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Yup, kind of like when we torture people and they call it ‘enhanced interrogation’.
Give something a sanitized term and people will run with it.
IDK, NYT has it’s issues but I don’t see anything wrong with their headline on this. They’re pretty explicit (possibly even skeptical given the other coverage of this…) that that’s what israel is calling these strikes. What else should they have said?
Oh wait hang on, “Israel assures west that IDF are ‘working closely’ with amrrican appointed DEI council to ensure no demographic group is unfairly left out of genocidal campaign”. They probably could have gone with that. Fucking hell, the only thing that makes my blood boil more than this
limpwristededit: wrist slap-y journalistic coverage is the literal cauldron of blood the IDF keeps scooting out of frame every time biden facetimes them…limpwristed
Might need to sunset that term dude.
If referring to a male, having effeminate qualities or characteristics perceived to be homosexual in nature.
Oh for… thanks. I’ve been using that one to mean ‘weakly slapped’ for the better part of my life.
Another one for the list of “Wait, that’s a slur?” “Always has been”
Oily Josh, why are so many idioms based in bigotry?
Can you sunset the term sunset also please.
The irony is that the tweet is the exact type of propaganda it’s claiming to call out. They just want to undermine faith in Western media because if you can’t trust them - and despite having some obvious failures they have proven to be the most consistently reliable sources - then they are free to feed you emotional manipulation to push their own agenda.
Early in life I have noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various “party lines.
~ George Orwell (Not from a book, this is his actual experience after fighting alongside the Spanish against fasciscm.)
This post clearly highlighting how unreliable Western media is, is actually propaganda. Do not believe your eyes it’s <their own agenda>!
The word pre-emptive implies self-defense.
Israel is “preemptively attacking” the entire region.
“Casting attacks as” implies they are reporting on what the IDF is claiming though, and doesn’t confer additional editorial meaning beyond that. Of those four it’s the only one with a semblance of journalistic integrity.
Far too many people only skim the headline and maybe the first paragraph of the article and then assume they don’t need to know anything more.
To include the perspective of Israel in a headline purporting to be neutral is instilling a bias in the mind of such readers no matter how many quotation marks and “Israel says” they use and they KNOW IT for a fact.
When it comes to Israel, the NYT has about as much neutrality and journalistic integrity as they do wrt cops: almost none.
You’re blaming them for malice in what should be fairly attributed to the stupidity and laziness of the general population, though. If you seriously think they should be writing their headlines with the idea of summarizing the Lebanon/Israel situation in one sentence, you’re either an absolutely incredible writier, not their target audience or a straw man made up to illustrate my disagreement with your point.
Including a reference to the statements made by israel in the headline of an article about what israel has said is not unreasonable, regardless of your personal opinion about how that might reflect their bias. It stands that the NYT, of all those headlines, is the only one that doesn’t openly bias themselves towards israel by directly quoting the IDF, and even reflects reasonable skepticism on the statements made by the IDF. If you don’t understand that, it’s not really their fault.
You’re blaming them for malice in what should be fairly attributed to the stupidity and laziness of the general population, though
No. The first rule of storytelling, whether it be fiction or journalism, is “know your audience”. The NYT knows their audience and chooses to deliberately mislead people.
If you seriously think they should be writing their headlines with the idea of summarizing the Lebanon/Israel situation in one sentence
That’s not what I’m saying, no. What I’m decrying is their deliberate decision to influence perceptions by including a biased perspective in the headline rather than just a concise summation of what objectively happened.
you’re either an absolutely incredible writier, not their target audience or a straw man made up to illustrate my disagreement with your point.
Pretty ironic that you would accuse me of constructing a strawman in the same sentence wherein you just constructed one yourself, however hypothetical you might have dressed it up.
Including a reference to the statements made by israel in the headline of an article about what israel has said is not unreasonable
Yeah, you’re fundamentally missing what the article is about. It’s about what the IDF has DONE. Or at least it would have been if the NYT weren’t failing their profession by acting as stenographers for a genocidal and notoriously dishonest regime.
regardless of your personal opinion about how that might reflect their bias
My opinion, while clear to anyone paying attention, has nothing to do with the fact that including the official IDF version of events in the headline shows clear bias. That’s just objectively true, and would also be if the version of the story was that of Hamas or even the ones whose side I’m ACTUALLY on: the innocent civilians caught between a terrorist group and a genocidal apartheid regime.
It stands that the NYT, of all those headlines, is the only one that doesn’t openly bias themselves towards israel by directly quoting the IDF
That’s the opposite of the truth. To directly quote them in the headline is as naked a bias that they could possibly show, short of the times where they go a step further and don’t even treat it as a quote but just unassailable truth. Like in that awful “Screams Without Words” propaganda piece they still haven’t retracted.
and even reflects reasonable skepticism
Putting quotation marks around a quote isn’t expressing skepticism. It’s the bare minimum of ass covering required to not risk getting sued for repeating the words of others as their own.
