Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (66455)	9/2/2004 1:53:28 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793955

Reuters has put a false frame on the story, which is not that the bombing had stopped, but now it started again and the Israelis were wrong in their thinking. I'll grant you part of that. It would have been better had the article said "daring to hope" rather than "daring to think." Although in either case the Israelis would have been "wrong again," it seems less critical to be wrong in your hopes than wrong in your judgment. I won't grant you the "lull" part. You seem to be denying that there was a lull. Of course there was a lull. The lull was widely commented on. Not a stoppage but a lull. Reacting to "lull" as though it conveyed "stoppage" rather than "a temporary pause or decline in activity " is too much. <i/>But only a mild bias or even no bias at all can be offensive, when the subject matter is the deliberate slaughter of innocent civilians. Nadine, I understand your desire for Reuters etc. to validate your world view. That's what all the carping about media bias is all about--not that it's biased but that it's biased the "wrong" way. We rarely notice when it's biased the "right" way since the bias coincides with ours. I don't think there's any way to avoid the negative response from readers and viewers but to get rid of the bias, including the bias against axe murders. The media should not be cheerleaders for anything. It really annoys me when, to give an utterly inconsequential example, the weatherman chirps that we're going to have a wonderful day--sunny and in the high eighties. Well, I don't judge that a wonderful day. I judge it as oppressively hot and I don't appreciate being reminded that my heat tolerance is out of sync. I get enough reminders of that in my daily life and I do have a bit of a chip on my shoulder about it. The media should neither be reinforcing chips nor knocking them off. They should just report the news and let us attach whatever value to it we want. If you are correct that Reuters expresses bias against axe murders but not Hamas bombers, then I agree with you that they are wrong to do so. The solution, though, is not to up their display of bias but to lower it. This is very important point in the WOT - are terrorist techniques acceptable and legitimate, or are they war crimes? What is an isn't a war crime is a very fuzzy area, particularly over time and venue. Jello, as LB might say. I understand the need to assert one's view on that and to counter opposing views, but that's Sisyphus territory--with an shape-shifting rock and a moving hill. No resolution probably ever.