I noticed a good amount of people talking about Al Jazeera in the BBC paywall thread and that make me ask, why!?
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Its a large organization. There’s Al Jazeera, and then there’s its Al Jazeera English subdivision which operates with widely different team. The latter has a reputation for high quality journalism and has won multiple awards for it - the former exhibits more bias in its reporting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_awards_awarded_to_Al_Jazeera_English
I would say the BBC is no more trusted and should not be any more trusted than AJ English. Each have biases and each are capable of very high quality investigative journalism.
Even if you don’t like al jazeera, remember they’re some of the few who cover Gaza in person and a whole lot of Africa and other developing nations. I don’t blindly trust them, but many western news agencies are barely reporting on the same thing. If they’re not covering these nations, why are we complaining about one of the networks that do it?
You need to receive news from a broad variety of sources, not just those that agree with your viewpoint or have a particular agenda.
Al Jazeera obviously have a pro-Qatari but less so than Fox News for example or any billionaire owned newspaper/TV channel have biases.
Aggregate from all sides and the truth will be somewhere in the middle.
Why wouldn’t they?
It’s hard not to interpret this comment in a western chauvinistic light.
There’s a saying among BBC journalists that all who work there eventually end up at Al Jazeera.
Watch one of my favorite documentaries of all time, Control Room (2004) about coverage of the Iraq War.
Al Jazeera is far from perfect, and I’d argue has fallen from its peak in terms of quality. But it’s still worth viewing to get a more well rounded perspective.
Now do I believe they can cover topics that hit close to Qatari interests? Not necessarily. For those I take with a grain of salt.
A pretty long track record of high-quality journalism. Same as the BBC.
Sure, they’re owned by Qatar. As of last I checked it serves as more of a status symbol than a propaganda outlet, though, at least in English.
As we quickly learned during the George W Bush era, no news media agency can be trusted. To counter this, check reporting of the same incident from multiple news agencies and find the consistent facts. Everything else is suspect.
In a hurry, see if Reuters or AP has covered it, but verify when you have the time.
Done this way AJ is perfectly viable as a source for news, in that the bias can be filtered out.
FOX and OANN are known to lie or misrepresent facts entirely, but that gets filtered through cross-checking.
Trust, but verify.
Well…Anyone has an agenda.
Even the most passive person when put in charge will have a personal philosophy they’ll follow.You’ve been on this account for two years. Happy birthday
Ty :)
Becuase it was founded with the same journalistic practices as the BBC.
Their original staff was a bunch of pretty serious journalists sourced from the BBC.
Al Jazeera is the mouthpiece of a hostile foreign power (to me). Its also sickeningly, cloyingly coated with hate for the US throughout any segment. I will on occasion read something that’s been generically reposted, recognize the writing style, and then confirm that it came from AJ. Its so tilted that it reminds me of Fox News. And I don’t watch Fox News either.
Imo it’s not about saying this or that org is least biased or less biased, it’s acknowledging the biases present in all news orgs and comparing the reporting from multiple sources.
Scepticism should always be applied to any state-run media.
Private media is not any more trustworthy than state run.
Please refer to the other comment where I address this.
Where?
The second comment of mine you replied to.
Is it better for media to be privately owned by billionaires?
No, definitely not. I don’t think there is any news source I would trust 100%. You need to seek out multiple sources and try to sus it out yourself. The truth is usually somewhere in the middle. I don’t claim to have all the answers but in my experience state media tends to be less than trustworthy. I’d say BBC is okay but they’ve had some big fuck ups before.
in my experience state media tends to be less than trustworthy.
How did you determine that?
I’d say BBC is okay
You haven’t been watching their year and a half of genocide support?
I’d be happy to consider your argument. First I ask you to pease refer me to some trustworthy state media.
Did you reply to the wrong comment?
I don’t believe so.
Ok. Seemed odd that you’d leave a comment with no relation to mine in response.
usa based media as you know leans right wing, all of them, and many of them are owned by right wingers irl. if you look at how they glorify the military and vets, and have copangada type shows. it almost never discredits a right wing president in a very negative light, while same cannot be said if it was Dem in power. certain things you notice you really cant criticise, is israel, CHRISTIANITY in movies, and shows, and military. everything else is ok.
AJ may not be neutral source, but its a source that is not controlled by the west, so you might get a ME perspective. just like how some british media reports some truthful news in the USA that usa would sugar coat or downplay, but not against british based news.
asian sources heavily criticizing usa for involvement in thier region, while usa never ever does that.
Yeah going around saying “thank you for your service” to “veterans” you don’t know is crazy IMO.
It kind of makes sense in the US, because the US is CONSTANTLY at war with someone / something, so unless people volunteer, there’s a good chance the draft would be back and a bunch of people would be forced to go.
“Thank you for your service. Better you than me amirite. 👈👈😎”
I can say both of those things with genuine respect. I thought I was going to get drafted into Desert Storm. I don’t like sand.
I agree. Almost as coarse and rough and irritating as getting blown up by an IED.
In my life experience the only way to test the reliability of a news source is to actually live some events and see how they are reported by different media.
I have no such experience with al Jazeera, so I couldn’t tell you reliably if they are or not reliable. Best advice with media is, unless you are certain they are reliable, treat them as unreliable.
reporting from “outside looking in” perspective, rather the us/bbc which only does it in the inside looking in.
I’m not American. bbc is also a external news source for me.
It’s not about being exactly more reliable than the other big ones. More about being a second perspective, filling in the gaps of the western ones.
Yeah, read a couple of sources and take the average.
Always bear in mind who funds it.
Be careful with the taking average mindset. It’s a default human one, and it’s being abused. A lot of media outlets (particularly American right wing) are mouthpieces for the same few groups or people.
Instead, try and look at their biases. Do they have a reason to mislead you. What akin do they have in a particular game. E.g. the BBC is still fairly unbiased on a lot of world news. They are far less unbiased on middle eastern politics now.
It’s an annoyingly complex problem to solve, on the fly.
Ya. A nuanced media net is the only real answer. Trying to balance one liar against another rarely results in balance.
