The Journalistic Integrity of the Al Jazeera News Network

Great Debates
21

Furt, but the point is still that the vast majority of internet/broadcast based journalists do not publish corrections, only update stories as the information becomes available. Is that bad? I don’t know. It is a whole other thread.

Slate is not a fast-news source. They publish in-depth articles in which writers should get it right the first time. Completely different from CNN/MSNBC/etc.

Yahoo certainly gets more credit, but they still are not publishing a steady corrections column. Literally all that this page covers is giving you contact information so that you go yell at somebody else. It does not take responsibility or address errors, simply passes the blame onto somebody else, because, in truth, all that they do is repost stories from elsewhere.

Both Fox News examples are specific stories in which a lot of people complain/notice and they issued one time corrections. In the second example, they used the correction as a way to insert this little jem at the end:

Absolute journalistic professionalism there, obviously.

Washington Post and NY Times. These are obviously serious approaches towards corrections by running continutal columns to acknowledge every known mistake. These people do obviously take their role as print journalists seriously, and should be lauded. I wish that most web-sites had the same approach. However, the point is that, although probably an example of good journalism, the majority of internet or TV networks simply don’t run corrections on most pieces unless the mistake was egregarious and caused a lot of embarassment. They simply don’t do the continual corrections, particularly on fast breaking stories like this one.

Think of aircraft accidents. The news media constantly adjusts numbers up and down in the early hours or even days and nobody runs corrections on it. The mere lack of corrections doesn’t mean that Al Jazeera is below the standards of its peers. Should the standards be higher? Excellent, but entirely different question.

Jackmanii, how is that headline so inflamatory.

50+ people died. Is that not a blood bath? And has it not become rather clear over the course of the last few days that a significant number of civilians indeed were killed?

I’m sorry if being notified that innocents are being killed in war offends your sensibilities. But it is the truth.

22

That’s kinda long for some headlines. Not very catchy either. Run it by a newspaper editor and see what he says. There’re stylistic limitations on the medium.

I don’t get the whole bit about sportsmanship that you’re going with here. That being said, just looking at the US reported numbers it does sorta look like a massacre. Apparently, they were picking off their attackers left and right and suffered very few casualties. Reportedly, the guerrilla fighters didn’t have any weaponry that’d really phase Bradleys and Abrams.

If this is taken in context it becomes much less inflamatory. You should’ve read the piece from whence it came.
The reporter is trying to explain why the US numbers differ from the reports from the hospital. First, it discusses how the view from tanks can be very limited. Second, it discusses how large ammo was being used. Then, as an attempt to explain why the counts of casualties differ, it offers the explanation that the heavy ammo used, ( 50mm & 120mm ), pierced buildings and caused unseen casualties.

Do you find it likely that the firing of of 50mm and 120mm rounds in a densely populated urban area injured some who were invisible to the coalition forces by virtue of being concealed behind walls?

Deliberately dry language can be examples of bias as well. Somethings are rightfully described in loaded terms. Take for examples some of the great military euphemisms.

23

SimonX, if your objection to non-biased headlines is based on length inappropriate for newspapers, look again - the al-Jazeera “bloodbath” headline was on a website. Your stylistic objections do not apply.

“just looking at the US reported numbers it does sorta look like a massacre. Apparently, they were picking off their attackers left and right and suffered very few casualties.”

Again, they were fired upon. They suffered relatively few casualties in comparison to those who ambushed them. I can understand some virulent U.S.-haters being upset by that, but it still does not constitute a “bloodbath” in any professional sphere of news reporting.

The linked BBC report makes no mention of anyone’s claim on civilian casualties, noting instead that Iraqi source(s) felt the U.S. report (on deaths in the action) was “exaggerated”. The BBC reporter/editor inserted an editorial comment on civilian injuries based entirely on supposition into a news account.

If one is awash in biased shriekings from the news media, as many of our European posters apparently are, this may not seem like much. American news sources, though not without their problems, are a tad more professional.