If you don’t understand that
Clearly I’m not the one failing to understand anything, and neither are the NYT. If they were completely new to how journalism works and didn’t have an editor, like you, I might have considered it an honest mistake.
They AREN’T new, though, and they DO have a (presumably highly skilled and experienced since it’s one of the most prestigious jobs in journalism anywhere) editor, though, so there’s no way that they aren’t aware of what such a headline is and does.
To quote the otherwise completely irrelevant Maude Lebowski: don’t be fatuous, Jeffrey.
Clearly I’m not the one failing to understand anything
Pretty ironic that you would accuse me of constructing a strawman in the same sentence wherein you just constructed one yourself, however hypothetical you might have dressed it up.
Yes, that was me discrediting my own argument with self deprecating humor, a common literary device used to highlight the doubt I have in my own outlandish claim and imply that a less hyperbolic take is probably correct. Look, I’m going to be honest here: a huge point by point breakdown is the #1 sign of someone not arguing in good faith - it’s basically just a Gish-gallop. I read through everything, but you did nothing to engage with the substance of my comment, you just went through and presented opinions derived from anecdotally lived experience as though they are founded and incontrovertible fact.
My opinion, while clear to anyone paying attention, has nothing to do with the fact that including the official IDF version of events in the headline shows clear bias.
It stands that the NYT, of all those headlines, is the only one that doesn’t openly bias themselves towards israel by directly quoting the IDF
The simple truth is that, due I suspect to unfamiliarity, you do not understand the usage of passive voice or quotation in journalism. You keep demonstrating that, in your vigor to present your own perspective as though it’s somehow anathema to my point and will ward off understanding or introspection with the billowing fumes of vacuous crap, you are more eager to fight the good fight than you are to put in the effort to affect a change in yourself or another. To clarify: Having a conversation with you is pointless, and I am quite sure you’re aware of that. You are not attempting to influence me, you’re just attempting to rebut me and any other poster that presents a point counter to the one you hold, and that is tedious.
And yes, I am aware that my words aren’t going to sway you here, doubtlessly doing nothing but to drive you further into the defensive enclave we all retreat to when the Specter of Error looms nigh over our opinions, so perhaps presenting your own words in a new light will get through to you:
I don’t think it works that way
It does.
… Now just how in hell is this a constructive way of responding to someone?
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It’s true that it’s biased in favor of Israel, but I’d say a biased headline isn’t as bad as a misleading one which isn’t as bad as a lie.
It’s misleading by being biased in favor of the IDF who are notorious for being fundamentally dishonest at all times including this one.
So congratulations, you got your triumvirate of shoddy journalism right here.
I don’t think it works that way, it can be at different places on the scale. The other OP headlines are worse than the NYT one because they directly imply the “pre-emptive” claim is true, as opposed to indirectly implying it by choosing to reference the perspective of the IDF.
I don’t think it works that way
It does.
The other OP headlines are worse
That’s irrelevant. Things don’t magically go from bad to good just because a worse version of the same thing exists.
they directly imply the “pre-emptive” claim is true, as opposed to indirectly implying it by choosing to reference the perspective of the IDF.
Only difference is how sneaky they are about it. The bias they’re deliberately trying to spread is the same.
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I’m not sure if you’ve genuinely misunderstood me, or if you are commenting to pick a fight. Assuming good faith: Casting is not a vague term, although you are correct that it does not imply they are quoting the IDF (who they are not quoting here. Yes, you can use the same words as someone you’re referring to without quoting them). It’s meaning is quite explicit in this context. That people may not understand is more the fault of the dire state of literacy in this country than it is of the person who wrote this fairly reasonable headline. I would prefer the headline be more critical, but it disappointingly isnt. That is my issue with it.
My comment was a bit poorly worded i’m taking the L on this one. NYT did indeed have a small disclaimer.
No. No it doesn’t. Preemption - in the military sense - could be used both offensively and defensively. If you are about to invade a country you could preemptively attack their parliament and barracks’ to make your invasion easier.
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israel was bombing Lebanon and Gaza far before October 7 where history magically starts.
Furthermore israel assasinated a Hezbollah top leader in Beirut. That was an escalating attack. Lebanon is defending itself right now.
You expect a military force to sit tight, not move, not shoot, while they know the enemy is about to attack?
Because, the enemy “is defending itself”?
I’d love to hear that rally speech with which you would motivate your soldiers to just eat incoming rockets without using the tools they have to prevent being attacked.
I expect headlines to say “israel strikes Lebanon”. Not “israel pre-emptively self defences in Lebanon”.
You expect a military force to sit tight, not move, not shoot, while they know the enemy is about to attack?
I’d expect israel to accept a ceasefire in Gaza which is a condition given by Iran and Hezbollah to prevent retaliation. That is, if israel wanted to achieve peace. Which it doesn’t.
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Defensing against israel is the only purpose of Hezbollah.
Hezbollah was created as a response to israel terrorism.
Yikes who’s upvoting this homophobic racist? Zero surprise they’re defending genocidal propaganda. Fash support fash.
