Aljazeera not only dislikes the Mehlis report, it’s also demonizing the Lebanese position.
Aljazeera’s website usually has six or eight major stories on its first page. These stories have pictures next to them and they’re the ones most read on the entire website.
So when Aljazeera decides to spend this precious real estate to showcase an opinion piece skeptical of the Mehlis report, a news bit about the impending security council action against Syria (with a picture of John Bolton), and a news bit about the debt relief Lebanon is expecting (a piece that has somehow slipped out of the inner folds of the business section of the website), all side-by-side, one can definitely conclude that Aljazeera has an agenda.
And it’s not one for our best Lebanese interests as far as I’m concerned
Hello, my name is Mustapha and I've been blogging about Lebanese society, business and politics since February 2005.
News is news. As long as they don’t distort the truth, what’s the problem?
they placed an opinion piece, that is not news, and how you frame the news is just as important as the underlying facts. Mustapha is right to note this
They have doctored the poll they made about Mehllis’s report, For every one vote saying yes, they automaticallyu casted three votes saying no.. I tried it… and many others did..
SOmeone looked at the source code and confirmed it too
no i don’t agree with you Mustapha. are you really starting to get threatenned by freedom of speech? this is what syrians do, not us. and if you watch aljazeera regularly, you’d clearly notice that they have the best anchor in their station placed in beirut, and you can’t call his coverage anything less than professional and objective. freedom of speech, freedom of speech!
Khaled– can u confirm what u just said about the poll being manipulated? If what you claim is true, please post something very detailed here or on your blog, even if it’s loaded with technical jargon.
Al-Jazeera is far from being a professional news station. They are no better than Fox news when reporting or commenting about events. This is what their anchor asked an Iraqi official following the Palestine hotel bombing that killed 17 people:
“could it be that the hotel was targeted because the US army was in the vicinity?”
This is professional and objective journalism? Their reporters can’t tell a question from a statement. Almost all their questions are leading questions.
Khaled –
If you have the source code, you should post it. But saying that you tried it and others isn’t proof.
If what you say is true, then mathematically it can be shown that the MAXIMUM the yes count would be is 25 % – and this is assymptotically speaking of course (i.e., the reality would be even less than 25), which is nothing like what happened.
With regards to the actual results, they didn’t seem too out of whack – around 40 with and 60 against. Remember, this poll is taken by the entire world (and mainly the arab one), and not just by Lebanese.
Kais -
So true. It’s such a pain going from one newspaper to the other trying to weed out the different news stories just to try and form a relatively unbiased opinion.
But I still don’t think the articles and the opinion piece M pointed to show that Aljazeera has an “agenda” against Lebanese interests. In that case, maybe we should just read annahar and mustaqbal.
What did you expect from al Jazeera? It only wants to please its bigot public.
I agree with Kais, al Jazeera is best compared to Fox News.
There is no doubt that the majority of the Arab public willfully avoids any proof that goes against their theory of Imperial aggression by the West and Israel.
They can see the Israeli occupation of Palestine, yet they did not see the Syrian occupation of Lebanon. They can see CIA assassination of Arab leaders, but without a photo of Assad driving the car bomb they do not see the Syrian assassination of Harriri.
The Arab Al Jazeera audience could care less about the suffering of Iraqis as long as they repel the US army and preserve Arab honor.
They are the Fox News and Republicans of the Arab world. And they are a majority.
So next time someone speaks about the importance of Arabism in Lebanon, you should ask “and what does Lebanon get in return??”
It is very intersting to compare the same poll on el jazeera and elaph http://www.elaph.com/.
Are you convinced with Mehlis report ?
—– Elaph eljazeera
yes– 59.7% 42.1%
no— 35.2% 57.9%
Anon 6:50 –
More information is sometimes pertinent. Note that Elaph only has 7709 people who voted.
Al jazeera has more than 50k.
If you scroll down slightly to M’s previous post on this poll – when aljazeera had 7000 people vote, the results WERE similar to those of elaph.
Just because they changed does not imply anything.
This poll is being accused simply because as lebanese, you don’t find this logical. But given the reasonable assumption that a large percentage of people didn’t read the report – who will they believe? Arab politicians who say the report is unfair? Or Western ones? Context is everything.
Lazarus, as you said there are no unbiased media sources except for newswires perhaps.
