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Looking for Unbiased War News?
AlexisKai asks: "With the forecast for tomorrow being sunny with a 90% chance of airstrikes, the US government will be clamping down on unpatriotic stories and the rest will be self-censored by the major media anyway. Where are Slashdot readers planning to look for reliable, disinterested reports as events in Iraq unfold?"
It might be worth while to try checking google news since they pull from many different sites. This seems like best choice.
the best source I've been able to find is Guerrilla News Network (gnn.tv)
Ain't no such animal. Imho the closest thing online is BBCi and that's where I'll be spending my bandwidth over the next (hopefully very) few weeks.
Life is like surrealism: if you have to have it explained to you, you can't afford it.
Canada is not participating in the attack against Iraq and therefore any news reported out of Canada will be unbiased. CBC is the Canadian government owned national broadcaster. Click here for a direct link.
I read em all and then believe 1% of all of what I read. I love the BBC, the Brits are always interesting, polite, and just damn cool.
Zed's dead baby. Zed's dead.
The sooner you realize that all media is slanted, intentionally or otherwise, the sooner you'll accept that fact and move on. Its just how the nature of media (ALL media, not just news) is.
My advice? Get your news from a variety of different sources, and then check on who THEIR sources are. At least then you'll be somewhat more informed than the average (dumb) Joe who recites facts (or "facts" if we're talking about Fox) without knowing anything about the situation.
And we are involved in the war.
For a fairly neutral, balanced view, try the Sydney Morning Herald.
The news will not cover the war. You won't learn what it was like for some Iraqi soldier to get carbonized instantly by a gunship (because his country's despot ruler is a punk). Why bother? Read an AP or Reuters report and get on with your life, the one with your $3 latte on the way to work tomorrow morning, because your life ain't the one those Iraqis are living, and it sure as hell isn't anything like what FoxCNNMSNBC is gonna show you.
For links to stories about how hidden elements of the U.S. government sell everyone else on war, see What should be the Response to Violence?
U.S. government agencies like the NSA, CIA, and FBI function as a world-wide secret police force. If they make trouble, they get more attention and funding. There is a huge conflict of interest.
Big weapons makers in the U.S. like GE own media companies, so they can make sure that war is seen as necessary and even interesting and fun. For many people in the U.S. war is an adult video game. They don't really think of the pain and suffering the U.S. government has caused. The U.S. government has bombed 14 countries in 35 years and killed more than 3,000,000 people.
U.S. taxpayers pay Israel $900 per year for every man woman and child in Israel. That money must be used to buy weapons from U.S. weapons makers. So much money for war tends to prevent peace.
The U.S. interferes with needed governmental change in Saudia Arabia. I don't think violence is justified. However, Saudi friends have told me that Osama bin Laden's complaints about the U.S. government are justified.
I find it deeply painful to realize that the government of the U.S. is partly corrupt.
I have actually heard a high placed member of the Bush administration threaten to attack 'un-authorized' satelite links. If you're a war reporter in Baghdad, that pretty much means you're a target unless you conform to the Bush propaganda. There currently is no independent journalist in Baghdad. My guess is that it will take years before we hear about the real collateral damage, just like with the previous gulf war.
Jilles
I have found that in such situations, the best that one can do is look for news sources which you expect to be biased towards both sides of the issue. I mean, read BBC and, say, DAWN, a pakistani newspaper (a rather respectable newspaper, very balanced, relative to most others that i have found from islamic countries).
So both of these are mostly very unbiased, but on such a issue, probably leaning to opposite sides. one can expect them to report pretty much all relevant points to the issue between them, and then, once u have all the information, build your own opinion...no, not as easy as getting your opinion ready made for you by a single source, but i think the only way one has any chance at knowing even a part of the truth. I know this is what i am going to do.