Homophobic I get (sorry, did not know about ‘limpwristed’, was genuinely unintentional) but racist?
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A homophonic racist fascist? Wow. How can somebody be that stoopid? You misused a phrase that you assumed meant weak - and let’s be honest - I can see how you could arrive at that conclusion. For all I know English could be your fourth language… then you had the absolute audacity to think there’s any complexity at all to a generations long war; and not a simple one-size-fits-all approach to geopolitical crises. You brought it on yourself, blud. Ignore the prOpAGanDa and BELIEVE EVERYTHING THAT INTERNET STRANGER HAS TOLD YOU. Ffs. Smh. /s
I cherish you.
Right back at ya, babe.
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Straight people can have flimsy wrists.
Nyt and Guardian seem fine, (in)directly quoting the idf.
It’s “strange” how imperial propaganda is always quoting the IDF but never the resistance.
I see a lot of articles quote the Gaza health ministry about casualty statistics
He said the resistance not the doctors.
The Gaza health ministry is run by the government of Gaza
Officially. In reality, the vast majority of the Gazan hospitals* from where they count the dead are controlled by the UN through UNRWA.
*Of which there’s none fully functional, which is why we haven’t gotten up to date counts for at least a couple months. Which is 50% of the reason why the IDF specifically targets hospitals and healthcare workers, of course.
The israeli ministry of health is ran by israel.
Wait…did you just completely miss the point?
There was no point to miss.
The problem isn’t them quoting it. The problem is passing along the blatant misinformation as truth. Why are you using their words when it’s very clearly wrong?
I’m reading this thread in awe, as I can’t see what this ‘blatant misinformation’ is that everyone sees so clearly
Hezbollah planned a large rocket attack and Israel attacked them first… How is this disputed?
The misinformation is that Israel is claiming they were forced to attack first due to Hezbollahs aggression. When in fact Israel is directly responsible for escalating this conflict for several months now, and Hezbollah has been showing a lot of restraint.
Are you denying Hezbollah was planning, and executed, a large rocket strike?
Where did I say that?
What would you do if you knew some group of religious nuts was going to fire a barrage of rockets at you?
Maybe not antagonize them for months by firing rockets at them?
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One look at your account and it’s clear you’re some kind of paid troll. 2 weeks old, 22 posts, 92 comments. A lot of it is pro-Israel and Zionism. Not even going to bother entertaining your comment.
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Then start applying buddy. You definitely got the engagement and looking the other way down. I don’t have a problem engaging in conversation. I have a problem when people try to deflect the issue at hand.
Israel attacks Lebanon is the correct headline.
Anything else is propaganda.
The tnyt title looks accurate to me: it says Israel is striking Lebanon AND that Israel is casting these strikes as pre-emptive.
The title is not saying that tnyt believes that the strikes are actually pre-emptive, instead it’s reporting that Israel claims that the strikes are pre-emptive. Which is accurate, since Israel does in fact claim that.
Same with the Guardian. “in self-defense” is quoted, something Israel is saying
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Yep, this is a good example of what actual inaccurate/deceitful reporting would be like. Unlike the headlines in the post of the op, your made up title is reporting things that didn’t happened, and your quotes are not things that Hamas’ spokespeople have said. It is vaguely based on things that have happened, but it’s mostly just made up and thus completely inaccurate and deceitful.
The point being made is that they’ll harp unconditionally any old bullshit coming from Israel, putting it in a position of prominence, but not any old bullshit from other sources - even when they say the quote cones from sources in the Israeli government, merely choosing that for prominent position is already promoting it and that source.
Selectivelly and reliably quoting just the one side or always giving more prominence to what is said by just the one side says is an old Propaganda trick for when the Propagandist does not have full information control, and works by the same principle as exploited by lots of far-right populists to rise on saying controversial bullshit and on the criticism of their adversaries: anything given prominence and more attention is internalized by readers/viewers a being more important.
Actual Journalism would treat both sources equally.
Unlike plain-old-lies, such Propaganda Techniques can only be confirmed as such by measuring lots of articles from a news outlet and statistically analysing the words they choose and where they use them by comparison to other outlets, as pointed out in Linkerbaan’s post.
Would you be happier with a title such as “Israeli airstrikes tried to ‘prevent’ a ‘well planned and succesfully executed’ rocket strike from Hezbollah” ?
That just sounds like you want a stupid paper for stupid people, with longer titles
“Expecting retaliatory Hezbolah attacks, Israel preemptivelly strikes Hezbolah positions.”
Of those 4 examples, only the NYT has a shorter title.
The absurdity of your example is entirelly of your own making.
Yeah but your own contribution fits right in there with the 4 examples in the OP. Remember: you can’t use ‘pre-emptive’. That’s a manipulation & narrative control term
You’re claiming I said something I never said.
The manipulation and narrative control is in:
- Portraying one side as having justification for their acts and the other as acting without reason.
- Systematically quoting without confirmation the justifications given by one side, not the other.