24

This isn’t an issue of opinion. Al Jazeera is first and foremost a TV network

Irrelevant

Who are paid for their time. But I assume you don’t expect to get paid for working. The point is that when what they do is general practice, it is by definition not a testimony of bias. Your singling them out, on the other hand, is.

25

Oh, by the way…

Do you actually READ a site before linking to them?

Yahoo says nothing more than that they will provide corrections MADE BY THE NEWS SERVICE they are citing.

And Greta van Susteren had her ‘correction’ compiled by a viewed who sent in a letter.

In the other Fox case, they misidentified an actor. As in, they likely received a nice little letter from a lawyer whose firm makes as much money in a month as their entire legal department in a year, asking on behalf of his client to correct the misrepresentation.

Without those people doing the work for the website, it is highly unlikely the correction would make it to the web.

26

Let me see if I understand this logic.

If (to cite an example in a similar vein) furt were to criticize someone for making a racist statement, that someone could be defended by showing that others have made similar racist statements. And furt would be a bigot for singling the original person out for criticism.

That may make sense to OliverH, but it does not to me.

27

I don’t want to get sidetracked on the whole “corrections” issue but would like to say that:

  1. corrections are a definitely a good thing in regards to journalistic integrity (if you want to debate this that should be a different thread);
  2. yes, a lot of news sites update their sites rather than run corrections;
  3. most of them will run corrections or follow-ups for major gaffes and incorrect stories;
  4. All of the stories that Furt linked to show that these news orgs run corrections in some shape or form. I don’t undestand the point of saying that the source of the correct info was a reader/viewer/lawyer as opposed to someone working for that org as if this detracts from the fact that they informed readers/viewers of the correct info. AJ is free to run corrections from these sources but chooses not to. And yes, I’m basing this all on AJ’s website which is the only AJ source available to me.

Typically I get my news from a variety of sources- GoogleNews is a great resource for this. It’s easier to get a good picture of an event from a variety of sources and draw my own conclusions as to what occurred. And from doing this I can tell you that if you only read the AJ version of a story, you will get a very incomplete version of events.

There’s a longer post coming.

28

First of all you’re reaching faulty conclusions, (or engaging in an deliberate attempt to bait me. I’m not sure which.).

I do not now, nor have I ever had an "objection to non-biased headlines."
I made comments about the specific, alternate headline that was presented, not about any category of headlines.

IIRC, I referred to the stylistic constraints of the medium. Since the purpose of a headline is to both attract the reader’s attention and to provide an encapsulated version of what’s to be found in the article in a short and concise way, it seems that even websites are bound by the stylistic contraints of headlines.

I’m not clear as to what difference being fired upon makes to the description provided by the US spokesman.

There were 88 civilian casualties including 8 deaths.
Coalition troops sat in armored vehicles and picked off their attackers and others who were unable to signifigantly harm them.

I don’t know where you live, but having nearly ninety people get shot inside of a few hours would constitute a blood bath in my neighborhood.

IYHO, what would constitute a bloodbath in a professional sphere of news reporting?

The Samarra’s hospital director, Abd Tawfiq, said his staff treated 80 casualties and received just eight dead.
In what way(s) does this statement fail to meet the criteria of “anyone’s claim on civilian casualties?”

Also, no one uses the word “felt” in the article. The operative verbs are: disputed, say, and said. Is your use of the word “felt” an example of your bias?

A two hour firefight involving 50mm and 120mm rounds took place in a densely populated urban area. That casualties went unseen by coalition troops due to intervening walls etc is based entirely upon supposition. I would also like to point out that a tree falling in the forest making a noise is also based solely upon supposition.

The issue is about the quality of supposition.

Are you asserting that there’s not ample reason to believe that a two hour firefight involving 50mm and 120mm rounds that took place in a densely populated urban area would create casualties that went unseen by coalition troops?

29

One example of bias that I found recently on th English web site was their description of the synagogue bombings in Turkey. I’ll try to find the article if I can. But what first struck me when reading was that they never once mentioned how many Jewish people were killed. The article described in great detail how many Muslims were killed AND how many were injured, as well as describing the damage caused to the local shops; then went on to describe the types of shops damaged (the local area was an important source of lamps and carpets). It was quite clear that their target audience didn’t care if Jewish people were injured, only that the explosions were bad for local business.

