CNN.com – Breaking EDITORIALS… June 5, 2010
Posted by gulfshorewriter in Uncategorized.trackback
For a very long time now, my home page has been cnn.com. I can no longer in good conscience keep it that way. These days you will be hard pressed to find any substantial piece on the site as much filled with news as opinion. I can’t figure out if it’s policy, lack of editing or pure and simple bias but you don’t get the straight reporting of facts from cnn any more. In fact, it’s hard to get it anywhere.
If I may remind you, in the finest of journalistic traditions, the news reported only the facts and generally confirmed by more than one source even then. Anything which was an opinion of the journal reporting, by any writer or editor, was clearly to be marked as editorial. If marked so, any opinion could be expressed that you could get past your editor. This line was not to be crossed. It was the way a reader could be sure to distinguish fact from opinion. Not only has that line repeatedly been crossed but done so subtlety that you must be looking hard for it to catch it.
Over the coming month, I’ll be pointing out some cnn transgressions as examples. You can find them most anywhere these days. In fact, if you know of an online news source where this isn’t the case, please comment here so I can check it out.
If you want an early example of this sort of behavior from cnn, simply read the reports of Israel maintaining their naval blockade. You’d think that Hamas and associated parties have become the saviors of the Middle East. You see, Israel is tired of receiving airborne rockets from Gaza so they want to keep weapons out of there which had been arriving by ship. If you want to send stuff to Gaza, you may but not directly without it being inspected at a designated port.
Now if this is truly humanitarian, why do the people on the ship care whether it goes in directly or through a port where it can be inspected? Is the cargo not what they say? Was the whole thing done for publicity? Have they only set up a scenario which with outstanding PR and help from the “news” media is yet another way to bash Israel? The early reports on the attempt to break the blockade today indicate that the ship will not allow the humanitarian materials bound for Gaza to be delivered if they can’t do it through the blockade. Israel told the world what would happen to ships trying to run the blockade. Did anyone have any doubt that they’d back it up? Am I missing something here?
Why isn’t cnn asking these questions of the people on the boats? Is it just not PC these days to question the purpose of activists or anyone claiming to be what they are not? It’s hard to listen to your rhetoric when your actions don’t match what you’re doing. If I missed it, please let me know. We need some facts, cnn, not emotion and posturing, especially when it appears to be biased.
By the way, I’m not Israeli or Jewish. Have the readers stopped thinking these days and just accept everything told them by an online “authority?” Are we afraid of reporting on certain groups now? If that happens, the press as we knew it is dead. The Israelis are not perfect but they do have the balls to back up what they say and I give them credit for that.
There doesn’t seen to be a doubt that the 24/7 news era has led to a situation where news organizations, having only a limited number of facts and a seemingly endless demand for information, must fill in the gaps with opinion and debate. Somewhere in the last few years this led to the polarization of the media and that same media losing its journalistic integrity on the whole. You can blame the media of course, but you can also blame the consumers who would rather be told what facts mean rather than learn the ins and outs of every situation for themselves. The media is just providing what sells. (Yay capitalism.)
But to the Gaza situation specifically as you’ve addressed it here, I feel that there are certain questions you yourself have failed to ask. For example, why does the Hamas feel the need to fire rockets into Israel? Is it because Israel has marginalized the Palestinian peoples and pushed its own building projects further and further into lands which have been Palestinian for years? The oppression of the Palestinians by the Israelis has been well documented for decades. Through all of it the most powerful nation in the world has both implicitly and explicitly supported these acts. While I’m not choosing sides per se, I do tend to empathize more with the oppressed than I do with those who have a ready supply of tanks and guns and top tier military training (all paid for by the US, mind you) using those tools to further their efforts to further enforce their will on an already displaced people.
That being said I don’t doubt that the aid flotilla was used as a PR move. If the flotilla got through its a win because basic necessities get through to a needing population. If not, the arguments made for the illegality of the blockade gain some international visibility. But if that’s the case I think it would be fair to say that Israeli boarding was also a PR move. It was to show that any attempts to break the blockade would be met with force. Those weren’t coat-and-tie government officials looking to peacefully inspect the cargo who boarded the boat, they were armed commandos.
And if Israels actions are as innocent as they (and you) claim, why not submit to an international review? Why block access to witnesses? Why not release their own tapes of the incident? There’s a lot we still don’t know about what has happened but Israel’s handling of the situation leaves a lot to be desired. It appears to me that hiding behind America’s skirt while they lash out at their neighbors has become national policy. Israel, like the 24/7 news outlets, must learn to use fair-handed balance and facts as its currency and not spin and ideology.
Thanks very much for the comment. I hope we can get some good discussion going and get some facts uncovered that the news services can’t seem to do. Let’s all keep it about the subject and ideas and not make it personal.
I think it’s fine that the news organizations are filling gaps with opinion and debate; the problem is that they aren’t always distinguishing between fact and opinion. Editorialize all you want as long as it’s clear that’s your opinion and not engraved into a stone tablet somewhere. Another way of viewing this is that when you run out of news, maybe you need to just be quiet instead of blah…
Not blaming the media for the loss of their journalistic integrity because consumers want it is like saying it’s okay for crack dealers to crank it out because their buyers are really wanting it. Integrity is what you do when no one’s looking and for its own sake usually not shaped by forces blowing in the wind. I have nothing but the highest regard for capitalism but remember that our media is by design a protected class and lately they’re not living up to it.
