Trust News Reporters?

sondance

Member
Here is a post I made on a news blog in the US. I am interested in how Europeans see this issue of credibilty by news reporters.
Do they use polls there to tell you how you think?
Ken
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Is it just me or have "news" articles become more rife with editorial statements which have no connection with the facts presented in the specific article and which are obviously intended to persuade me to "adopt a view". The latest being that we are failing in Iraq, the world hates us for being there and that we believe we should pull out.

Wouldn't it be nice if faith were this easy - let me tell you what you believe. None of that messy responsibility to think things through required.

Here is an example of what I see. On Dec. 1 this story appeared in the headliner section of the AP articles found on worldmag.com (and I suspect any other site using AP reporting). "Two U.S. allies leaving Iraq, more may go", By WILLIAM J. KOLE Associated Press Writer. It contained the following paragraph:

"In the months after the March 2003 invasion, the multinational force numbered about 300,000 soldiers from 38 countries. That figure is now just under 24,000 mostly non-combat personnel from 27 countries. The coalition has steadily unraveled as the death toll rises and angry publics clamor for troops to leave."

This cannot possibly be an ethical representation of the facts.
1. It compares 300,000 soldiers of unstated purpose against 24,000 "mostly" non-combat personnel. Does that mean that the 300,000 does not include American soldiers? Who knows? But I think it does, in which case it has compared completely different numbers.

2.The coalition has decreased due to A) countries that elected to remove troops because they objected to (... what exactly, other than Spain suffering terrible bombing on their own turf?) and B) countries whose commitment had come to its originally given end, apparently like Bulgaria. How does that constitute a "steady unraveling"?

Well the story does not end there. Friday, another article appeared in the headlines by the same writer, "Dec 2, 7:44 AM EST U.S.-Led Iraq Coalition Steadily Eroding", By WILLIAM J. KOLE Associated Press Writer

"In the months after the March 2003 invasion, the multinational force numbered about 300,000 soldiers from 38 countries - 250,000 from the U.S. and 50,000 from other countries. The coalition has steadily unraveled as the death toll rises and angry publics clamor for troops to leave.
Now the nearly 160,000-member U.S. force in Iraq is supported by just under 24,000 mostly non-combat personnel from 27 countries. Britain has the second-largest contingent with 8,000 in Iraq and 2,000 elsewhere in the Gulf region."

You can see he corrects the misrepresentation found in the earlier article, mostly. It is still important to him to tell us that most of the remaining non-US forces are non-combat personnel. Still for this to support his spin it should mean that a majority of non-combat personnel is unusual. Actually it is quite normal that most personnel are "non-combat personnel" who take of transportation, equipment and supplies, etc. (except for the US Marines and Special Forces).

His spin is that "the coalition is steadily unraveling". He uses the opportunity provided by the Bulgarian and Ukrainian pullouts to trump this claim. The phrase was in his first article and he used it as the title for his second. The reporter is on a campaign. I read elsewhere that the Bulgarians are pulling out because they have reached the end of their year long commitment. That is not the same as becoming scared and running for your life. It is not the same as deciding Iraq is a failure or that President Bush is a megalomaniac which is what the media constantly tells us.

My last point in this little tirade is how these spins then become our reality. First they tell us what we believe with out providing any evidence, because they do not have any. Then the polls reflect what they have told us because we do not know the difference between what we believe and what they tell us we believe. Then they cite the polls as evidence that their spin is real. So in the media our reality is pre-determined by their bias and completely fabricated.
 

Priest

Commodore of Impending Doom II
interesting..
I have never really trusted much in US media.. generally too colored. A little while ago, Human Rights Watch launched a report of torture incidents, that roused quite a lot of focus in european views, but most US papers didn't gave it any larger notice..

Politics and media is always way to entangled in each other.. most news papers and television show, supports a certain political agenda, that is most suiting for themself. I never give much for taking ones point of view from one source alone. Always crossreference when you read something.. media is often not a source of knowledge but a tool to show you what someone finds you intended in believing.. wether is good or bad.
 

sondance

Member
Thanks Michel. You've never been shy about letting us know what you think of American political/culture issues. I'd put you just one notch below the BBC on the "Damn Yankees" scale (I think they are still sore over losing the Revolution).
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My question is, do you find a similar attempt on the part of Danish journalism to inform you what it is you think? Or do they treat their countrymen with a little more respect?
Ken
 

Priest

Commodore of Impending Doom II
I'd say that there is an advantage with danish media..
Denmark is a little country where the agendas of the state never reach some larger scales.. we only have 5 million inhabitants in our country.. so there is not really any needs to rally us in a general way.. and we are on the top10 list of having the most independent media.

But still.. all newspapers in our country do as well support some part of the political scale, so I still don't take it for granted just because something is written in one paper..

I prefer to form my own opinion.. if I go sample my opinion from some leftwing papers.. then my opinion would only be leftwing or vice versa.


There are always sources where you to start with can question their liability.. tabloid magazines or papers owned by some larger coorporation that is entangled in other political issues. For an example.. Fox news(pretty dire example).. don't expect them to form an agenda that is matching democrat view points.
 

Thomas Dressler

New member
Well, for another, but somewhat different American viewpoint on this, I'd make a couple observations. One is that politics for Americans can be an issue that is highly charged with emotion. If we read a viewpoint we agree with, then we feel it's good journalism. If it's the opposing viewpoint, then we get fired up about its faulty journalism. Add to this the fact that a lot of journalism is most likely influenced by politics, and you get a situation where it really is confusing to form an opinion because 1. even if we were presented with completely unbiased facts, and they disagree with our own viewpoint, we might try to explain them away as wrong instead of learning from them, and 2. it's likely journalism is used in some cases in the coercive way you described.

Interestingly, I'd also observe that there are people who felt the opposite--that the American press was too lenient on Bush for a long time and it's becoming more balanced as of late.

Because the opinions in our country are so polarized right now, there is a tendency to mistrust anything coming from the opposing viewpoint. I agree that one needs to look in more than one place and exercise critical thinking to try to ferret out the truth.
 

giovannimusica

Commodore de Cavaille-Coll
A dear friend of mine once said: "I can only trust reporters as far as I can throw them."

She has a Rottweiler that flies into a foaming-at-the-mouth, howling rage everytime it sees and hears lawyers and reporters on TV - smart pooch I'd say
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Gareth

Commodore of Water Music
Ok my opinion, news reporters twist the truth because:
1.It makes them look good.
2.They can get more of everything from lying, just like anything.
3.To make you think differently.
4......(add on to my list).

That dear friend of yours obviously taught her dog well!!! Well, like owner like dog in this case????
 

giovannimusica

Commodore de Cavaille-Coll
Well actually Gareth,

The dog has a natural aversion to those who dissemble and lie - politicians are also objects of the dog's scorn...

I guess the dog has a built-in BS meter.
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All the Best,

Giovanni
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Gareth

Commodore of Water Music
Sounds like it. My friends mom, is a newspaper reporter, she does a lot of them, so yeah, to try and make it sound more dramatic than the situation really is :p
 

Underscore

New member
To be honest I don't 100% trust any form of media. But obviosly you need get your information from somewhere. I just take everything with a pinch of salt.

reading the newspapers and watching the news here in UK you can tell they over emphasise on certain points. But I guess thats just the media for you.
 
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