Now I’m no media expert, but for as long as I can remember Al-Jazeera has always endeavoured to emphasize arab-arab conflicts as it knows this will draw in the greatest amount of viewers (usually angry ones). Siding with arabs VS the west is boring and the west VS the arabs is deadly.
Right after Feb 14th they were very pro-Lebanese/anti-Syrian because we were the underdogs.
And now with the UN security council in session, Syria is the underdog.
They play for ratings and controversy.
Do they really influence public opinion?
Are they any worse than the hatred being propagated on Syrian media against us?
Some quick remarks:
-Polls about a specific country, should be held by the people of that country. Aljazeera audience is the arab people not the Lebanese only, therefore, this poll is useless. If the subject was about having a united Arab currency for example, then such poll would have some meaning.
-Aljazeera lost its credibility during the shameful Irak war where Saddam was loosing big time and they were reporting Victories.
-Any network twists the news to make them closer to the views that it preaches. Many techniques can be used: not saying the complete truth or not repeatign the news as many times or during peak hours where a bigger audience is captured.
- freedom of speech dictates that newsmedia like Aljazeera operates but does not dictate false news. The audience eventually will decide. That is why Fox news is not taken seriously
Here are the headlines on Jazeera.com:
“War on terror” or war on Islam?
Prosecuting Bush
Who’s behind “terror” in Iraq?
Imposing “Imperial Democracy”
Syria: War clock ticking down
They also have on article on how the Iraqian elections were faked, despite the fact that the UN and various international organizations confirmed the results.
Actually, Fox is better then Jazeera. I just found an article that says that :
” since the surge in violence in the past few months; that occupation forces carry out covert “terror” attacks so as to maintain chaos and keep the reason of occupation vivid.”
It’s very possible since the US and the jews staged 9-11.http://www.aljazeera.com/me.asp?service_ID=9924
Al Jazeera has a target audience , the same as Fox news does. They both now are commercial ventures. Whatever the faults of Al Jazeera, it has revolutionized the air waves in the ME in a positive way by giving people an alternative to state television media.
People that are passionate about everything American can opt to watch Fox. Their esteemed News anchor O’rielly has just called for the assassination of Bachar- even more reason for you to watch Foxnews ,Vox. http://mediamatters.org/items/200510040005
When any of us uses the media we all use our filters and sift the information and opinion provided. I read the Israeli media everyday. and it gives me an insight into their political and social culture.
I do not agree with everything but it gives one some balance. Every media has an editorial policy and it reflects their bias. Look at the media in Lebanon.
We should look at this station as a reflection of Arab opinion as imperfect as it may be. There is a symbiotic relationship between the media and the audience but that is another argument.
Vox, I know that you believe that every Arab that watches Aljazeera is a bigot, but that is an unfair and malicous characterization.
The mercantile nature of the Lebanese and American interference in our internal affairs is also another unfair characterization according to Mustapha. View http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2005/06/1715750.php
Vox , It is possible Aljzeera was referring to the two british SAS soldiers caught in Arab dress and a car full of explosives after shooting at police and bystanders on about Sept 25 in Basra . All occupation armies are the same. View at http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=32 Ask any Lebanese.
Issam
Well I don’t watch Fox news, I am so ignorant about it that I don’t know who O’rielly is. BBC world is the only television channel that I like. But I agree with you on one thing, al Jazeera is a relative progress for the Arab-speaking world.
Kais,
I checked with the tech guy who viewed the code of the vote, he doenst have it anymore…
he will look into it again..
But he told me, that even if itg was posted, someone can say that the posted code was doctored by us…
so unless the poll is still up there, there is no proof that they did it
This comment is very late, but I’m going to give it a shot anyway.
Fox News is “news entertainment,” a burgeoning industry in our strange, strange land. The anchors, reporters, tele-columnists, and so on basically shout their stories on to the airwaves in much the same way that the BBC tends to whine theirs. Of course, delivery is not the only problem. Fox News feels no need to appeal to an anti-American crowd, inasmuch as none of us can deny that such a crowd exists (and inasmuch as some of these commentators certainly belong to that crowd), and Al-Jazeera can represent that crowd if it so chooses. Regardless, Fox News has revolutionized the American television market in that they have made the rednecks curious about the world around them, while Al-Jazeera has injected a great amount of badly needed self-introspection into Arab society by marketing the concept of freedom of speech. We cannot expect instant understanding and tolerance of others’ perspectives in just a few short years.