The Propaganda technique called “framing” is, quite self-explanatorily, framing (a.k.a. decorating) what is being reported about one side’s actions in one way and what is being reported about the other side differently - the core content which are the events are described the same but only one side’s views on the why for those event are reported.
It’s a far more subtle technique than outright telling the readers “these are the good guys” or using nicer words for the same actions if executed by one side than for the same kind of action when executed by the other side (mind you, at least 3 of these 4 examples will also use this latter technique, which is about “portraying” rather than “framing”)
My contribution frames both sides equally thus both actors seem equally rational in their actions and the justifications for their actions given by both are there with equal prominence. It gives both sides’ justifications to the readers and leaves it to the readers to decide who to believe and which justifications they found valid. That’s how actual Journalism aims to report: giving what they have to the readers and leaving it up to the readers to decide who to believe.
Framing is not a technique from Journalism.
The strikes - whether you agree with them or not and regardless of your political posture - are genuinely seen as militarily preemptive. Israel apparently expected a large Hezbollah attack and tried to get in there first. They “preempted” any such attack. The Guardian employs actual speech marks - so it’s not an opinion but a quote. Newspapers can report what people say, even if the editorial policy is contrary to what gets reported. Linguistically the headli(n)es are correct. (I haven’t taken sides in the Israel-Gaza conflict as I know both sides are currently led by scum who have no qualms about slaughtering innocent people for their own personal gain and have no interest in any meaningful peace.)
The strikes are only pre-emptive if we put on white-nationalism glasses and take away Lebanon’s right to defend itself. Israel attacked Beirut first. TheGuardian quotes IDF propaganda but Hezbollah just “fires rockets”.
I haven’t taken sides in the Israel-Gaza conflict
…
The strikes are only pre-emptive if we put on white-nationalism glasses and take away Lebanon’s right to defend itself. Israel attacked Beirut first.
I guess as always with language, there are many possible interpretations. Yours is one, that’s right.
To me, it came somewhat surprising to see you connected “pre-emptive” to moral judgements, or to the question who attacked “first” (which is a controversial and potentially infinite topic to track the actual honest true ‘first’ origin).
Another interpretation is just military doctrine. The best defense is a good offense. Who cares who started the fight.
In this interpretation, the IDF felt there might be an attack incoming, and prevented it’s adversary from doing so by striking first.
Much like Hezbollah (or any other military force) would gladly pre-emptively strike their foe to protect their own troops. Doesn’t say anything about who started the overall conflict or even who’s right.
You still have a point; by highlighting the reasons behind the strike, and painting it as a protective measure, it probably makes it easier for the reader to sympathize.
A fair take by the newsmedia would have been to use the word “retaliatory” for Hezbollah’s attack just like they used “preemptive” for Israel’s.
Both attacks have causes, so if one is mentioning the causes for one set of attacks (which makes it seem less senseless) one should also mention the causes for the other set of attacks.
The manipulativeness here is not the use of “pre-emptive” for Israel’s attacks, it’s in the systematic framing of Israel’s attacks as having “a reason” (in this case pre-emption) whilst the other side’s attacks are portrayed without mentioning the reason and hence sound senseless to anybody less well informed.
What they’re doing here is called “spin” or “framing” and it’s a Propaganda technique meant to project a more favorable impression about one of the parties involved.
Quality comment, well said.
I’m not sure (take that literally, please) wether both causes deserve to be treated as equals, but I can very much vibe with the general spirit of your comment. That’s what I had in mind when writing the last paragraph of my previous comment.
You can turn that around as well, as the attack Hezbollah was retaliating for was, in itself, retaliatory. Only calling Hezbollah’s attack would imply that they were retailating for a first strike attack (which, as we know from the playground, is the difference between right and wrong).
The idea that each and every article, let alone the title, should encompass the entire conflict and, why not, the history of the Earth is very dumb and it just sounds like you want to see your own propaganda injected into what is basically normal and balanced journalism
Nice strawman you have there.
You sure did trash the argument I never made.
In this interpretation, the IDF felt there might be an attack incoming, and prevented it’s adversary from doing so by striking first.
The idf assasinated top general Fuad Shukr in Beirut, far from the Lebanese border.
This is like if Hezbollah bombed Yoav Gallant in Tel Aviv. And then Hezbollah starts bombing israeli airports “pre-emptively” because “an israeli attack” (retaliation) is coming.
Hitting someone and then hitting them again because you expect them to hit back does not seem very " self defensy" or “pre-emptive” te me.
This is like if Hezbollah bombed Yoav Gallant in Tel Aviv. And then Hezbollah starts bombing israeli airports “pre-emptively” because “an israeli attack” (retaliation) is coming.
Yes, exactly. They had good reasons to assume the other side is angry and might do something violent, because they themselves just did something very violent to them! So to protect themselves, they deprive their opponents of means of retaliation. Pre-empting the retaliation.
Hitting someone and then hitting them again because you expect them to hit back does not seem very " self defensy" or “pre-emptive” te me.
I get you. I would totally agree if this was about a school dispute. However in war, there are a number of things which can be done in self defense or to pre-empt an enemy attack which might seem counterintuitive at first, like for example destroying your own infrastructure, or investing in weapons with the intent to never use them.