As to the Gaza situation, there are countless questions I’m not asking. Feel free to ask them.
I see no point in asking why someone is firing rockets at me before I get to the point where I can stop them from doing it.
I would be interested in seeing some support and/or clarification of the decades of oppression by the Israelis that was mentioned. Too many statements are thrown out these days and people assume they are true because they’re in writing and/or on line. Please educate us with facts and not something “everybody knows,” because we don’t.
If the Israelis were not armed as they are, the country would not still be in existence. Their much larger neighbors have said over and over that they intend to wipe the country out. Wouldn’t anyone want a tank or two?
If anyone didn’t think the Israelis would use force for their blockade, they don’t know much about the Israelis now do they? If you want to see how those blockade things work, look back at some of our dealings with that little island just south of Miami when they had missiles pointed this way that the Russians were providing. They weren’t even firing the missiles yet. This isn’t the first naval blockade.
You lost me on the thinking about the Israelis boarding being a PR move. They had stated repeatedly that ships attempting to break the blockade would be boarded. They did what they said. Yes, they were armed commandos which is a good thing if people are violently attacking you. I wasn’t there so I couldn’t see who threw the first blow or pipe or whatever.
I don’t think anyone was perfectly innocent here, or intelligent for that matter. Submit to an international review? Right. They’d get a fair shake there. Just read all the press. Already tried there and convicted. I agree with you that Israel’s handling of the situation leaves a lot to be desired. I don’t think that hiding behind America’s skirts has any truth any more. America doesn’t seem to have the cojones to be a leader in that region any more. We are less of a friend to our allies and seeking to appease our enemies. What price peace?
It’s clear you have more of a pro-Israel bias than you do an interest in an even handed treatment of a highly volatile situation. I could link article after article found on the internet or books or documentaries that show Israeli exploitation of Palestinians and it really wouldn’t serve a purpose; partly because you’ve already chosen your side quite concretely and partly because there is just as much material to the contrary (however dubious.)
I look at it this way: Israeli do deserve to live in peace, but so do the Palestinians. Since the later years of the 19th century, through the declaration of Israeli independence, through the Israeli building projects carried out even today in the Gaza Strip and other areas belonging to the Palestinians, the Palestinians have seen their country taken away from them more and more with each passing decade. And Jewish entitlement/Zionism has done nothing but aggravate the situation. And the blockade? Have you seen the items which aren’t allowed through the blockade? To illustrate, Israel just eased the blockade to allow soda, juice, jam, spices, shaving cream, potato chips, cookies and candy in! What is the sense in blocking these things in the first place?!
Imagine if Native Americans suddenly decided that they wanted your neighborhood back because it was their homeland? Or, since you’re on the gulf coast, more realistically, the French or the Spanish? (Since I don’t know exactly where you are.) If you were displaced out of the home you’d known your entire life, marginalized and treated as the “other”, as less than human, I don’t think you’d have a difficult time understanding the plight the Palestinians face.
Thanks again for the comments, Robert. Some of them are sounding a bit emotive with your knowledge of my intent and interest more clear to you than to me. You “could” give references and sources to back up what you’re saying but you
don’t. You seem to have predetermined it won’t change anyone’s thinking and that is according to you. How can you say that someone else has chosen their side when there is nothing except vague, general arguments that are so general they may only be refuted by saying, “no, you’re wrong?” How good is the
dubious material you mention but don’t identify? Help us out here.
I believe most people would like to live in peace but again, at what price? I can still remember the shock to my sociology class when our professor proclaimed that when we had slavery, it was one of the most socially stable times ever. When you thought about it, he was likely right, but at what price? Who in their right mind would trade that for stability or peace?
When money, land and power are involved, governments go to war. The Europeans came here and virtually wiped out the American Indians and took whatever they wanted. Quite an example to set. And it’s not like we were the only ones.
If this struggle now were only a war, it would be much simpler. It has gotten to the point that any move at all is political on a global scale.For the record, I am leaning with the Israelis on this one. I don’t think I’d call it bias. Most days it feels like me versus all the “news” reporting agencies so I don’t believe uneven handed treatment necessarily needs to be falling on my shoulders. I think using the naval blockade to prevent weapons entering Gaza is better than bombing civilians in Gaza. Avoiding wiping out Hamas, not so much.
So feel sorry for the Palestinians who aren’t trying to kill all Israelis and send them aid but do it through the Israeli port where they can be inspected for weapons and then forwarded. The last shipment, however, that was delivered to Gaza was not allowed in by Hamas, according to CNN. Very humanitarian. It’s
not about getting stuff in. It’s about the politics and if Hamas can’t win, they don’t want to play.
I’d love to continue the discussion but for us to get anywhere, and, yes, my mind can be changed, you have to let us know how you know what you know.
Let’s do remember that the original topic was about news and editorial reporting, right?
It just occurred to me to clarify that in saying all this I do not in any way support Hamas. Hamas is clearly a terrorist organization with an agenda entirely separate from that of the Palestinians. The actions of Hamas cannot be and should not be viewed alongside those of the Palestinian leadership or populace.
I’m glad to hear it. I won’t ask for backup on your Hamas view. I will say that if you’re talking about Gaza in this day and time, I don’t see how you can split the populace, the Palestinian leadership and Hamas. The former two allowed and welcomed the latter. Hamas was going to be their savior.