Looking at the two big news publishers in my country. One isn’t reporting about the current bombings at all, while the other one is phrasing their words mostly anti-Palestinian.
Is there some neutral coverage I can keep up to? Where do you guys get your info from?
Stick with reputable news sites. Reuters is my gold standard. Along with AP News. They tend to be some of the least bias sources out there and do their due diligence when it comes to reporting.
It’s worth noting that a lot of the news coverage may come across as pro-isreal and anti-palestinian but that’s because a lot of the news is “Isreal claims this” and “An IDF statement that” the sources themselves are biased.
Also keep in mind that this is an active war. There will be a lot of wrong information as media reports the best information available, it’s not the media having a bias, it’s just the fog of war as things rapidly develop.
It’s also important to keep in mind that when you read “Gaza health ministry claims”, in reality it’s the same as “Hamas’ health ministry claims” since Hamas has been ruling that area since 2006 and tortured the Palestinian opposition ever since (https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/05/gaza-palestinians-tortured-summarily-killed-by-hamas-forces-during-2014-conflict/ ). Same thing with claims by Al Jazeera since Qatar hosts Hamas’ leadership and funds their lavish lifestyles there so it wouldn’t be right for them to suggest in their own newspaper that they’re hosting terrorists, thus their news will rarely be critical of Hamas.
What’s the solution? There are a few choices you could make. You could cherrypick pro-Palestinian sources like Al Jazeera, Middle East Eye or Electronic Intifada and automatically dismiss whatever Israel says as disinformation and it could make you feel good about yourself as it’s very easy to oversimplify the conflict as just one big high-tech state abusing poor people fighting back with stones. You could also do the same cherrypicking for a pro-Israel position. Or you could dismiss any pro-Palestinian or pro-Israel source and only listen to news sources that provide a “balanced” account of the events (Associated Press is indeed very good). Or, much better but will require more thinking on your part: you read all of them and you dismiss none of them.
Ugh. That link is horrible. I mean the descriptions behind it.
It looks like non-Hamas Palestinians have two enemies working against them.
Makes me wonder what exactly a Pro-Palestinian position is.
A pro-Palestinian position is (for now) anti-Hamas and pro-Abbas, supports the removal from Hamas from power, supports Israeli action against Hamas, but decries the limitations of aid or the blockades from Egypt/Jordan/etc against even short-term refugees.
Palestine would currently be a country, for the first time in human history, if Hamas did not exist.
Can you expand on this?
A 2 state solution was offered multiple times and was denied because Palestinian leadership had a hard line of Israel not existing.
When a 2 state solution became politically viable in Palestinian territory, Hamas seized power and refused further elections
Just because I don’t know if you want clarity on the whole thing, Palestine as never been a country. It was part of Jordan and Egypt before being lost in the 6 Day War, and part of a chain of empires before that. There was no unified Palestinian identity prior to 1967.
To my knowledge the closest state to the 2 state solution was an offer to Arafat after the Camp David negotiations. He didn’t take the offer, but I don’t know why. But that was in 2000, before Hamas seized power in 2005. That was why I asked.
Abbas moving toward the 2 state solution was what led to the Hamas takeover, and violent skirmishes between the PA and Hamas. Specifically their issues were the more secular state the PA favors and that they don’t believe Israel should exist
So the ideal solution would be a 2-state+1-cage solution, where the cage is for Hamas and Netanyahu together with his Ultra Orthodox faction, where they can fight each other to death, while Israel and Palestine negotiate on a peace treaty.
After Amnesty’s report on Ukraine when russia invaded it, many people no longer consider it a credible source.
Amnesty is not a neutral source. They are always biased toward minimizing casualties regardless of political outcome.
Once you know that, and that they aren’t news so much as they cite news, it’s readable.
“Minimize casualties” is a short-sighted, pointless cop-out that is only beneficial to the aggressor. Very much similar to “Stop fighting”.
Yeah definitely. But, they’re a charitable organization focused solely on that and not on political outcomes so I give them some leeway. It’s not like they hide their intent.
I’m aware of that, and some of the current claims are probably subject to change in the future. I just browsed through reuters, and they seem unbiased. While my local news refers to hamas as “radical islamic terror organisation Hamas”, reuters just uses “hamas”.
Good journalists will never make their own opinion on the matter known outside the comment/opinion/analysis pages.
Not: Man eats a delicious red apple
Not: Man eats a red apple and says it’s delicious.
But: Man says he ate a red apple and claims it is delicious.
Or in some cases: Footage appears to show many saying he ate a red apple and claiming it was delicious.
If the journalist didn’t see it with their own eyes, they won’t state that it’s a fact.
It’s annoying how intertwined opinion and journalism have become, but it isn’t a journalist’s job to do anything more than report on what they saw, read or heard.
Unfortunately journalism has been in decline for so long now, that many people don’t know the difference between good and poor journalism. So when a good journalist simply reports on what someone said, they wrongly think the journalist is agreeing with them, instead of simply reporting on what they heard the person say.
Good journalism isn’t someone shouting about how angry something makes them, even if you agree with them. Good journalism is the equivalent of a court stenographer or someone who subtitles movies for the deaf.
Why is man “claiming” the apple is delicious? Is he in the pocket of Big Apple, and it really isn’t delicious? Or is the report from Fox Apple and they’re trying to cast aspersions on the man and his “claims”?
The apples are turning the frigging hourses gay.
Edit: horses. I had a stroke.
This might be the best eli5 of good journalism.
Right. It’s all about media literacy. Once you start picking up on loaded language like “Radical Islamic terror organisation Hamas” it starts becoming pretty evident what the biases are. That’s not to say the news they are reporting is false, just that it is going to take some extra work on your part to filter out all of the bullshit. Like you mentioned, the Common name of the government of Gaza is “Hamas” calling it anything else is an attempt to appeal to emotion to prime you to think about it a certain way. Like calling the Israeli government “zionists” it’s ment to sway to to something, not give you news.
Hamas is the government in Gaza because they seized power and do not allow elections.
Calling them a radical terrorist organization is both accurate and removes the citizens of Gaza from responsibility for the actions of Hamas.
Exactly, that’s what I’m talking about.
Obviously, with the fact that the Palestinians have been opressed for decades, which led for organisations like the Hamas to arrise, there’s no good guys / bad guys in this situation.
Regarding media literacy, the number one book I can recommend anyone wishing improve theirs is " The News" by Alain de Botton.
This is an accurate, unbiased description of Hamas. They are exactly that, the same way ISIL/ISIS is.
While this might be true, it’s all about the context. They make it seem like the Israelis are targeting the “bad guys” and should be allowed to do so. But they don’t mention the unrightful suffering and death of Palestinian civilians at all.
You now what I mean? If they call the Hamas a radical islamic terror organization (which I’m fine with), why don’t they also call the Israelis a radical zionist terror organization?
What I want to read is, if the Hamas fucked up, then let me know about it, also, if the Israelis fucked up, I want to know about that too.
Because they aren’t that.
There is no country on the planet that would not respond military to a thousand civilians being murdered via state-sponsored terrorism.
But haven’t they oppressed the Palestinians for the past decades. Didn’t they evidently commit crimes that fall under the umbrella of “terror”?
At some point, it’s unavoidable for organisations to arise, that don’t play by the rules anymore.
No. Words have actual meanings.