If I Owned a News Paper or Television Network...

...

>_>  You know, to some, that might not be much different than the media now.

I wouldn't consider this liberal but more of the conservative side of things.  At first, I bristled at the "religious fundamentalist" tag because I consider myself one.  I think you mean more of the "extreme religious fundamentalist" type which I'm not. 

Remember fundamental just means "basic."  I believe we need to get back to basics. 

My youngest son is an editor making some pretty good inroads very quickly and at such a young age.  He just changed jobs from VA to IA receiving two job offers.  He's thinking of keeping both.  One fulltime and the other partime.  He called last night saying he might be interested in buying a newspaper.  I think he would agree with much of what you put here. 

He said we should see what comes off the AP wire.  We have to have access to this wire to see it and it costs the paper thousands of dollars to get this access.  I think he said it's the greatest expense of the newspaper.  Anyhow he said what comes across is totally biased.  It's very clear that what comes off this wire is very liberal biased.

Thank God for Fox News. 

I don't see the mainstream media being very sympathetic to minorities or biased against fascists or religious fundamentalists.

When did you see the last CNN report that referred to northern Africa as "Tamazgha" (the Berber name for it) rather than the more often used "Arab Maghreb"? The media are very clearly biased against the natives and supportive of Arab imperialism.

Similarly the media still use the word "Palestine", the pagan Roman imperialist name, for the land that its natives for thousands of years call "Eretz Israel". They are clearly biased against the Jewish ethnic minority in the middle east.

When was the last time you saw the mainstream media refer to Iran as something other than an "islamic republic" as if the religious fundamentalism forced upon Iranians by its dictators is "Islam"?

Or when exactly do the mainstream media point out that the PLO was founded by Nazi sympathisers and former allies of Nazi Germany during the Holocaust? Instead the PLO are celebrated as "moderates", aapparently a mainstream media word for "Nazi".

How often do the mainstream media defend a Kurdish or Assyrian position in Iraq against the Arab rulers' interests?

How often do the mainstream media point out that while Sudan is ruled by an Arab government it is, in fact, a country of mostly Nilo-Saharan (black African) peoples living under Arab rule?

No, my friend, ethnic minorities do not have a great place in tha mainstream media, and unless they have a powerful lobby in the west, the mainstream media will ignore such ethnic groups.

But fascists and religious fundamentalists get a pass all the time.

Or why would the mainstream media not constantly report that Syria practices an apartheid system which takes away the rights of its Kurdish population?

Do you have any proof of this?

That or they're just utterly ignorant? You know, not everything is one big plot, or one big bias. In fact, I find it startling that someone of your intelligence doesn't realize it; in my opinion, you let your bias run amock. I honestly cannot think of a time when you've said something positive about anything Arab. Maybe I missed it, I'll admit that.

It's common knowledge, but I applaud your newly-found sense of questioning what you hear.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Amin_al-Husayni

He was an Arab leader in "Palestine" and Iraq who collaborated with the Germans and helped forge the alliance between Iraq and Germany during World War II. He was unsuccessful in his attempt to drive out all the Jews or kill them and to expand the Holocaust into the Arab world.

His Egyptian nephew finally founded the PLO. He is still considered a hero by supporters of the PLO.

Egypt's dictator Gamal Nasser was another ally of Hitler who already attempted to take over Egypt and join Nazi Germany and fascist Italy during World War II but did not succeed until 1952.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamal_Nasser#Second_World_War

His support for Arab nationalists in "Palestine" was crucial and the PLO developed right from that nice set of people.

I assume a lot of it is stupidity. But that doesn't excuse the obvious bias or the validity of attempts to point it out. There is also nothing wrong with being biased. But one shouldn't call oneself a "news source" if one publishes opinions.

As for saying positive things about Arabs, I think you are confusing my opinion of Arab nationalists (which is similar to my opinion of German Nazis) and my opinion of Arabs and Arab culture (which is similar to my opinion of Germans and German culture, which I am a part of).

I have written a lot of positive things about Arabs and, as most Christians here will probably remember, about Muhammed and the Quran. None of that has anything to do with my opinion of Arab nationalism.

Here are a few articles I have written about Arabs or Arab countries which were completely positive:

https://forums.joeuser.com/331877

http://citizenleauki.joeuser.com/article/332239/Israels_Muslim_Friends_III

http://citizenleauki.joeuser.com/article/342378/Most_interesting_Arab_blogger

http://citizenleauki.joeuser.com/article/342696/Everybody_loves_Hamas_except_those_who_know_them

Hmmm, interesting.

I stand correct; my apologies.

The only problem is unchecked and ignorant bias.

