Who is afraid of Press TV?

 -
Press TV (stylised PRESSTV) is a 24-hour English language news and documentary network, affiliated with Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB). IRIB is state-owned but independent of the Iranian government in its management; the IRIB is a legal TV and radio broadcaster inside Iran. Press TV is headquartered in Tehran, Iran, but has offices and bureaus around the world, inlcuding in London, Beirut, Damascus, Kabul, and the Gaza Strip. Press TV began broadcasting HDTV on the Hot Bird satellite cluster since 13 January, 2014. The network's slogan is "News Anew".

The BBC journalist Linda Pressly has described Press TV as pro-Palestinian, anti-sanctions against Iran, and... critical of Western foreign policy.

LOL



We can't have that now, can we?



In July 2013 Press TV and other Iranian channels were removed from several European and American satellites (amongst others those of Eutelsat and Intelsat), allegedly because of the Iran sanctions, even though a EU spokesman told the channel that these sanctions do not apply to media. In November 2012, the Hong Kong-based AsiaSat took Iranian channels off air in East Asia, and in October 2012 Eutelsat and Intelsat stopped broadcasting several Iranian satellite channels, though the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting managed to resume broadcasts after striking deals with smaller companies based in other countries.

Anyway, this is their website: http://www.presstv.ir/

And this is Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's speech in Damascus, dated 7.26.2015, they recently published:

http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2015/07/26/421935/Syria-PreAssad-ISIS-UN

Is Press TV's take on the world ethnocentric? Is it biased? Is Bashar al-Assad's account of the events in the region slanted?

Undoubtedly so.

Is it propaganda?

Of course, it is.

How much so?

It depends.

It would depend, I suppose, on what one's definition and understanding of terms such as "ethnocentrism," "bias," "slanted," and "propaganda" are. And to what degree one think such terms might apply to our own media, like, say, Fox News, CNN, NBC, or, God forbid, BBC America.

Call me a stickler for the credo of pluralism and world-mindedness, but it does seem to me that people in this country, in Europe and in the Americas, ought to be free to listen to any media news channel they wish and exert their own judgement, without a third party deciding for them what they ought to watch or not watch and banning what said party deems inappropriate. Because anything less, would be… Well, it would be anti-American, now, wouldn't it? And against everything the people who founded this great nation of ours fought for.
MORE >

"Americans overuse medical services because they generally don't have to pay much for them..."

MORE >

Lord of the Flies

Wow, quite some program there on the Daily Paul. I wonder what the good doctor's position is on any of this, and whether he endorses the site or any of its content.



Oye Oye OYE VAY! What a concept! Yup, Pol Pot himself couldn't have possibly said it any better!

Who would have thought that the Republican Congressman for the 14th congressional district of Texas (and presidential nominee of the Libertarian Party in 1988) could have so much in common with the Khmer Rouge of 1975-1979 Kampuchea.

When the Khmer Rouge came to power in Cambodia in April 1975, age was reversed as a marker of status, very young children--the only ones considered pure--were indoctrinated to denounce and turn against suspect adults. Elderly, who were previously accorded great respect, were cast aside as useless and unproductive. Traditional norms of respect for elders were suppressed and the "Comrade Child" was praised as being "pure and unsullied by the corrupt past of the adults."
(Ponchaud, 1977, p. 143).

Special spy units, Kang Chhlop, were composed mainly of children and were used to spy on adults. One Cambodian woman recalled the power given to children under the Khmer Rouge:

In the Pol Pot times children could catch an adult if they thought they had done wrong. They could beat the adult. For example, if an adult was caught stealing fruit a child could tell the soldiers: "look they are our enemies". Then the soldiers would set a chair for the child to stand on so that they could beat the adult's head.
(Boyden and Gibbs, 1997, p. 44)



Children rose quickly up the ranks of the Khmer Rouge and it was not unusual for children to be in charge of workcamps at the age of twelve. Camps run by these children became notorious for the extreme and arbitrary violence inflicted on the inmates. Children, even more than adults, appeared particularly cruel. Even after Cambodia was liberated in 1979 by the Vietnamese, there remained a "residual fear of children" in the country (Boyden and Gibbs, 1997, p. 98).
MORE >

Timing is Everything

As Obama gears up for the 2012 reelection campaign, administration officials need both a fresh face on the economy and someone who can craft a credible vision for creating jobs and restoring the nation's economic vitality. Sources said the White House is considering whether to choose a candidate who could blunt criticism that the administration has been anti-business, such as a corporate chieftain or prominent investor.
---Lori Montgomery, Washington Post Staff Writer (9/22/2010)

Enters the count:


MORE >

Unstated Assumptions

It always cracks me up when I read about the Los Angeles Times "subtle and inadvertent" bias. Especially when it comes to the usual suspects:



The technique is, of course, neither "subtle" (not inasmuch as the above reporters are concerned), nor "inadvertent."

There is a name for it:



And apparently it's considered good journalism at the LA Times---I wonder whether they learn it in school? Notice how Peter Nicholas and Janet Hook didn't say that "Obama's plan" was a "costly plan." That would've been incorrect. Some would call it a lie.

What they said instead is that "Obama's plan" could be a tough sell "with lawmakers skeptical of sweeping and costly plans to revamp healthcare."

See the difference?

Here is another more recent example from today's edition of the LA Times from an article by Peter Nicholas and Richard A. Serrano: Mosque dispute takes Obama off-message on Gulf Coast. The whole article is a study in propaganda techniques; it should be required reading in any High School level class on propaganda.

I'll only focus on the last paragraph:

Notice how the reporter doesn't say that Obama speaking of "the mosque" is "a gaffe." Nor does he say that it is a "gaffe" on par with another remark (yet another presidential "gaffe" are we to assume?) that Obama made more than one year ago about the Cambridge arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr.

No, the author would never say anything like that. What he said instead is:



I don't know, everything is relative. So maybe it could be considered "subtle" by Fox News standards.

The technique is the same though.



Think they all go to the same school?
MORE >

Yes, but is it sexism?

Apparently, the desktop picture above is considered politically correct.

But the second one hereunder could be judged offensive.



Or so I have been told.

Go figure.

They call it sexism.

I call it cognitive dissonance.



MORE >