My following story appears in today’s edition of Crikey: A few weeks after the start of the Iraq war in 2003, I talked to a senior editor at The Sydney Morning Herald and asked her why there were basically no Iraqi voices in the paper, either for or against the conflict. “I never thought of…
Showing all posts tagged mainstream media
Wikileaks vs NYT and I know who is most honest about the world
From a recent “debate” between Julian Assange and NYT editor Bill Keller: Keller did get his dander up after Assange said that watching the American news media cover international events is like watching a goldfish bowl where readers pay little attention to outside perspectives. Keller seemed to take that as a slight against the prestigious…
Australian media on Palestine; ignore the Palestinians
Satire is clearly dead. Weeks of media coverage of Israel/Palestine in Australia and the BDS campaign pushed by the NSW Greens and Sydney’s Marrickville council and not a peep from Arabs or Palestinians. I mean, why should they be heard? It’s only about their land in the Middle East but let’s not focus on details.…
Dear TIME; are war criminals now worthy of praise?
Bless the corporate media. Here’s the 2011 TIME 100 Poll featuring Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa. Whoever wrote this blurb clearly doesn’t care about the serious war crimes allegations against his government: Since ending Sri Lanka’s 26-year-long war against the Tamil Tigers in 2009, and grabbing control over once independent institutions like commissions on human…
Inserting fear into BDS because Palestinians may speak up
While the parochial Australian media continues to “debate” Israel/Palestine without any Arabs or Palestinians in the discussion (just the latest in the Murdoch press today), Max Blumenthal writes how BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) is forcing Zionists to either speak in platitudes or face the realities of what Israel has become: Last night I went…
This is what passes for “serious” Mid-East commentary in NYT
Columnist Thomas Friedman – whose understanding of the Muslim world involves staying at very expensive hotels and then speaking to the doorman to sense the “Arab street” – writes yet another article that shows how little he gets about the region. Want to speak to people who aren’t just in the elites, Friedman? When I…
We dismiss Wikileaks at our intellectual peril
Last night here in Sydney I helped launch – MC really alongside author Andrew Fowler and journalist Kerry O’Brien – a wonderful new book on Wikileaks and Julian Assange, The Most Dangerous Man in the World. Go buy immediately! What was clear during the discussion was the significance of Wikileaks challenging the media class in…
How many times does a corporate reporter need to visit Israel to repeat its talking points?
Here we go again. A little game; how many Western “journalists” and politicians continually visit Israel on a propaganda tour? Answer; most of them. In 2009 I wrote about the Sydney Morning Herald’s international editor Peter Hartcher visiting the Zionist state and being more than happy to speak to a very select collection of people,…
Assange challenges Aussie journalist that Wikileaks has had no impact
Last night on ABC TV’s 7.30: LEIGH SALES: Commentators have noted that in terms of what the cables revealed about American diplomacy, it didn’t show anything particularly scandalous, if anything it showed that there was quite a bit of consistency between America’s public positions and their private positions, although in private of course they are…
Thinking very carefully before visiting Sri Lanka
Travelling isn’t an ethics-free zone. The places we visit are imbued with political and social meaning. Tourism in repressive states should be carefully navigated to avoid giving support to the regime (as much as possible). Sri Lanka, still in the grip of a political culture that refuses to acknowledge its massacre of Tamils and ongoing…