Did you know that Hitler's "Mein Kampf" is a best seller in the Arab world? Or that Hamas refer to and quote the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in the charter? Those people believe that stuff. They are like the Germans used to be, only without the ability to project military force and outproduce their neighbours.

I don't think so. While it isn't a vast conspiracy, it is pretty clear that the people who run the big news organisations (Reuters, AP etc.) have an agenda. Ignorance can only explain so much.

However, I also think that today's journalists thrive on having a job which they assume makes them fighters for freedom and automatic experts on everything.

I think it's more accurate to say that people who become journalists tend to have a social agenda which causes them to become journalists. That social agenda inevitably leads to bias, through what probably has a proper name but for convenience I'll call the embedded effect. Basically, abysmal pay for difficult working conditions is the result of a calling, so most successful journos tend to have zeal for their causes. Disinterested observers don't become journos - there's more money in management training.

Secondly, we have the agency issue, which even your outlets would have to cope with. Apart from a handful of state media outlets, which have their own quirks, most news orgs are dying. There just isn't enough money to pay for a good journalistic pool at your average broadsheet, which leads to an overreliance on agencies. So you get hundreds of papers worldwide running the same story. Agency journos tend to be good, so quality or accuracy is rarely an issue, but it means there's no breadth of coverage, which is the real problem. In the past you could rely on a difference in reports from the NY Times, the Guardian, The Times of London, the Washington Post, etc. Those days are nearly over.

I did know that, but I am staying a long ways away from implying they are anything like the Nazi's. (Knowing there is a large difference between Germans, and Nazi Germans...)

Mmm, I would disagree, but who knows.

Yes, but why would that social agenda always include support for Arab imperialism, disdain for Africans and Jews, and a complete and utter disinterest in any world event that cannot be blamed on America or Israel?

I agree that journalists are fighting for a "cause". But I do believe that unless that cause is truth, journalism is not the right field for those people. Journalists are supposed (and claim) to report the facts. That doesn't agree with having a cause.

I on the other hand am no journalist, do not claim to report just the facts, and have a clear bias towards Zionism, towards support for all other ethnic minorities in the middle east, science, equal rights for men and women and homosexuals, religious freedom, and a certain level of capitalism.

Well, I already said that there is a clear difference, since the German Nazis were able to produce lots of stuff and had a great military. But other than that the only clear difference between the German Nazis and the Arab Nazis is that middle-eastern Jews were forwarned and able to defend themselves while European Jews were not.

Once someone reads Mein Kampf and screams "Death to the Jews!" the difference between him and a German Nazi is really academic, isn't it?

I'm either more or less cynical than you, I can't figure out which: I find there's very little human stupidity CAN'T explain.

I'm inclined to think that the media is easily manipulated and prone to group think rather than outright malicious, on the whole.

The most vicious journalists appear to be lone wolfs.

I can only really speak for my own country's press, but I can assure you that what you say is not the case here. There aren't many journos that share those features. Usually if they're interested in America/Israel (whether for or against) they tend to be negative about Arab imperialism. No one cares about Africa except for a sad story about human suffering, although occasionally you get something about how we should take in more African refugees. As for world events, most things covered don't tend to blame anyone as such. 

The EU elections though have been very concerning. The anti-Semitism of many successful candidates has been heavily played up in the Australian press. You may have something to really worry about over there, but as an Irishman you probably know more about that than me.

News isn't necessarily about truth. When I was working as a junior cadet my mentor used to tell me that the truth didn't matter a damn if I couldn't tell a good story. Sometimes journalists get carried away and report the story rather than the news, but in serious broadsheet journalism I think it's very rare.

Really? Can you point me to two examples where Arab imperialism is even mentioned?

It's a media myth. What in fact happened is that the European elections were won by conservative pro-Israel parties. The media here are already calling it a "protest vote".

The anti-Semitic parties, left and right, got very few votes, fewer than in the last elections.

Let's look at individual results.

Germany

Christian Democrats (the party of Prime Minister Angela Merkel, whom I would call reasonably philo-Semitic): 37.9%

Social Democrats (who have both pro-Israel and anti-Israel factions): 20.8

Green Party (who are very anti-Israel these days, in the name of pacifism, of course): 14

Liberal Democrats (who have an anti-Semitic branch but are mostly disinterested in the issue): 12

Socialists (who are mainly anti-Semitic but have a vocal pro-Israel camp these days): 8

Ireland

Pro-Treaty Conservatives: 29.1

Anti-Treaty Conservatives (aka Republicans): 24.1 (both are not anti-Semitic at all)