I just started reading he history of Al-Jazeera by Mohammed El-Naway. The simple answer to this post is that Al-Jazeera HAS to be biased because otherwise Arab and people of Middle Eastern disent wouldn’t watch it. The fact is that they do watch it, and with great enthusiam means that the news is targetted to them.

That final point is important. I told my girlfriend about that synagogue article and her response was, “so what, if a Canadian had died the CBC would have been all over it.” And that’s exactly true, we get very little coverage of those events until there is a local reason for it.

Let’s not forget that during our criticism of CNN, Fox, and Al-Jazeera, that these are companies who’s business is making you watch their programming. The same way your local sports team gets entirely positive coverage even when they lose…

30

Sorry, one more thing I wanted to point out in Al-Jazeera’s defence, another point I picked up reading their history: I that I think they are quite intensionally biased but with good reason. My impression is that they start with the assumption that you’ve already read the Jews controlled Western version so they go out of their way to make sure you hear the other extreme.

So to repeat what most other posters have said, no one source is appropriate. I love to read CNN.com and english.aljazeera.net at the same time and assume the truth is somewhere in the middle.

31

Thanks for demonstrating that criticism of the US is on one level with racism for you. That certainly illustrates where the bias sits. No, it doesn’t make sense for you, that is quite obvious. Nevertheless, there’s plenty of people who know the difference between “standard” and “what Jackmannii would like to see.”

32

I fully agree here. But accessing only a relatively insignificant part of a news outlet isn’t enough to say they don’t run corrections. You wouldn’t make statements as to CNN’s propensity to post corrections based on their teletext either.

Sorry, but your conclusion here is not warranted by the data presented. In order for Al Jazeera to be free to run corrections from these sources, but CHOSE not to, you assume that they received submissions of such corrections. Do you know that to be a fact, and what evidence do you have for it?
Second, do you have evidence that these other outlets would run corrections if they had not been prepared for them? Once more, corrections on the english website represent additional work for AJ, above and beyond what other outlets have to do.

And from living in the US for several years, I can tell you that if you only read the US version of a story, you will get a very incomplete version of events, too. I once read reports on a security conference in Munich Rumsfeld attended. Comparing the reports in the US and German press on the event, you could think they were covering different events. And frankly, the way CNN covered the war in Iraq was severely disturbing to someone with access to media of non-war parties. As long as US news outlets all jump onto the patriotic bandwagon at times when careful watch of the government is even more important, criticising AJ for bias is highly disingeneous. Once the stance that “in times of crisis, the government has to be supported, no matter what a bunch of lying, cheating scoundrels it is and how many civil liberties and constitutional principles it scoffs at” is abandoned, there might be some justification. Until then, it’s mote and beam and all.

33

Cripes, Simon. What an absolutely classic example of reading what you wish into an article, with no connection to what it actually says. Let me reproduce the relevant passage for you:

“But now local officials say the American accounts of dead and wounded are wildly exaggerated.
The Samarra’s hospital director, Abd Tawfiq, said his staff treated 80 casualties and received just eight dead.”

If you can find the word “civilian” in there, or any reference whatsoever in that entire article to civilian casualties (other than the undocumented speculation of the reporter at the end), I will give you a Kewpie doll. Or other appropriate prize.

If your definition of responsible reporting includes floating speculation about something based on your gut feeling and nothing else, we will just have to disagree.

“…it seems that even websites are bound by the stylistic contraints of headlines.”

Fairness trumps style in the playbook of the professional news organization.
OliverH, you are cordially given a second chance to respond to this point - why do you feel that finding an additional case of bias excuses the first case, and why do you think it acceptable to accuse someone of bias merely for noting that bias exists?

34

:smack: D’ohh
That was very sloppy of me. I was carrying on too many conversations, fighting a computer with a tendency to restart itslef arbitrarily, (which it did in the middle of composing my original post, which was completely factual and Pulitzer prize worthy I assure you :wink: ), and being at work dealing w/ those people.

