would see Sullivan as lib rather than con since one of his main issues is that gays should live “normal,” respectable lives: not very libertarian as I see it. I suspect that the Times’s decision to cease employing Sullivan had a lot to do with his publicized hypocrisy (basically Sullivan failed to practice what he preached and got caught; sort of like if Bill Clinton had made his career urging marital fidelity).
BTW, London, Sullivan’s bio is more impressive than I had realized. It’s a shame to see how far he’s dropped: it’s one thing to write articulate if wrong-headed articles for the Times or The New Republic; it’s another to be spewing the kind of LCD trash he’s got on his web log.
Oh, come on Sam. Surely you see the problem with fashioning an OP primarily on a blogger with an axe to grind, and a tabloid more famous for page 3 girls than anything that might called news. If a memo is leaked to The Guardian or some other reliable newspaper that is one thing. Next you’ll be expecting us to consider links to the National Enquirer, or maybe the Hooters webpage.
Hmmm…well, upon a quick Google, apparently there is a law that says you must be an American citizen in order to own an American television station. But I think that only applies to broadcast TV, not cable or satellite, since broadcast TV is supposed to be public property. But IANAL, and that’s just speculation on my part.
Andrew Sullivan is not just a ‘blogger’. He is a journalist who has written for just about every major publication and newspaper around. His web page gets millions of hits.
But this isn’t just about Andrew Sullivan. Andrew Sullivan linked to an article written by an embedded reporter who is IN THE CONFLICT, accusing his own organization of serious bias. This is at least newsworthy, and the issue it raises is worthy of debate.
You don’t have to agree with december. Feel free to tear his argument to shreds. What you SHOULDN’T be able to do in Great Debates is just pop into a thread to take a cheap shot at someone you don’t like.
Sam, I’m sorry if my post struck you as a cheap shot. To me, under the circumstances, it seemed appropriate. december seems to be making a habit of attacking the bias of the BBC (which, btw, in the thread he linked is likened by some other poster to Al Jazeera! How’s that for what’s wrong with the SDMB these days?)
The last time round we went through the whole nine yards: various British posters explained that the BBC gets complaints from both sides. Links to the BBC were provided to show evidence of balance between pro-war/anti-war. december was urged to listen to/read the BBC for himself rather than rely on Sullivan’s opinion. Now here he is a few weeks later with the very same source on the very same issue: he makes no reference to the previous round of arguments. He just starts from scratch, as though the previous thread had never been: and all the time that was spent by all the people who replied to him might last time round might just as well have gone into some black hole for all it has done to moderate, contextualize, or enrich december’s perceptions.
This time round in addition to Sullivan’s personal opinion he’s got a link to a tabloid and some angry letters in another Murdoch newspaper to back up his point. This in spite of the fact that december has been asked many, many times to take into account that certain kinds of writing–e.g., some columns, letters to the editor–tend only to tell one side of the story.
Well, speaking for myself, I just can’t take the memo seriously until it is reported in a reputable newspaper. And I’m sorry to see someone with Sullivan’s intelligence sink so low. If he wants to make a case against the BBC’s reporting he should write a serious article on the subject based on a sustained analysis–not re-post tabloid garbage and other people’s letters.
I have been listening to the BBC almost every day since the war began (though the World Service isn’t the same content as what’s on Radio Four). I do not think that Sullivan does justice to their reporting–most of which is very straightforward and factual. And december has already heard polite opinions from me to that effect–more than once–and from others in England with greater knowledge of their programming. I question the veracity of the so-called leaked memo. (If it turns out to be legitimate that’s another story; though it’s also true that one upset correspondent protesting one instance of reporting does not necessary mean that the entire organization is discredited).
One thing I do want to make absolutely clear though: don’t say that I “don’t like” december. There is nothing personal here. In fact one of the things that I like (alot) about december is that he seems to know when he’s thrown together a shoddy OP, and to take the predictable response in stride.