In war, an attacker can very well attack again to defend themselves and/or to pre-empt the enemy reaction.
If you could hire one of two generals to protect your country; one which considers pre-emptive follow-up attacks and one who would rather let the other side strike back because it seems fair, who would you hire?
Words like “defense” are used for israel. Words like “attack” are used for people defending themselves against israel.
This is because “defense” looks noble and “attack” looks violent and is associated with the aggressor of a conflict. Our media purposely chooses these words to subconsciously brainwash people. It is no coincidence these words are never swapped.
There’s a good reason the “ministry of War” is called the “ministry of Defense” now.
Of course these propaganda outlets also regularly make up lies for israel and let IDF soldiers write articles for them.
Can I borrow your “white-nationalism glasses” and reread my OED? Perhaps the text will read differently… Whilst I applaud your passion and presumably heartfelt desire for this conflict to stop you can’t just redefine words on a whim. Language doesn’t generally work like that.
If you haven’t picked a side after 10 months of Genocide I can understand you’re not very passionate about the conflict. For more info see
To reiterate: both sides are led/ruled by murderous scum. I “picked my side” over twenty years ago when I traveled with an NGO in the area. The side I picked back then? The civilians. Both Israeli and Palestinian. Forget you and your holier than though attitude. If you think genocide has only been going on for ten months then you are so out of the loop regarding the entire region that your opinion has now become worthless.
Every party wants a peace solution except israel for the past 75 years. You’re talking like a school director which gets mad at the bullied kid when he finally fights back against the bully. While doing nothing while the kid was being bullied.
The West Bank has been trying to do peace with israel for many years. Even Hamas has stated they are open to a 2 state solution. Who isn’t open to peace? Only israel.
“While doing nothing while the kid was being bullied.”? Uh… not exactly. I’ve lost friends and colleagues to both sides and you have the fucking audacity to accuse me of taking the Zionist point of view? You’re just pissed-off that your bullshit making up meanings to pre-existing words was called out. That’s all I did. I made a simple linguistic observation and without you having any idea who I am, who I’ve worked with, where I’m from and where my family are from you’ve jumped to the most inaccurate assumption you could have. Well done, genius. Round of applause for you, you absolute doughnut.
Do you think the situation would have been better if Hezbollah didn’t restart the border conflict back in October?
The Guardian is clearly quoting. Judging an article by its title is like judging a book by its cover: clearly misguided.
So is the NYT title
I never saw “pre-emptive” as an absolving term. You just decided to strike first: it’s relatively free from any connotations of propriety in my mind.
While I acknowledge that the MBFC does have some right wing bias, I think it serves its purpose. Aka to flag literal propaganda “news” sites.
The titles are literally accurate in the image. Israel is (unethically) launching preemptive strikes.
If you look at the .ml news communities that don’t use MBFC you will see that way too many news stories are from literally Russia Today, Southern China Morning Post, and other extremely biased to a very particular agenda publications.
I think people are trying to tie MBFC to being Zionist just so the bot will be dropped and it will be easier for them to normalize things like Russia Today outside of .ml spaces.
that’s quite the theory… does the bot somehow prevent posts from those places? were there more instances of popular posts from those places before the bot?
I wouldn’t say it’s a theory. Just my thoughts / speculation. I would speculate that people who are pushing out RT / Alex Jones level content would be more hesitant to do so if there would be a big “this is not a reliable news source” sticker next to it.
I would speculate that people who point Alex Jones / RT stuff just hope people read the article without thinking about where it comes from.
The requirements of quality, fairness, honesty, transparency and bias-minimization of their process for a “trust gatekeeper” such as MBFC claims to be should be far higher that those for mere newspapers, not the other way around - the former wants to control your interpretation of everything you read on the Internet whilst the latter only controls what you read in their site.
One thing is when a guy you’ve seen a lot in your local pub asks you to “lend me a fiver”, a whole different thing is when a some random guy down the pub whom you don’t really know well keeps unpromptedly telling you “go talk to this guy, he is a great investment advisor” and then the second guys asks you to “give me all your life savings and I’ll make sure you’ll be rich”.
Not only is the level of proof any half way intelligent would demand to trust somebody with “a fiver” totally different from that to trust somebody with all of one’s life savings, but the second setup even stinks of funny business due to the whole hard-push by a 3rd party whom I don’t even know well enough to trust.
Just because you’re seeing more of the “complete total bollocks” style of propaganda from places like Russia and China in communities without MBFC doesn’t mean what you see in those that have MBFC is not propaganda-heavy: I actually lived in Britain for over a decade and also in other countries in Europe (and speak those languages so can follow their news) and certainly the BBC and The Guardian systematically - as exemplified here - spin their reporting, a far more subtle style of propaganda which is based in Marketing, PR and Politics methods to shape people’s impressions of specific actors (unlike the outright lying of the newsmedia from authoritarian countries) and which is especially common in Anglo-Saxon countries.