I accidentally conflated various other news stories I was discussing like this one.
“The only corpses at the city’s hospital were those of ordinary civilians, including two elderly Iranian pilgrims and a child.”
"Asked about reports from senior police and hospital officials in the town of eight civilians killed and dozens more wounded, the US general insisted: “We have no such reports whether from medical authorities or police.”

My bad.

I never said this. Thanks for trying to interpret. You got it wrong though. Thought you should know.

Here’s an interesting take on the events which describes the rules of engagement for that fire fight, including:
“The ROE under “Iron Fist” is such that the US soldiers are to consider buildings, homes, cars to be hostile if enemy fire is received from them (regardless of who else is inside. It seems too many of us this is more an act of desperation, rather than a well thought out tactic. We really don’t know if we kill anyone, because we don’t stick around to find out. Since we armored troops and we are not trained to use counter-insurgency tactics; the logic is to respond to attacks using our superior firepower to kill the rebel insurgents. This is done in many cases knowing that there are people inside these buildings or cars who may not be connected to the insurgents.”

Umm… get over yourself. Okay, I apologize. I’m so sorry that I said that your headline was “kinda long for some headlines” [and] “[n]ot very catchy…”.
Your’s is absolutely THE most fucking brilliant headline I’ve ever seen.

35

??? The point I was making is that is absurd to imply, as you did, that they can’t be expected to run corrections because they are non-native speakers of English. If one can write an otherwise intelligent and articulate article in a language, one can certainly later write a breif correction to that article in the same language. The people that write corrections at NYT or wherever else aren’t doing it for free; paying them to do it as part of the cost of business for a responsible news outlet.

**

I didn’t “single them out”; I was demonstrating that, in fact, admitting one’s errors is general, or at the very least common, practice. If AJ deviates from that practice (I say “if” because I am open to new evidence), I don’t see how Mojo or anyone else pointing that out is at fault. No, AJ are not be the only ones; hence my point about the BBC: I don’t like it when they do it either.

Maybe, maybe not. Dunno. Again, if you know more than the rest of us, please say so. All I know is that all of the sources I linked to show (found easily) instances of media sources, including web-based, admitting error. Whether the error was spotted by someone in-house or not is irrelevant. I rather assume most corrections are brought to an outlets’s attention by outsiders. If they knew it was factually wrong, they wouldn’t have run it in the first place; editors fact-check stories before they’re published, not after.

Waht is important is that they do admit mistakes, which is evidence to me of some committment to truth and accuracy. A brief search of AJ’s website suggests that either they do not admit error, or that they are infallible, or that no one ever calls errors to their attention. I find the latter scenarios unlikely. YMMV.

Does that invalidate them as a source? No; but it is, in my book, a knock on their credibility, just as other things may be knocks against FOX or the NYT or CNN. The OP however, was about Al-Jazeera, and anything that speaks well or ill of their integrity seems germane to me.

36

Uhhggg…

But, Furt, look at your links again! They are not, I repeat NOT, consistent corrections columns. One of them isn’t even a correction, it simply states that Yahoo indeed, DOES NOT, run corrections. It says: If you have a problem with something, talk to sombody else.

Two stories from Fow News where they correct the name of an actor and another chatty, one time correction of an area code does not equal a solid corrections policy.

CNN: I couldn’t find a corrections column nor any specific corrections from the first 20 hits from a search of the website saying “corrections”.

BBC: No corrections column. I have been reading their front-page thoroughly for the same period as Al Jazeera, and I have seen NO corrections.

NPR: Again, I couldn’t find either on the website, although I have ceratainly heard them on certain programs over the air. The same may or may not be true of Al Jazeera.

Fox News/Yahoo/Slate: Already discussed. Fox has no standing pattern of correcting factual errors, simply making one time corrections when it attracts enough attention. Yahoo doesn’t do corrections at all. It is rediculous to even attempt to compare Slate with the other news sources here.

The issue here isn’t whether the standards for the industry are too low or not. I would tend to agree with you anyway that they are too low. But again, not the point. Does Al Jazeera match the generally accpeted journalistic standards for internet news coverage? Again, I say yes.