The Singapore Forum

Ok here is a story from the LA Times.

The German news organization Der Spiegel published photographs Sunday showing two U.S. soldiers posing with an Afghan corpse.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld ... 0625.story

So what some GI's take some pictures of some corpses. Big deal, so what, happens all the time. Right?

Now how the story was reported in the Guardian in the UK.

Commanders in Afghanistan are bracing themselves for possible riots and public fury triggered by the publication of "trophy" photographs of US soldiers posing with the dead bodies of defenceless Afghan civilians they killed.

http://m.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/ ... pe=article

OMFG! WTF! That's disgusting!
So here you have 2 newspapers covering the same story but spinning it to two completely different directions!

You're calling the Guardian a newspaper?

Spin, "yellow journalism", "muckraking"...news organizations have always done this, I think?

Disgraceful. Because any given event has only one possible accurate interpretation.

cromasaig wrote:Disgraceful. Because any given event has only one possible accurate interpretation.

Yeah, mine





Edit: But, seriously, unless it's on the Op Ed page, I don't want to hear the writer's opinion or interpretation. Just report the story, thanks.

The US newspapers (the LATimes is not the only one) are clearly under-reporting the incident and not informing the read of all the facts. (nowhere does it say the photo was with a civilian they just shot). While the guardian was over dramatising and emotionally loading the story.

Both are wrong but they are clearly editorialising to either downplay or overplay the incident. The actual story is upsetting but editorialising for effect is disgraceful.

Oz: what makes you in any better position? Haven't you been overplaying the whole nuclear incident only 2-3 days ago on these very pages?

Stop being hypocritical and learn to accept there's a bunch of people with their own agendas, and in all honesty, there's little you can do to influence most of the things out there. And once you can do that, the beer tases just so much nicer!

Don't worry Oz. The truth is out there..

I thought the fact that newspaper and tv stations have their own agendas has been well-known since Fox news. I watched the nuclear disaster in Japan in Germany quite a bit and found it very different how the state-owned media and the free media reported it

most of the Ozzie press that we quote on here is owned by Fox too...

Oz, you forgot to quote the parts of the LA Times that went into more detail of the incident.

Oh hang on, they didn't serve your purpose did they? Silly me.

Fat Bob wrote:Oz: what makes you in any better position? Haven't you been overplaying the whole nuclear incident only 2-3 days ago on these very pages?

Have I? or has the press underplayed it? How do you know for sure? Cause the "telegraph" tells you so?
I see now nuclear radiation has entered the food supply. Now they admit there was a partial meltdown at the reactor and the radiation leaking is high enough to kill people. Yes this rather long article is spun.

Officials said the rating was raised after they realised the full extent of the radiation leaking from the plant. They also said that 3 per cent of the fuel in three of the reactors at the Fukushima plant had been severely damaged, suggesting those reactor cores have partially melted down.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... eople.html''

So over the coming weeks,months, years more stories will come out (spun one way or the other) and the "Real" truth will eventually be known.

This is the whole point. The actual news is completely irrelevent, how it is presented or "how it makes you react or not react" is what is important to the media.

Kooky wrote:Oz, you forgot to quote the parts of the LA Times that went into more detail of the incident.

I think you missed the point. Where in the LATimes article are the words "civilians they just shot" while the Guardian goes on to over play those words and adds words like "trophy" and "defenseless". That is the point I'm trying to make.

I think we've all missed the point. You're a nutter and there's no reasoning with you.

Morrolan wrote:most of the Ozzie press that we quote on here is owned by Fox too...

Not me. Its rare for me to read a News Corp paper online. Fairfax is a tad more balanced.

baloo wrote:

Morrolan wrote:most of the Ozzie press that we quote on here is owned by Fox too...

Not me. Its rare for me to read a News Corp paper online. Fairfax is a tad more balanced.

yes, though their online papers are badly set up.

Actually you think some of my theories are crackpot the australian news limited papers are hillarious. Try this one.

GRAVE fears were last night being held for the Darwin's talking cat, Mischief, amid fears it had been abducted by aliens.
It came after Siberian air traffic controllers claim that a female-sounding alien spoke to them in a cat-like language.
They say that a mysterious object - which they believe was a high-speed UFO - appeared on flight monitors over the remote Russian city of Yakutsk, the Daily Mail reported. Darwin locals last night expressed concern the air traffic controller may have mistaken the voice for that of Mischief, the Territory's talking cat.

http://www.couriermail.com.au/entertain ... 6015957640

shoot me now...

Morrolan wrote:shoot me now...

Only if we can pose with your body afterwards.

baloo wrote:

Morrolan wrote:shoot me now...

Only if we can pose with your body afterwards.

There is no such thing as universal truth, weather with intend or not.