They’re just as much out to make up your mind for you rather than merely inform you (and at least the guys at The Guardian have very openly stated they’re “opinion formers”) as the Russian and Chinese media - they just use different techniques for their manipulation of people’s opinions.
MBFC activelly re-inforces the “spin” style of propaganda of very specific news outlets with specific politican biases by claiming they are highly trustworthy and even (laughably) left-of-center, and yet compared to the newsmedia from many European non-English Speaking countries this stuff is clearly and consistently massaged to manipulate the reader into feeling in a certain way towards one side and a different way towards another side.
News reporting using the same kind of techniques to manipulate people as Car Adverts, Investing Scams and Politicians isn’t Journalism.
Had I grown up reading and watching on TV all my life this kind of spin portrayed as “news”, I would have trouble noticing it, but I was born in Southern Europe and beyond Britain also lived in Northern Europe, so this style of spin used for “opinion forming” in most mainstream newsmedia in the English-speaking World really stands out for me because it’s always “loaded” in the same direction.
Aka to flag literal propaganda “news” sites.
Why do I need MBFC to do this when I can just read someone in the comments who claims “This was posted by a Russian bot farm”?
If you look at the .ml news communities that don’t use MBFC you will see that way too many news stories are from literally Russia Today, Southern China Morning Post, and other extremely biased to a very particular agenda publications.
I don’t see any of that on their local front page. In fact, most of lemmy.ml’s front page is reposts from lemmy.world. The only other sources I see are the BBC, BoingBoing.Net, and TheConversation.Com.
I think people are trying to tie MBFC to being Zionist
The agent flags virtually every mainstream news source as Left or Center-Left. The AP, the Guardian, Reuters, CNN, you name it. The very concept of Left/Right seems to boil down to “Do American Conservatives hate you?” If they’re Zionist on top of that, it’s likely only because these corporate media outlets tend to track with the American foreign policy position of any given moment.
But don’t actually bother to ask why mainstream news gets consistently flagged as “Left Wing” despite mapping neatly to a right-wing government’s enthusiastic endorsement of various fascist middle eastern state leaders. Hell, don’t ask why mainstream news habitually runs gushy positive news stories about Saudi monarchs and North African military dictatorships.
To even raise the question… you must be getting your news from all the Russia Today articles on lemmy.ml.
MBFC is ran by Zionists and rates Zionist propaganda outlets as accurate.
Example: https://unwatch.org/
it has been said many times before, but, remember the USS Liberty
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You just linked to YouTube’s homepage, and a claim like that really needs a good source.
Cuz like, to be a false flag, they’d have had to try and blame it on someone else…
Israel didn’t try to hide the fact they did it, or blame it on anyone else. They just said they thought it was Egypt’s and tried to destroy it.
That’s just not a false flag
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Corrected the video.
Bruh…
Look at the title of the video, a fucking 4chan meme popped up as the thumbnail even…
That’s not a good enough source for a claim like that. It’s just shitty YouTube videos some random person made. And as bad as Israel is, you still have to be careful because lots of people dislike Israel because they dislike people who are Jewish, they don’t have a problem with the genocide of Muslims.
I’m not comfortable leaving those video links up, because it seems like that’s the type of people that made them.
Look at the title of the video, a fucking 4chan meme popped up as the thumbnail even…
Yes it’s called making a Youtube video. Thumbnails and Memes get people to click on video. Not "History review #495
The video is filled to the brim with direct quotes from people involved in the matter. Such as the CIA Director Richard Helms
The video is filled to the brim with direct quotes from people involved in the matter. Such as the CIA Director Richard Helms
And if you linked to a decent article or direct source with that information, that would be better.
But Israel would have still have needed to try and blame it on someone else for it to be a false flag.
Israel intentionally attacking an American ship isn’t a false flag. It’s fucked up, but that’s not what “false flag” is.
A screenshot of a YouTube video that has a screen shot of an unsourced document ain’t proof of anything.
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If it is as you say, why didn’t Israel sink the ship?
Because they did.
It’s pretty obvious you’re just here to defend israel without knowing what you’re talking about. If you want to learn something there’s a video in my previous comment.
The rocket attacks Hezbollah did launch shortly afterwards lends a lot of credibility to Israel’s claim it was preemptive.
If I walked up and started punching you in the face because I said you looked like you were about to punch me…
Would you just let me beat you up to prove you weren’t gonna punch me?
Especially knowing there’s no one that would stop me from beating you up if you didn’t defend yourself?
What if after the fight I said I punched you for something you did last week?
I’d think what would have worked best was an immediate response, which is what you’re criticizing Hezbollah for doing…
But it sounds like you didn’t understand who was who in that metaphor
Hezbollah counter-attacking after being attacked by Israel, does not mean that Hezbollah would have attacked if they had not been attacked first. If your neighbour is a bully, then it’s probably best to not be a pushover.
What does lend the “pre-emptive” claim credibility, is that afterwards Hezbollah said that they had retaliated for the murder of one of their commanders in Beirut. So the Hezbollah attack was not a counter-attack, but rather an attack that they had been preparing for weeks already.