Labour: 13.9

Nationalists (who are anti-Semitic): 11.2

United Kingdom

Tories (not anti-Semitic): 27.7

UK Independence (they are anti-Europe but I haven't heard much else): 16.5

Labour (nobody knows what they are at the moment, Tony Blair was certainly no anti-Semite): 15.7

Liberal Democrats (probably are anti-Semitic): 13.7

Green (probably are): 8.6

British National and a few other nationalist parties (some of whom are anti-Semitic): less than 10

I've yet to read a single article about Arab imperialists such as Osama bin Laden (presumably that's who you mean by Arab imperialists) where they've been discussed in positive terms. Not even in the Green Left Weekly, which is about as anti-Israel, anti-Bush as you can easily get in Oz (Obama's election has made 'anti-American attitudes' very hard to prove - he was cheered by random Parisians yesterday, according to AP. Can you imagine that happening for Bush? Clearly hatred is only man-deep). I guess I could find some specific examples if you want, but I think the challenge might be to find some supporting articles, especially post 9/11.

Fair enough. It's a bit of a shame that you can only either be pro-Israel or anti-Semitic in the EU, but the EU isn't much of a foreign policy hub so I suppose we can't expect subtlety.

Osama bin Laden is referred to an a "Muslim fundamentalist", despite the fact that what he believes in has very little to do with real Islam in any shape or form. The fact that the media tend to confuse evil terrorists with Muslims is a related problem which I addressed in points 13 (interviewing philo-Semitic Muslims) and 19 ("Islamic Republic").

Arab imperialism is the claim that all of North-Africa and the Middle East from Egypt to Iraq is the "Arab world". And I have seen no mainstream media outlets that do not fully respect and support Arab claims to all these lands. The only country in the region that is not under Arab rule for the longest time is Israel, a case in which the media demand that at least a part of it must be Arab (and Jew-free, of course). (Note that this situation has changed during the Bush era, because now Iraqi Kurdistan and the Christian part of Sudan are autonomous. Two changes the media did not exactly celebrate.)

If the United Kingdom modified, by force, the Commonwealth of Nations such that all member countries would have to be ruled by white Englishmen whereas native languages would be forbidden and blacks legally enslaved or murdered en-masse, you can be sure that the liberal media would scream bloody murder. Yet the Arab League gets away with this stuff.

The entire invention of a "Palestinian people" (which did not historically exist and is not linguistically different from Jordanians and Egyptians) is a mechanism to protect Arab imperialism. They are one Arab people when it suits them and lots of small oppressed peoples when that fits the propaganda better. That's why, apparently, the "Palestinians" cannot be absorbed by Arab states. But middle-eastern Jews, who are linguistically and culturally different from the Arabs, can be expelled from Arab countries and bombed in Israel and western media hardly mention that they exist (let alone that they make up the majority of Israelis).

Another feature of this trick is to call Arab towns "refugee camps", whereas Sderot, for example, is not a "refugee camp" despite the fact that its inhabitants fled Arab countries at the same time that the Arabs in "refugee camps" fled Israel. And none of the media ever point out that while Arab refugees got and get lots of aid from the UN, Jewish refugees got and get none (and are not even legally recognised as refugees).

If a hypothetical British empire did the same things these days, the media would be all over them, I am sure. Heck, South-Africa practiced the same system the Arab states practice (just with fewer genocides and less oppressive laws), and the world was supposed to boycott them because they (for some reason) were evil. But have the media ever called for a boycott of Arab states because of what Iraq did to the Kurds and Assyrians or because of what Sudan does to the Africans (or because of what the "Arab" states in northern Africa do to the natives there)?

The difference between South-Africa before 1990 and Syria today is that in Syria the native Kurds have no homeland at all and are not allowed to run schools in their own language, while in South-Africa at least a few rights remained for the natives. (Otherwise the countries seem to be pretty similar, including their support for terrorists in surrounding countries.)

I sometimes hear that anti-Israel and anti-semitism are not the same things, but I have yet to hear about an anti-Israel position that is not based on some anti-Semitic assumptions.

For example, I do not believe that those who compare Israel with Nazi Germany chose Nazi Germany as a random example of an evil dictatorship and might just have chosen Pol Pot's regime if it had come to mind.

As for one possible difference between pro-Israel and philo-semitism, I want to quote Dr Khaleel Mohammed, whom I wrote about in a previous article.

"My position on Israel is free from any hidden motive: it is based on my reading of the Qur'an, one that I must admit places me at odds with many of my coreligionists. I certainly do not support Israel so that the in-gathering of the Jews can fulfill the parousia, and they be converted to Christianity. This to me is latent anti-semitism. Nor do I support a Jewish land in Israel so that I can convert Jews to Islam. This would be latent Judeophobia."

