On Bias in the Media?
I haven't written about bias in the media - specifically against Israel - in quite a while. Maybe this is because Israeli politicians have been careful since Lebanon to restrain themselves... leaving the media with nothing to report on.
Maybe it's because Google News has become my main source of news, and I usually read three articles about any given subject to get as well-rounded a view on the subject as possible - letting the various biases cancel each other out - or call attention to each other & letting the facts seep through.
Today though, I came across an article in the New York Times that went too far in exhibiting the Times' persistent bias against Israel.
The headline read, "Fatah Officials' Home Stormed in Gaza Clashes"
The photograph was of destruction & a large crowd of Palestinians.
The photograph's caption read, "Palestinians searching for survivors after an Israeli missile strike on a building in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip today."
The first paragraph mentions that the Israeli air strike is just one aspect of the violence in Gaza, and then briefly mentions some of the factional fighting. Five paragraphs down the NYTimes finally indicate that the air strike was in retaliation for an increase in missiles raining down on the town of Sderot - which have injured many civilians.
The rest of the article basically focuses on the factional fighting between Hamas & Fatah. They even mention that Hamas militants killed five of their own "by accident" and shot at point-blank range seven Fatah police men.
If it's not clear where the bias is, I'll spell it out. The article was a total of 870 words. Except for maybe one paragraph, the article doesn't mention violence coming from Israel - the article focuses on the "factional violence" (which I'd call civil war). But, we all know what people look at first, in order to determine if they'll keep reading: the headline and the caption for the large photo at the top. Those three elements, in this case, point a bloody finger at Israel.
The headline doesn't indicate who stormed the Fatah Official's home (Hamas stormed it). But the image below the headline, and the caption below the image both discuss Israel's bombing of a "building" (a Hamas office).
At quick glance it's easy to assume that the building bombed by Israel in the image that the caption refers to is the home referred to in the title. Yet the bombing by Israel has nothing to do with the war Palestinians are waging on each other. Considering that the article is about Palestinians killing Palestinians, why is there an image and a caption of Israeli force?
The article can be found here...
This entry was posted
on May 17, 2007 at 5/17/2007 01:38:00 AM.
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On the Mobile Phone Business
The McKinsey Quarterly often publishes great interviews with business leaders. Today I read an interesting interview with Keith Pardy, Nokia’s senior vp of strategic marketing. Below are some lines that struck a particular cord with me:
"It’s not about pushing out messages any more. You have to initiate interesting conversations and build meaningful relationships with consumers."
"If you start playing games with people, they’ll find out and eat you alive."
"...we haven’t figured out how to unleash all the creative potential that lies in people talking about our products in exciting new ways."
"[in North America] the understanding of the price-value equation is confused, since the cost of the [mobile] device is wrapped up in long-term service contracts."
"watch what happens when you give somebody a new device. The first thing they do is put it in their hands, pop it up and down a little bit, and roll it around. Now that, to me, is an insight."
Read it!
Labels: marketing, Mobile, Phones, Technology
This entry was posted
on May 8, 2007 at 5/08/2007 12:22:00 PM.
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Local Online Social Networking
Today I read about Clear Channel starting an interesting experiment in local social networking. Read about it here.
As a big proponent of local networking, I'm really interested in seeing how this pans out for Clear Channel... Although I'm a bit skeptical - maybe it'll be great for kids who haven't gone to college yet (and don't know many people outside of their home city), as well as older folk who haven't really tried out online social networking, and don't have a network outside of their home city.
My skepticism is borne out of the appreciation for the appeal of Facebook, et al... users who aren't currently in the same city, can keep in touch easily no matter where they are in the world. And at the same time, they're able to keep in touch with people who do live near them. Just today on Facebook one friend who lives in DC posted that he'll be in Columbus, OH tomorrow in case anyone else will be there and wants to meet up. Another friend who lives here in NYC posted that she'll be attending the Salute to Israel parade on Sunday, if anyone wants to join her.
This entry was posted
on May 1, 2007 at 5/01/2007 06:27:00 PM.
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High Fructose Corn Syrup
I'm going to put this out there: from the little evidence I have, it appears to me that High Fructose Corn Syrup is connected to the insanely high rate of diabetes in the US, and the high incidence of obesity.
And while I haven't seen much research on the connection HFCS has to poor health- I doubt we'll see a study any time soon, as it's used in almost every American made product.
I don't particularly like conspiracy theories - this one seems plausible. Hopefully I'll be able to find more evidence soon... If you have thoughts or ideas, please share.
This entry was posted
on at 5/01/2007 12:54:00 AM.
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