One thing i am not going to do is read CNN, though. CNN has recently been a major dissapointment in its over all coverage of ALL issues, from the ENRON and co. scams, to the IRAQ issue. I think they are guilty of fraud, the way they omit an anti-goverment viewpoint, eg in the case of the hugely edited UN weapons inspector transscript posted on CNN (read about it on that other site )...thats just one example. Their coverage of the worldwide anti-war protests could have made one feel that it was just a dozen hippies who made a bit of noise, not the 10 million plus who marched all over the world. What good is the guarentee of freedom of press when the press is unwilling to use that freedom? Its weird that a govt. owned news channel (BBC) manages a much more balanced reporting that a completely independent and very powerfull entity like CNN. The irony get worse when you consider that CNN gained most of its worldwide popularity during operation desert storm, when it was the only international news network allowed to operate from inside iraq by saddam, because, as the iraqi govt put it: "they are the only ones we trust to objectively report the truth".
Its a weird world.
Ghoul2
Sigura Non Grata
Go find whoever taught you what "bias" means and ask for your money back. Bias isn't about whether "facts" presented are "actual"; bias is about which facts are presented. (And if you really think Fox is unbiased news--which is what the question asks for--then you are willfully ignorant.)
__
Choose mnemonic identifiers. If you can't remember what mnemonic means, you've got a problem. - Larry Wall
Shoot, take a course in Latin America's history and the idea that the government of the U.S. is partily corrupt will seem like a gross understatement.
The U.S. government's foreign policy is in no way dictated or influenced by the opinions or needs of American citizens (or any other world citizen, for that matter) or moral imperatives. U.S. foreign policy decisions are made entirely on the basis of economic interest, Cold War style paranoia, or both.
& a quick look at the financial profiles of Bush & a large number of Congress members makes it fairly obvious that U.S. politics has reached a state where lawmakers and U.S. government leaders don't really even need to be bribed by interest groups, they can bribe themselves. For example, Bush's oil-industry stock is going to skyrocket if the U.S. can take control of the Iraqi oil fields for a multitude of reasons. On the domestic side of things, that same oil-industry stock portfolio also discourages him from enacting good environmental policies such as a push for more fuel-efficient automobiles or programs to encourage the development of the United States's public transportation infrastructure.
Slashdot.org?
Oh wait... reliable
Radio Netherlands
Guardian
Messages to/for me ( in me journal )
I have actually heard a high placed member of the Bush administration threaten to attack 'un-authorized' satelite links.
Who? Assuming you're not making this up-- no offense intended; I'm just being honest-- I probably know him. So who was it? Feel free to email me privately if you would prefer not to reveal the name in this forum.
I write in my journal
http://www.alternet.org
Independant Media Center http://www.indymedia.org/ Indymedia is a collective of independent media organizations and hundreds of journalists offering grassroots, non-corporate coverage. Indymedia is a democratic media outlet for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of truth.
I'm not suggesting BBC coverage is terrible - it is very good in fact, just that any suggestions it is unbiased are exagerated.
Also, the BBC, especially on TV, has a nasty habit of wildly speculating about things. More than once I have seen them suggest that something is certainly going to happen, only for it to later not happen. Quire often the truth gets less coverage than the original incorrect speculation.
I think this is one of the nastier symptoms of "I WANT NEWS NOW!" syndrome. The media is so eager to report news the instant it happens (and public demand drives this) that by the time something has actually happened people are already moving on to speculating what will happen next.
There is an article about this in the the register. Seems an english war reporter was threatened of having her communication uplink targeted.
Heresay of the worst kind. A reporter says that she was told something that was obviously misunderstood, if it was ever said at all. Why obviously? Because that is the exact opposite of the Pentagon's oft-repeated policy.
Hell, controls on reporters are so lax right now that a journalist speaking on Liddy's radio show today revealed operational details of the unit in which he is-- or maybe was-- embedded. He said, live and over the air, where they were staging, what their target was, and what kind of resistance they expected to meet, leaving no detail out. Hardly the iron-fist approach that Ms. Adie claimed.
Probably what happened is this: a Pentagon official, speaking on background, told her about one of the weapons in our arsenal, a radiation-seeking missile called HARM. Fire one of those and it homes in on the strongest radio source it can find. We use those missiles primarily to take out radar facilities, but we can also use them to sever wireless communications links. She probably misunderstood and asked, "What if it's a journalist broadcasting on television?" To which the Pentagon official replied, "Well... they've been warned." Or something like that.