One point I forgot to add: Sullivan’s calling the BBC “objectively pro-Saddam” is the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard him say (and I have read his stuff, here and there, for years). He has lost it; has sunk to the Matt Drudge level of “journalism.” The average GD poster on the Straight Dope is far too responsible to say anything so ridiculous.
Mr2001
C-Span has been showing the traffic in London lately and news.
- I have no problem with december using The Sun as a cite. As a journalist who has written for The Sun (and The Times, and the Evening Standard) I can assure you that they have the same standards of accuracy and integrity as any other paper when it comes to “serious” stories (ie not “man eats alien” type fluff stuff).
Trevor Kavanagh is a respected British journalist, senior in his profession.
Most people criticising the UK tabloids on here appear generally to be american, with very little understanding of the UK media. I realise it may appear like solely tits’n’bum to you, or the National Enquirer, but believe it or not, there is “real news” mixed in with the pop gossip and TV trash.
Where you can distinguish “sunisms” or “tabloidisms” is in words like “blistering” “sensationally” and “attacked”. A broadsheet would probably use “strongly-worded” “strongly” “criticised”. Doesn’t mean the facts or the validity of the sources is any less credible, just the language and the spin.
-
On the other hand, one should also be aware - for the purposes of this thread - that The Sun has an unequivocally, unashamedly biased pro-war position. That’s the position it took. It may affect what stories it covers, or the space it gives to certain stories, but it won’t affect validity, and it won’t affect fact.
-
All that said, in relation to the BBC’s position, I support them in any attempts to break through propaganda.
After a week of saturation news processing in the news room, colleagues and I are cracking the joke:
Q - “So how’s the war going?”
A - “It’s going extremely well!”
Taking the piss out of the endless “official” US and UK sources who continue to repeat this line when it is clear (from journalists, from military analysts, from other independent sources) that this isn’t quite the case, that the war is not going quite as well as planned. Helicopter accidents weren’t planned. Such strong resistance wasn’t anticipated. Iraqi TV is back and running. despite effotrs to take it down. Saddam isn’t dead, despite attempts to get him on the first night. Maybe minor things, but certainly not successes.
The BBC would be lying to its viewership if it didn’t report this.
Nor is it taking a specifically anti-war position to point this out. One can be pro-war and agree that casualties have been higher than hoped/expected, that things are tougher than anticipated. It was never a pro-war argument that “we’re pro war, because it will be easy.” It was just hoped it would be easy. And it isn’t easy.
- The allegation that the BBC’s reporting is actually contributing to the length of the war is arguably the most fucking ridiculous thing I have ever heard.
I can buy that, but I will be perfectly honest with you here: to infer that the reporting of casualties, and even saying that the war isn’t going as well as planned, will have a tangible, noticable effect on the Iraqis on the ground is to stretch the hypothesis to the outer limits of absurdity.
Any media outlet will have some bias on it one way or the other, that is the nature of the game. The BBC is as far in the middle as it can be, with the invariable wobbles from side to side as individual people start talking. No government official is going to say that there have been problems, but given that there is bad news from the front and we are encountering difficulties, and have had at least two friendly fire incidents so far, I would argue that this line is Government Spin, which is just as bad.
Some people went back to Stalingrad to fight, knowing that they’d be killed by Stalin when the war was over. Pick the aphorism of your choice: “My brother before my cousin, and my cousin before the infidel,” or “better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.” They both add up to the same thing.
Istara
I’m in the UK, and I would take issue with this. Their fact checking may be better than, say, the weekly world news, but they have been responsible for some gross omissions, and like all tabloids the degree to which they simplify the news down to schoolyard language makes me feel dirty when I read it. If I wanted to be talked down to by someone with a rudimentary grasp of the English language I would go down the pub and talk to any old bloke standing there. If I want news, however, I’m more likely to go somewhere where they put actual meaningful words around the facts and give some degree of contextual information.
