Sunday, November 20, 2011

Al Jazeera takes line of the 1% regarding papper spray incident


Al Jazeera has put up the video of the pepper spray incident accompanied by a story giving the side of the police and university officials only. The source is listed as, Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

This is quite puzzling and not a little disconcerting, since the video shows that the story provided by the authorities is fabricated.

However, since the video is provided, readers can make up their own mind.

It alerts us, however, on whose side the management of Al Jazeera stands.

US university probes protest pepper spraying

4 comments:

Nathan Tankus said...

to those who pay attention, al jazeera's news section is infamously neutral. Don't beat em down for this just yet. also check opinion, i bet they have some good stuff on it.

Tom Hickey said...

@ Nathan,

I am fine with truly neutral coverage. This was not neutral.

Also "fair and balanced" is not giving two sides of a story in which one side is factual and evidence-based, and the other is made-up and contradicted by evidence.

The Al Jazeera story is contradicted by the evidence of the video, which is unedited and shows clearly that the police were using excessive violence, which is police brutality.

This is going viral around the world, and it is further eroding America's moral authority, which has already been shredded by war crimes and torture admitted at the highest levels with no investigation or prosecution.

The US is coming across as the rogue state that it has become, both to people at home and abroad.

Nathan Tankus said...

No where in the story does the report say that those officials views are correct and, as you point out, they posted unedited video. it simply reports what these people said so that people can judge for themselves. perhaps they should have had a few protesters statements. neither of us have any idea about what kind of access the story's author had to protesters.I don't think the reporting here is bad and i don't find it "disconcerting". If anything the quotes in contrast to the video make the officials look worse.

Tom Hickey said...

" perhaps they should have had a few protesters statements. neither of us have any idea about what kind of access the story's author had to protesters."

The protestors stories have been reported, as my previous posts show. Not a very well researched article, and it undermines my confidence in Al Jazeera as news source.

This is a story I know something about. Much that Al Jazerra reports I have no such access. I have to conclude on the basis of this that its reporting is less than complete and in this instance relies on one side only.

They have the video, too. I assume that those contributing to the story watched it. There is no mention in the story of discrepancies between the accounts of officials and the video record.

Fail.