15th April 2003, 7:22 AM
I don't get the whole anti-war vibe from CNN. It seems pretty straight forward. Perhaps skeptical, but never anti-war. Do you have a quote of some kind?
It's interesting that you got that message out of the Doonesbury cartoon, because I got a completely different message. I got the sense that the cartoonist was saying that while CNN and others were reporting something closer to the truth (no matter how brutal and gritty it might be), Fox News is practically a 24-hour pep-rally for the United States. But no matter how much Fox News uses selective amnesia, the United States public doesn't care. We like to hear that we're "winning." We like to hear that everyone agrees with us, and that whoever doesn't agree with us is a rotten no-good scumbag. We like to hear that we're stopping the bad guys. We like to hear that we're the saviors. It's comforting. It's also biased. But so is Al-Jazeera. The war is certainly more than civilian casualties and an invading force. It is more than a power struggle between the Western civilizations and the Arab World. It is certainly more than oil. Somewhere in between these points is a proper balance of the American and Arab points of view. But you won't find it on American or Arab television. The American public has a bias that understandably favors itself, and would reject a channel that expressed the Arab point of view without skepticism. In the EXACT SAME WAY, the Arab public has a bias that understandably favors itself, and would reject a channel that expressed the American point of view without skepticism.
We are more like Arabs than we think. We too have wackos that do terrible things (Oklahoma bombing). The only difference is that their wackos are told that their suffering is the United States' fault. We don't have any clear scapegoat (but we do have a history of making scapegoats). We too have general bias toward our own nation. We too have religious zealots. We too have racism/ethnicism.
But that is not the whole story. We too have moderates that believe that the opposite side is not skewed so much that it has stopped listening. We too have families. We too have faith in God.
What is "biased in the right direction?" I know it was accompanied by a smiley, but your writing before that kind of backs up that you actually believe that. Doesn't "the right direction" completely depend upon your point of view?
For Arabs that wish the United States would stay out of Arab business, isn't the information given out by Al-Jazeera, "biased in the right direction?" You may respond with, "Well, those Arabs are dillusional." But to them, you are dillusional. And they are just as educated as you are (if not more so).
It may seem odd, but for many years Al-Jazeera was considered too left-wing, too willing to show the "other side's" perspective. People that are just like Weltall, but happen to be born in the Arab world, think the following about American television (to quote Weltall's Arab equivalent): "That station represents a people who are...already indoctrinated with a dislike for everything to do with us."
I think that everyone's just trying their best.
And if we were in their shoes, we would probably be thinking what they're thinking, and they would probably be thinking what we're thinking.
It's interesting that you got that message out of the Doonesbury cartoon, because I got a completely different message. I got the sense that the cartoonist was saying that while CNN and others were reporting something closer to the truth (no matter how brutal and gritty it might be), Fox News is practically a 24-hour pep-rally for the United States. But no matter how much Fox News uses selective amnesia, the United States public doesn't care. We like to hear that we're "winning." We like to hear that everyone agrees with us, and that whoever doesn't agree with us is a rotten no-good scumbag. We like to hear that we're stopping the bad guys. We like to hear that we're the saviors. It's comforting. It's also biased. But so is Al-Jazeera. The war is certainly more than civilian casualties and an invading force. It is more than a power struggle between the Western civilizations and the Arab World. It is certainly more than oil. Somewhere in between these points is a proper balance of the American and Arab points of view. But you won't find it on American or Arab television. The American public has a bias that understandably favors itself, and would reject a channel that expressed the Arab point of view without skepticism. In the EXACT SAME WAY, the Arab public has a bias that understandably favors itself, and would reject a channel that expressed the American point of view without skepticism.
We are more like Arabs than we think. We too have wackos that do terrible things (Oklahoma bombing). The only difference is that their wackos are told that their suffering is the United States' fault. We don't have any clear scapegoat (but we do have a history of making scapegoats). We too have general bias toward our own nation. We too have religious zealots. We too have racism/ethnicism.
But that is not the whole story. We too have moderates that believe that the opposite side is not skewed so much that it has stopped listening. We too have families. We too have faith in God.
What is "biased in the right direction?" I know it was accompanied by a smiley, but your writing before that kind of backs up that you actually believe that. Doesn't "the right direction" completely depend upon your point of view?
For Arabs that wish the United States would stay out of Arab business, isn't the information given out by Al-Jazeera, "biased in the right direction?" You may respond with, "Well, those Arabs are dillusional." But to them, you are dillusional. And they are just as educated as you are (if not more so).
It may seem odd, but for many years Al-Jazeera was considered too left-wing, too willing to show the "other side's" perspective. People that are just like Weltall, but happen to be born in the Arab world, think the following about American television (to quote Weltall's Arab equivalent): "That station represents a people who are...already indoctrinated with a dislike for everything to do with us."
I think that everyone's just trying their best.
And if we were in their shoes, we would probably be thinking what they're thinking, and they would probably be thinking what we're thinking.