That's a much more likely scenario than the thought that there's a secret plan to kill unruly journos and only Ms. Adie knows about it. Occam's Razor, don't you know.
I write in my journal
The best probe is that in most issues the BBC is accussed of bias by all the different people holding different opinions about the same issue.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
These were useful during the Afghan invasion: Lebanon, Jordan, Arab News, Gulf News
ALL news will be censored since the pentegon have said unauthoriesd satellie broadcasts (including those from journalists) will be targets. Read this from Kate Adie. (Kate Adie is a BBC reporter who covered the last gulf war and is regared very highly in the UK)
If the US blocks all outside broardcasts we can only wait until after the war to see anything like the truth. Censorship sucks.
Anyone quoted by a reporter knows how little they understand
Don't believe what you read is the truth.
Calling Indymedia unbiased is the height of telling lies.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=4116
Start at number 1 and work your way down.
Kate Adie is probably one of the most experienced and well-respected war reporters in the world. She has an outstanding reputation, earned the hard way by telling it how it is, and not necessarily by telling it by how certain Western governments would have you believe.
She's covered just about every conflict - major and minor - of the last 20 years, and she didn't make it this long by being dumb, so when she says that unathorised transmissions are considered to be legitimate targets by the US forces, it's because she's been told so, and having been told so she double-checked with her sources to verify what she was reporting was accurate.
I find it far more plausible to believe that the Pentagon was trying to spin this story back their way than to believe that Adie misrepresented the facts - either intentionally or unintentionally.
Besides, I've heard the same story being reported by several other news sources and agencies. I find it hard to believe that they've all got it wrong.
Please, let's not make the truth any more a casualty of this war/invasion than it already is.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I suggest consulting several sources with a broad range of perspectives. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Guardian Unlimited's World News Guide is a good starting point. It contains pointers to international sources for news from every region of the world.
The worst source for information is the American electronic media. They are obsessed with breaking the newest little piece of news, ignoring normal journalist practices of verifying information before going live with it. They focus on areas and events where they have reporter who can transmit live, and give little time to anything else. I watched CNN for half an hour this morning, and not even once did they slow down long enough to provide a summary of what was happening. FOX, CBS, etc. are just as bad. ABC is a little better, but only when Peter Jennings the anchor.
"Unbiased media" is an oxymoron.
All media is biased, one way or another; the only difference is the direction of that bias. The most dangerous media outlets are the ones who claim to be unbiased, because they've lost sight of their bias in their arrogance.
So if you want a balanced view of the war, looking for a single source will do you no good, because no single source exists. Instead, get your news from multiple sources, always aware of each source's bias, and then think for yourself. The classic "CNN and the BBC" may not work well in this particular case, given that they're both located in nations with a direct hand in the attack. If you really want to walk on the wild side you could use Rush Limbaugh and Michael Moore, but many people can't stomach either of them, much less both.
Look around, and you'll find something. Just remember this rule: don't let anyone do your thinking for you.
If you can't get unbiased media, you can try to read all sides and make your own mind up. A key part of that is getting at the data the press are filtering for you.
http://www.centcom.mil/ is where the US military distribute their news, eg transcripts of press briefings, images of leaflets they've been dropping on Iraq, that kind of thing. Unfortunately they seem to be running it off a teeny weeny server so its always on the brink of falling over.
The BBC's John Simpson was going to be crossing the border into Iraq from the Kurdish side as soon as possible, and is not travelling with Army units (he says "the army - anybody's army - gets in the way of reporting"). His reports can be interesting if a little self-aggrandizing (if you heard his reports when he arrived in Kabul last year you'll know what I mean). Anyway, unlike most of the press, he won't just be reporting what he's been briefed by the military.
Warning...
Your sarcasm detector seems to be malfunctioning. Please return the unit to it's place of purchase and return it for a new one (if the current detector is still under warrenty) or (if it is no longer under warrenty) feel free to disassemble the detector yourself and look for any obvious problems.
Units over the age of 50 tend to suffer problems with their input devices. This does not necessarily indicate a problem with the sarcasm detector itself.
