Text 12830, 109 rader
Skriven 2008-03-14 14:07:58 av Jeff Bowman (1:229/500)
  Kommentar till text 12746 av Björn Forsström (2:203/614.61)
Ärende: Re: Bush Vetoes Waterboarding Bill
==========================================
 
BF> Back home in Sweden I have what I need on sattelite and here in Thailand
BF> they have Fox, BBC, CNN, RAI (Italian), a French, DW (German), a Dutch
BF> and Al Jazira + many that I don't have a clue about if they are Thai,
BF> Chinese, Cambodian or Korean.
 
I don't have satellite, just cable.  We get our typical local news from a
couple different sources (it's not a big city), then we have NBC, ABC, and CBS
for evening news.  For actual network news, there's Fox News, CNN, CNN Headline
News, MSNBC, and CNBC.
 
Of all of those, I usually just watch some local news, then NBC news in the
evenings, and CNN randomly for what's going on at the moment.  If something big
is going on, I'll usually flip among all the big networks. My parents tend to
watch CNN Headline News a lot since they repeat top stories over and over, as
well as airing a local news/weather segment (not done by CNN, but by our local
news people fit into the particular time slot with the network, probably
inserted at the cable company level), in order for people to catch up with
what's going on no matter when they turn it on.
 
Then of course I read a lot of internet news and video, which fills in a lot of
gaps.
 
 
BF> Of those I preffer Fox because they are easy to understand compared to
BF> BBC and CNN send weather every 15 min for 5 and that's *very* annoying.
 
That actually sounds a bit like the CNN Headline News channel that I mentioned
rather than plain CNN.  If a local news/weather segment isn't inserted, one
would normally see like a nation-wide forecase segment.  But without seeing
what you get, I couldn't say for sure which it is.
 
 
BF> If I read in Swedish papers (online) that something have happend I
BF> immediatly change to BBC because they are so much better on news than
BF> Fox but which  isn't that except from Al Jazira.
 
I would probably watch BBC more if we got it on cable, just to hear things from
the European perspective. I'd get it if we had digital cable, but that costs a
little more. Same with satellite. 
 
As for Al-Jazira, I simply don't trust them.  I feel like they've shown bias
towards muslims in their arab-based network.  Particularly in showing videos of
hostages and such, which is against policies in most places.  They basically
give terrorists an outlet to make their demands by doing that sort of thing. 
And part of me thinks they do it because some in the organization are
sympathetic to them.
 
Whenever such a video makes its way here, many times a network will outright
say that they're not going to show the actual video during their report, and I
approve of that to a large extent.  No human in such a situation should be
exploited for ratings or to express terrorist demands.
 
There's an Al-Jazira English too, but their original network left a bad taste
in my mouth, so I'm not interested.  We don't get any of their stuff on normal
cable anyway.
 
 
BF> Don't think any govt. have anything to say about what's on the sattelites
BF> so Rupert can spread his propaganda just as he can afford but after a
BF> while one learns to have a bag of salt beside the TV.
 
I didn't think about you watching it via satellite when I said that.  I thought
you meant the cable television carried it.  Maybe they still do in some other
countries, I have no idea.
 
 
BF> Luckily for us, ouside of the U.S. we have alternatives and back home I
BF> *never* watch Fox. Our news are totally un-biased and news are reported
BF> as news without any political angles and those who tries to do that is
BF> very fast removed.
 
Problem with news is that they don't expect you to think it's biased. That's
how Fox News gets away with it.  I never used to think American news could be
that way. Now I find that almost any news is biased to some degree. It's just a
matter of how much.  From Fox, to CNN, even to BBC.  It can be anything from
outright falsehoods and twistings of the truth, down to carefully wording
things a particular way to change the impression a report gives off. It might
even be an honest case of a reporter applying their own personal bias without
realizing it.  Other times it's "adjusted" to better suit whoever the majority
audience is.  Regardless, I tend to be a little more observant these days.
 
I live in the south, for example, where people tend to be more conservative.
And while the local news station I watch is pretty good about being straight
with people, and I think most of the news anchors seem like decent people,
sometimes I've noticed little things here and there that I thought might show a
bit of influence in one direction or another regarding a topic.  Our newspaper
is another story.  I've noticed a lot of bias towards the conservative and
religous in there.  I don't even read it most of the time.
 
I once had a disagreement with someone from an asian country, I can't remember
which one it was now after all these years, but they kept saying American news
was all propaganda and fake, and that their news was all free and true. Yet
when I read about their country, I found out that it was quite the opposite. 
All their news networks were government controlled, and reporters had been
fired and arrested for reporting things the government didn't approve of.  This
person simply didn't want to accept any possible notion of bias in their
country, or the possible lack of bias in some of America's.  The very fact that
their government controlled all the news agencies should have been an
indication of funny business, but they just wouldn't listen.
 
Don't get me wrong, I'm not outright saying your news is biased of course,
considering I've never seen it.  But my advice to anyone nowadays is to never
take anything at face value.  We have these great brains of ours, we should use
them to find truth ourselves from numerous sources instead of just one, and to
always keep an open mind.

--- D'Bridge 2.99
 * Origin: FyBBS (1:229/500)