All news is biased one way or the other, but not all news has to be written by, and for, three year olds.
istara, thanks for your input, all of which I appreciate. I am indeed American, and, as a non-journalist, by no means expert on UK media. That said, I’m also not as clueless on the subject as you might think. (For work-related reasons I have been visiting the UK frequently for about 15 years, and have also lived and worked there. I met my husband there and while he has lived here long enough to be quasi-American, we keep in close touch with family and friends. I also write about England–but usally stuff that happened a long time ago.) On the whole my opinion of The Sun is much like McDuff’s, though, given your expertise, if you think the memo is legitimate I’m ready to believe you. (And I do know that The Sun is a different kind of tabloid than the Enquirer, so my comment to Sam was exaggerated; but we don’t really have any Sun-like papers in the US; even the New York Post is a bit more serious–and I don’t say that only because there are no topless women in it.)
In any case, putting aside Sullivan’s outlandish remarks, and the ludicrous notion that the BBC is causing casualities, what do you make of the memo (if anything)?
My own sense of what’s happening could also apply to the New York Times’s coverage of the war thus far. I think many Americans (and I expect many pro-war Britons as well), did expect very few deaths among soldiers, and a short war with relatively few civilian casualities. That they did so is not entirely the fault of their leaders or the media: to an extent they believed what they wanted to believe. But I do think that many in the pro-war crowd never contemplated what individual deaths and suffering would mean to them: soldiers taken hostage and looking visibly roughed up and scared; pilots shot down by “friendly” missiles; soldiers facing unexpected guerilla-style combat and Somalia-like warfare vs. what a hawkish friend of mine likes to call “push-button” war. And then there is the fact that so many in both countries, especially in the UK, did not want this war–making them even less likely to casually dismiss the deaths of soldiers, or the injury of civilians. And then there is also the fact that the strategy for the war seems to have been inept (though that’s not to say that a more effective strategy won’t soon be implemented). So I think that the way in which these incidents are being reported (both by the BBC and the Times) reflects (rather than produces) the genuine sense of reality-check being experienced by many who thought this war would be quick and almost painless. And IMO that’s not anyone’s bias: that’s the feeling that is in the air.
Mandelstam - to be honest, this whole issue of “unexpectedly high casualties” and “more difficult than anticipated” quite terrifies me.
I cannot understand how (ignoring media lies and sensation, and government propaganda designed to curry war support) the real Powers That Be - and the military intelligence of two major world powers - could seriously have underestimated what they were up against, or overestimated Iraqi ground support for their actions.
So for me it boils down to three - equally terrifying - scenarios:
-
The pro-war contingent in power, in its attempts to win support, has actually propagandered itself, ie deluded and brainwashed its own officers and governors, into thinking the war would be more simple, despite evidence and opinion to the contrary.
-
The pro-war leaders never expected the war to be simple, and lied and deceived the public and goverment ministers, and military leaders that it would be a quicker campaign with less casualties.
-
Our military and political intelligence and analysis is just not that good, or not sufficiently good enough to give us a more accurate picture of what we would face by going in to Iraq.
Also - I think you are right about there being no Sun-like newspaper in the US, perhaps anywhere in the world. British tabloids are perhaps quite a unique phenomenon, hence they get frequently misunderstood.
McDuff - while I would agree with you to some extent on “gross omissions”, simplification and “schoolyard language” - these three things still don’t constitute inaccuracy, lies or falsehood. I would also agree that editorial slant - in terms of choice of story, editorial column content - reveals extreme (unashamed) bias. But that still does not make me doubt the veracity of sources, or information, or the (few!) facts there are - at the end of the day, this is still journalism, albeit a very different from from that in the broadsheets.
There is “real news” in there. Of course hardly anyone in the more educated sector of the UK is going to use The Sun as a primary, or even secondary, news source for anything other than celebrity gossip. It’s amusement, it’s entertainment. But many people in the UK don’t have the education to read - or more importantly, to WANT to read - a paper like the Times, or the Guardian, and therefore The Sun - along with other media such as TV and radio - is a news source for them.