Also, certain units seem have problems with their spell checkers.
_Partially_ true. Nobody "threatened to attack" journalists, but they were warned that broadcasting from somewhere behind enemy lines can make you a target. This is only because of the new RADAR-seeking missiles that are being used to destroy Iraqi radar and communication installations...
A missile isn't smart enough to tell the difference between a high-power television transmission and a radar dish of the same power... RTFA people, this isn't censoring of the media, they're simply trying to keep the reporters from getting themselves killed.
Well, having served in the Army and having been in situations where one may be inclined to think "the military tries very hard to prevent soldiers from assembling any clear picture of the latest world news," I have to disagree.
The military does not have much of a problem with its soldiers forming their own opinions. I have been in quite a few facilities where CNN and other news feeds are piped in. Post exchange facilities, even those in theatre, have access to Newsweek and Time.
The reason why the military does not care is because it really does not need to. Discipline, integrity and professionalism are typically motivation enough for a soldier to serve in combat. Comradery is another. There are some who do serve because--well, because they're crazy. Those in the latter category consider it the ultimate X-sport, or just like the thought of killing. Regardless of the cause, the Army does not need to misinform its personnel because there are factors other than one's opinion of contemporary events that compels one to serve.
My point that you contend with is that when one is an eye witness, then the source of bias is oneself. To illustrate my point, seeing Auswitz first-hand did a lot to convince those present that they were fighting the Germans for all the right reasons. The fact that Saddam commits attrocities will be aparent most to those who witnessed first hand. The fact that Saddam has weapons he recently said he didn't will be aparent to those who have to react to them.
The only time in my years of service where I was out of touch was when I was in Basic Training--and that was because there's really too much going on to muck with TV. Oddly enouch, that was during the last Gulf War.
Besides, who's to say that those who don't support the war aren't being brainwashed? Afterall, my key point is all news is biased, and if one gets his opinions from what is gleaned from the media, then is that not brainwashing?
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
And Rush Limbaugh when I'm driving. MEGA DITTOS!!!
The Christian Science Monitor is an excellent new source.
They have won many awards, respected by the industry, and are very neutral. They do have points of view, but are expressed in op/ed type sections, not news stories.
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
I couldn't believe the details that the newscasters were pushing for this morning. Norman Schwarzkopf was asked how involved the Special Forces were in this campaign. He simply laughed and said "Even if I knew I probably wouldn't be able to discuss that."
I know the media wants to be there for every shot and get incredible footage of things blowing up. I'm sure we'd have cameras broadcasting footage from each bomb, plane, tank, and rifle if the media had their way. They would receive advance notice, so they could go in and set up cameras to get the best angles on the attack.
What the hell is wrong with the media? As early at 10:00 EST they were doing estimates on how much money the strike cost. At 9:45 they were speculating on what had been bombed and why.
I think the Daily Show last night had the best coverage - it was taped before the deadline and aired after. They cut to a segment where Steven said "If we have not bombed them, I disagree with this war with every fiber of my being, but if we have, then I have been behind this effort wholeheartedly the entire time."
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
I recommend looking to The Onion. It is, after all, America's Finest News Source.
In all seriousness, I shall probably be checking the BBC's web site regularly (News Ticker (Win32) | RSS), as well as buying a decent newspaper for greater depth and insight.
Of course, for those committed to both sides of the argument, I recommend visiting Al-Jazeera with the use of a Arabic-English translator. Apparently, Al-Jazeera will soon be launching an English language service (e.g. the end of March).
This thread hits close to home for me because I work in the newsroom of a major metropolitan newspaper, and a good friend of mine is in Kuwait right now on assignment.
After reading many of the comments in this thread, it's clear there is a lot of skepticism and mistrust toward how the US media will cover the war with Iraq, and I would heartily encourage this.
The biggest reason to take everything you hear with a grain of salt is because of how the US media is approaching this conflict. Essentially, the US press is beholden to the military in every way, shape and form in trying to cover this war.