If attacked they attack, that’s shitty evidence because they would have struck back anyway.
About as much as you punching somebody on the face could, after they punched tyouback, be claimed by you to be a preemptive punching of their face: i.e. it’s complete total bullshit.
And here we have the press from nations with heavily pro-Zionist governments and power elites spinning that bullshit into their stories whilst [email protected] moderator’s beloved “trust gatekeeper” has their own bot telling readers they’re totally trustworthy and even in some cases that those media sources spinning the-ethno-Fascists-are-the-real-victims-here takes on their stories were they’re the ones initiating violence, are lefties.
I’m not quite sure what’s the bullshit power in this, but it’s at least square.
PS: It’s funny how me and somebody else seem to have independently come up with the same metaphor, even if I worded it in a reversed way so as not to come out as aggressive.
If Hezbollah rockets had fired first, would this have meant they were responding pre-emptively to Israeli airstrikes?
If they knew of an impending Israeli airstrike, and they fired the rockets at the aircraft or airfields, would you not call it a pre-emptive strike??
They do know and they did that.
“Pre-emptive” and “self-defense” are objectively true here. Hezbollah initiated its current conflict with Israel and continues to launch attacks; Israel is fighting defensively and destruction of Hezbollah assets prevents future attacks on Israel.
(You might believe that Hezbollah is justified in attacking Israel, but it’s still the attacker and Israel is still the defender.)
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According to the IDF and American intelligence who came to the conclusion within an hour arter the attack, have shown no proof to support the claim and both have a history of false conclusions and outright fabrications when it suits their pro-Israel narrative.
Uh no, according to Hezbollah themselves. Unless of course you believe the Hezbollah leadership are all Mossad plants
Nope. There’s no defensive way to bomb civilian targets. That’s not how the word or indeed the world works.
There were 3 deaths on the Lebanese side: 2 Hezbollah fighters and 1 from an associated
Uh no, according to Hezbollah themselves
Gonna need a source on that.
There were 3 deaths on the Lebanese side: 2 Hezbollah fighters and 1 from an associated
Sounds EXTREMELY unlike how the IDF tends to operate. Gonna need a reliable source on that one too.
Hezbollah deputy chief Naim Qassem said on Friday that the group would not be swayed by calls for it to stay on the sidelines of the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, saying the party was “fully ready” to contribute to the fighting.
Hezbollah said the strikes killed two of its fighters in al-Tiri. The Hezbollah-allied Shi’ite Muslim group Amal said a strike on Khiam killed one of its fighters.
fully ready
How on earth can you take “we’re prepared” to mean claiming that they DID the thing? 🤦
As for the other one, it’s very vague. There’s no indication of whether or not there’s uncounted civilians, only casualties of the official participants with their source being the notorious massacrer of innocents and burier of truth IDF…
I think you have a very, very onesided view on this
You can find plenty of articles from October where Hezbollah is proud to declare they were attacking Israel to support Gaza and tie up some of Israel’s forces
You can find plenty of articles about how almost all civilians in Southern Lebanon have been evacuated.
There’s no indication of whether or not there’s uncounted civilians, only casualties of the official participants with their source being the notorious massacrer of innocents and burier of truth IDF…
The information you’re disputing is not coming from the IDF but directly from Hezbollah themselves, on both these issues
I share your opinion. I don’t think its worth continuing to debate that guy as you’ll never come to a conclusion. It doesn’t really matter what one thinks of the civilian tragedy in Gaza when it comes to whether or not Israel is fighting Hezbollah defensively. In support of Hamas they started sending more bombs in the northern border of Israel so the IDF followed suite to prevent Hezbollah.
I think you have a very, very onesided view on this
Yeah, I do. Because some things aren’t about sides but about whether or not something is factually accurate.
I’m on the “side” of not doing free PR for known liars whether they be Israel claiming they never did anything wrong, or terrorists bragging without evidence.
almost all civilians in Southern Lebanon have been evacuated.
Guess what? Forced relocation is in itself a war crime. Forcing people out of their homes so that needlessly bombing them to rubble won’t look as bad as it otherwise would is NOT a kindness.
The information you’re disputing is not coming from the IDF but directly from Hezbollah themselves, on both these issues
So you keep claiming without any source except “trust me, dude” 🙄
This is some George W Bush doublespeak.
You cannot “pre-emptively” defend yourself, an attack to head off a suspected attack is still an attack.
Other than that semantic nitpick, personally I’m there with you… However, you cannot seriously be pointing this out without also recognizing that Israel is very much the initial offender in any conflict that arises as direct result of their actions in gaza.
If I let a bully sucker punch me so I have an excuse to beat up all the people around them, and then someone else close by hits me, I can’t honestly say I am the one who is defending myself.
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I think the purpose of the word “pre-emptive” is to describe a situation where one side appears to attack first but that side is actually acting to prevent an attack against itself. Consider a less controversial situation: Ukraine launched drones into Russia in order to blow up glide bombs in storage at Russian airbases. I suppose that could be described as a “pre-emptive attack” but I still see it as an act of self-defense.