Incidentally, I have exactly the same opinion about Israel as the one Dr Mohammed found in the Quran.

Ironically, Osama bin Laden, the "Muslim" Brotherhood, and Arab nationalists disagree with the "word of Allah" in this case.

It's in Sure 17:101-104. Allah commands the Israelites to live in Israel (not, ironically, in "Palestine", a word used then only by the pagans of whom Islam's prophet had a very low opinion). (Muhammed, an Ishmaeli, also had a low opinion of Arabs and their tribalism, but that is perhaps besides the point here.)

Regarding this:

Turns out the highly succesful United Kingdom Independence party is highly philo-semitic and pro-Israel:

http://www.thejc.com/articles/ukip-leader-attacks-trendy%E2%80%99-israel-hate-eu-parliament

I am starting to be convinced that the mainstream media are trying to play down the fact that Europe is moving right AND becoming more pro-Israel.

The fact that the UKIP is openly for Israel didn't seem to stop its many voters. And neither were the German Christian Democrats or Berlusconi's party in Italy shunned for their support for Israel.

It seems that the majority of Europeans really do think different from what the media tell them to think. A few years ago, it hadn't been like that yet. Maybe the advent of blogs and better Internet access in general makes people more right-wing and less anti-Semitic?

can I be pro the existance of isreal and pro-isreali life while still being anti its occupation and some of its policies, or are the two impossible?

I don't know.

Which particular position do you think is pro-Israel and against its "occupation"?

(And how pro-Israel is a position that makes Israel vulnerable like in the 60s again?)

Sorry, let me rephrase it.

I agree with the right of Isreal to exist and its people not to be killed.  In that I am pro-Isreal. 

I do not agree with some of Isreals policies with regard to the placement of the new wall, the bulding of settlements on non-pre1967 land and such like.

I do not agree with Hamas killing anybody (and Obama speech asked them to stop all violence), I do not agree with attacks on Isreal.

Good.

And I have a problem with the position that certain land must be Jew-free. I consider that position as racist as the extreme Zionist position (which very very few people hold and which is really unpopular in Israel) that Israel must be Arab-free.

(Note that Lieberman, whom western media call racist, does not propose that either.)

Nobody agrees with Hamas killing people (except for a few fanatics). The issue is whether you would go as far as admitting that Israel should be allowed to build a wall to stop Hamas and other terrorists from killing people.

That's where the problems start. Most people agree that Jews must not just be killed. But few people agree that Jews have a right to defend themselves. And a wall is among the most humane methods to do so.

He and his followers are also hugely racist in favour of Arabs - if you look at the writings of Malay Muslim terrorists who've dealt with Arab Muslims, many bemoan poor treatment at the hands of Arabs (and the world's hearts bleed for them, truly). The Arabs seemed to believe the Islamic super state everyone was fighting for should be ruled by Arabs. That's what I thought you were referring to. Clearly not.

The only analog I can think of this situation is China. People talk of China, but Tibet and the Uighur aren't happy members of the state. Weak example, sure, but I'm not sure categorising a region by the dominant political force is necessarily discrimination. It's shorthand instead. Intelligent people will know there are minorities in these regions, and even idiots should be aware that the Arab world's borders end rather messily around Israel. Journos tend to work to word and timing limits - I'm not sure it's practical to mention that Israel isn't Arab every time you want to talk about some pan-Arab issue.

As for the demands? from journalists towards Israel, history shows that part of it has been Arab, and demography shows that a sizable minority of Israelis are Arabs. I don't think it's logical to move from "these people talk non-specifically about the Arab world" to "journalists think Israel should be Jew-free". We can be more reasonable than that.

In the current Commonwealth climate, I think the UK would be expelled from the Commonwealth they created. The difference is that Arabs are always screaming about murdering people. It's why no public anywhere trusts 'them', and dumb South Americans get shot in tube stations for looking Arab. It's not news any more, save when anti-Arab fervour seems to be dying down. Surely your local region has seen the massive arguments through the courts about the siting of mosques, or the tolerability of burqas on public streets. You don't see anywhere near as much fuss about Jewish temples or those little hats and dreadlocks.

Overall, I think you're mistaking the vocal minority of the public who only dislike certain groups for the vastly xenophobic majority, who hate or fear every foreigner more or less equally.

That's because anyone can walk into a synagogue and see for himself that it is not used for preaching hatred. And while this is probably true for most mosques as well, it certainly isn't true for all of them.

Hassidic Jews are also not exactly known for their violence so there is little reason to be afraid of them (and noone is). There is also a difference between a man wearing a hat and a woman being forced to wear a burqa. One is an unfortunate fashion choice, perhaps, the other is subjugation of women.