I agree that omissions, oversimplifications and slants do not constitute outright lies, but I, personally, find them much more dangerous because of this. A half-truth is dangerous because people will believe it where they would dismiss a complete lie out of hand.
Of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the memo is false.
But, as you say, they are catering to a market of people who want to be told that their opinions are right, and that they don’t need to think because the world really is this simple. I’d shake my head sadly, were I not banging it on the desk…
I can’t speak for anyone else, least of all the author of the memo, but it reads to me as just saying that the BBC shouldn’t gloss over the fact that there is substantial popular opposition to the war - i.e., demonstrations shouldn’t be downplayed, and “cheerleading” should be avoided. “Reflecting” that there is significant opposition to the war in the UK and allowing anti-war arguments to be heard and tested doesn’t make your news coverage anti-war, it makes it representative of reality.
“Even once a war is under way, opposition voices should be given airspace.” OMG! They’re not censoring the antis! How dare they! :rolleyes:
Well, there are a lot of people like you around who believe any expression of a viewpoint contrary to what they have been told to believe by authority figures is evidence of conspiracy.
So damn what?
I read the paper edition British press extensively and they are full of letters and opinion pieces alleging bias in media coverage one way or the other. Bound to happen.
And watching CNN, FOX and the BBC IMHO only the latter reports anything like an objective view of things. FOX coverage seems to be no more than crude US propaganda and CNN little better in it’s blind acceptance of official positions.
As it is I think the BBC is a little too pro-war in it’s coverage, which is why I take my information from a range of sources, all with a pinch of salt.
I damn well expect the BBC to report good and bad things and I absolutely expect it to be sceptical about official statements from either side and report information to the contrary.
And I also expect the media to show what the realities of war are, not a sanitised, lets-not-upset anyone version, warts and all.
You people wanted war, now damn well look the awful consequences right in the eye.
McDuff - exactly. I am not quite sure why The Sun has taken such an extreme position. It’s been increasingly critical of Blair in months leading up to the war.
So I am not sure how much of their attitude is commercial (pro-war readerbase/pro-war advertisers/US advertisers), political, in terms of Murdoch needing to curry favour with Britain and/or America, or whether there is something ideological behind it.
not sure about that but Murdoch owns the Sun and the Times and the only UK satellite TV channel. He and his papers are adamantly opposed to the licence fee that funds the BBC because they use it to produce popular,entertaining programmes, which Murdoch sees as taking the bread from his mouth.
His campaign against the BBC is long standing, vicious and unrelenting and the “anti-war” BBC stick is one you must expect him to wield at every opportunity.
Sullivan says that his beef with the BBC is that their objectivity has deteriorated. Why not take him at his word? BTW he has the same beef with the New York Times, who he criticized harshly during a period when they were routinely publishing his articles.
Istara, if you look at predictions made by Bush, Blair, Rumsfeld, et. all., you can find a range of guesses about the war’s likely difficulty. Some were too optimistic. AFAIK, Tommy Franks and other military leaders have never made any predictions at all. Your theory #3 is true, and has never been denied: Our leaders cannot predict with precision just how difficult the war will be. They never said they could.
This has been true for past wars of any size, as well. It has also been true of domestic policy initiatives. Who can predict how difficult it will be to eradicate AIDS, to reduce illiteracy, to reduce the crime rate or to wipe out poverty?
Indeed. I wonder if he’s rather lost his way in the past four years … perhaps still trying to find a voice / place in the journalistic scheme of things … I wonder what he thinks of Hitchens ?
Looking again at his bio, he’s seems very catholic in his freelancing, broad-based for a political science Doctorate. This isn’t of itself uncommon (at least amongst the very good English/British writers) but not everyone can carry it off with, say, Hitchen-esque bravado.
Fwiw, I’d feel comfortable classifying his beeb pieces as slightly ranting op-ed’s by a not particularly qualified freelancer looking for career helping attention … is that too unkind, I wonder ?