With regard to your second point: Hezbollah has agency. They weren’t just helplessly carried along by events in Gaza; they chose to get involved. Their choice was predictable, but it was still theirs. One could argue that it was justified (and Hezbollah would certainly argue that it was justified) but justification is a matter of opinion and even if an attack is considered justified, the defender is still, well, defending.
Israel attacked Lebanon first not the other way around.
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Right? They’ve been cruisin’ for a bruisin’ for a long time. I really don’t care what happens to them.
fuck hamas
Is a ‘massive strike’ bigger or smaller than a ‘large-scale attack’?
It’s understandable, in an environment where they don’t control all the information that readers have access to, propagandists have to use framing techniques from PR, Marketing and Politics to push out a certain impression of trustworthiness and maximizing empathy towards one side, since they can’t just use outright lies without getting caught like propagandists in places like Russia can (mind you, the NYT has definitelly been caught repeating IDF lies).
At least this time around they didn’t use the trick of the Passive Voice (for example: “Massive strikes land in Lebanon”).
That propaganda trick is a pretty common one in the “reporting” of these news sources when they talk about Israeli bombings of civilians in Gaza (which are generally reported as “deaths in Gaza” as if they were just due to natural causes rather than being murders).
Mind you the “verbatum” and undisputed quoting of IDF claims on the title as exemplified here is also a pretty commonly used propaganda techniques by these newsmedia outlets.
Since a lot of users don’t seem to have caught on yet:
The Intercept collected more than 1,000 articles from the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times about Israel’s war on Gaza and tallied up the usages of certain key terms and the context in which they were used. The tallies reveal a gross imbalance in the way Israelis and pro-Israel figures are covered versus Palestinians and pro-Palestinian voices — with usages that favor Israeli narratives over Palestinian ones.
The term “slaughter” was used by editors and reporters to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 60 to 1, and “massacre” was used to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 125 to 2. “Horrific” was used to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 36 to 4.
Only two headlines out of over 1,100 news articles in the study mention the word “children” related to Gazan children. In a notable exception, the New York Times ran a late-November front-page story on the historic pace of killings of Palestinian women and children, though the headline featured neither group.
Overall, Israel’s killings in Gaza are not given proportionate coverage in either scope or emotional weight as the deaths of Israelis on October 7. These killings are mostly presented as arbitrarily high, abstract figures. Nor are the killings described using emotive language like “massacre,” “slaughter,” or “horrific.” Hamas’s killings of Israeli civilians are consistently portrayed as part of the group’s strategy, whereas Palestinian civilian killings are covered almost as if they were a series of one-off mistakes, made thousands of times, despite numerous points of evidence indicating Israel’s intent to harm civilians and civilian infrastructure.
Lots of us know this. Lots of us can also see that the 4 titles that you posted are not an example of this.
Some of those article titles that you are trying to paint as inaccurate, are in fact highly accurate. I can’t find anything wrong with the titles of the guardian and the new York Times that you posted. They are reporting a thing that happened and a thing that was said. They make it very clear that the “pre-emptive” thing is a claim of Israel and not a fact.
Unlike your claim in the OP, The Guardian also doesn’t have a credibility of high on that shitty mbfc site, but only “mixed”.
As I’ve explained above, reliably giving prominence to the quotes of one source promotes that one source and those quotes as it subconsciously it makes it seem more important to the reader.
This is a technique used for Propaganda when the propagandist doesn’t control the information space of the reader: since outright lies would easily be caught when readers have easy access to other newsmedia, the promotion of one side over the other by the propagandist is instead done by portraying it as more important by quoting it more often, giving more prominence to those quotes and never challenging them.
It’s interesting the number of concerned posters popping out if the woodwork here repeating the pretty old falacy commonly harped by such news media that “they are stating those are quotes hence they’re giving fair coverage” which is an obvious oversimplification of how impressions are made on others and hence of how opinions are made by even the most junior professional in PR, Marketing or Politics.
Lots of us know this. Lots of us can also see that the 4 titles that you posted are not an example of this.
Why is Hezbollah not defending themselves against a large scale israeli attack?
Why is Hezbollah not launching a “pre-emptive” attack?
Why is Hezbollah not "launching rockets ‘in self defense’?
Because loaded language is used in favor of israel, not against it.
Your alternative titles really highlight how little you value factuality.
Hezbollah did not claim to be launching a pre-emptive attack. And claiming that they launched a pre-emptive attack after they were already attacked is … Weird.
No one is reporting that Hezbollah was launching these rockets in self defence, because Hezbollah has already let it be known that their attack was a retaliation for the murder of one of their commanders in july.
No news source worth their salt is going to use those titles, because it’s straight up inventing alternate facts.
Your 4 examples of what you want to portray as “non credible reporting” are professionals. Unlike you, they’re not just going to invent news to push their narrative. Yes they have their biases, but unlike your alternate facts, their reporting is based on actual facts.