Most of the information you will read in the newspaper or see on TV is from "imbedded journalists," who are reporters who have been officially credentialed and assigned to particular US military groups around Iraq. As you might expect, they have no freedom or initiative to actually go out and obtain first-hand observations. They are spoon fed information from official government press conferences. Although one argument to justify this situation could be is that it's to protect the journalists, in reality it's one big spin-control session.
It's hard to fault the journalists parroting our government's propaganda right now. They are strongly influenced by their environment and the pressure to produce some sort of story, whether or not it is fair, accurate and responsible. Personally, I doubt we will vitness any true "front-line" journalism for quite a while, but I know there are reporters wandering in the war zone who will publish pieces free of the yoke of our government's influence. These stories (and photos) will appear in newspapers -- not on TV where there pressure for "up to the minute" news is too great. Just be patient.
In a past life I was one of the guys who tested these puppies (Shrikes, HARMS, Cruise Missles, Mavericks, Smart Bomb guidance systems, etc.) at China Lake NWC. For Shrikes and HARMS we would setup dozens of "threat" simulators, each with slightly different modulation (CW, PRF, PW, jitter, spread codes, etc.) to simulate particular makes and models of radar, and each at different location to simulate real life deployment. You don't want to be near any source that is on a target signal profile list. One of my other duties included measuring the distance between the boresite and the missle's impact crater after a test. Often enough my simulators were damaged or destroyed by inert warheads alone :-). Let's just say the 100-hour 1st Gulf War wasn't much of a surprise - China Lake has geography a lot like Kuwait and Iraq.
It's certainly possible to discriminate targets well enough to avoid targetting TV satellite uplinks. It's even possible that journalist's military-supplied uplinks are provided with known spread code signals that are put on an avoid list. A warning and insistence on "equipment registration" may be CYA - unless they know the equipment's signature, there's still a small chance of a "mishap". However, unless they choose to target TV stations it would still probably be pretty safe (How many TV broadcasters does Iraq really have? Ah, maybe one? Compared to simply being shot by accident?) The spectral signatures of analog or digital TV are pretty different from radar (even spread spectrum radar).
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Despite my experience with this stuff, I'm still against this war and the facile justifications pathetically provided for it. If you don't see a patriot described above, you need to get your head examined!
This war is about extension of the Monroe Doctrine to the entire world and Manifest Destiny as a world hyperpower. It's spelled out on the PNAC web site. Note the founders include Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and other major hawks in the Bush Adminstration. Also note that the entire obsession with regime change and axis of evil predates 9-11 back to when Clinton was approached by PNAC with essentially the same Iraq/Axis of Evil plan. Clinton rejected it. Bush has embraced it. Linkage between Al Qaida and Iraq? Machiavelian fiction, nothing more. Weapons of Mass Destruction (worked on those too ;-| )? Doesn't add up in the context of post-War Iraqi infrastructure and economics, and especially not with forged documentery evidence provided by the US and UK intelligence agencies.
Creating a hegemon might not even seem so bad if you happen to be an American, but this type of foreign policy is certain to be mirrored in domestic policy: the beginning is Patriot I, Patriot II, TIA, CAPP and other recent laws and proposals.
For those who have read Linked, consider what a Bose-Einstein condensation of a geopolitical social network is in comparison to what it is for an economic social network. Consider that one of the desires of PNAC is to assure that the relationship between the US and each other country shall be stronger than the relationships between any pair of countries. What social network topology is that? Can you say: "All Roads Lead to Washington".
There are many active and reserve duty officers with similar concerns. I recently gave a speech about this subject where an officer I know, who is now serving in the Middle East, was in attendence. I was concerned about his reaction - these are scary ideas most people would prefer to ignore - but he approached me after the speech and was my stron
So to summarize. Nobody in the civilized world can possibly grasp what it is like to be there. So if you want to know what is happening and save an hour or five, read an AP or Reuters report. If you're a soccer mom in touch with your feelings, tune into the cable news channels to see the field reporters trying to move up the leaderboard for a gig as host of yet another talking heads show by telling you how they're braving the relentless shelling (some fifty miles off in the distance).
Above all else, keep the troops on both sides in your thoughts and pray for a quick, mostly bloodless resolution.