Al-Jazeera releases 1,600 internal documents of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations
english.aljazeera.net
english.aljazeera.net
[1] http://english.aljazeera.net/palestinepapers/2011/01/2011122...
"There are nearly 1,700 files, thousands of pages of diplomatic correspondence detailing the inner workings of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process."
That suggests we'll end up with more than 1,600 files, not just a few files totaling 1,600 pages.
(and yes, transparency is a good thing in general, as long as no severe overriding concerns are present)
EDIT: I'd previously misread that Wikileaks was the source of the leak, but that's incorrect.
As a side note, your profanity is unnecessary and only detracts from your point.
I don't want to argue about who is right, I just want to point out you should be more careful not to make statements basically along the lines of mistaking your biases for neutrality. You call it experience but it is actually your political judgment.
Perhaps a different term would be better, but when I say I think they're more neutral, it's because they use fewer "weasel words"/phrases, very clearly delineate between their core factual stories and their opinion/analysis pieces, and feature fewer sensationalist pieces without significant hard-fact backing.
Again, what you say is reasonable, but doesn't apply in the context I was replying to the parent's statement in.
I've seen accusations from both sides of the conflict in Israel accuse the BBC of bias, for example, so I feel happy to trust their reporting.
I find this fetishization of neutrality to be bizarre: true neutrality is indistinguishable from ignorance. Why would anyone yearn to be ignorant? Is there not enough ignorance in the world?
You, me, and my mother's cat can and should have opinions and biases, but I'd like my news organisations to at least make a serious and sincere attempt to avoid them in their reporting.
You seem to have switched from discussing neutrality to impartiality and to me those are very different concepts. I expect a judge to be impartial but not to be neutral: a neutral judge could never make a judgment. The whole point of analyzing evidence is to become non-neutral, to make a determination of the state of the world.
Also, Godwin's law - you lose.
OK. Do you have any explanation? Or does your argument consist of only assertion?
Also, Godwin's law - you lose.
You know that Godwin's law was a positive and not a normative statement, right? So what exactly have I lost?
I mean, are you saying I'm wrong to criticize a value system that gives lots of free advertising and social prestige to Holocaust deniers while marginalizing actual experts?
In the context, the two words are essentially synonyms; they mean that you favour neither side. Go look up the definitions rather than imposing your own artificial distinction.
And the point with Godwin's law is that if you need to resort to absurd comparisons with Hitler or the Holocaust, then you obviously don't have much of an argument.
Your point above seems to be that one time, somewhere, a TV program took a ridiculous stand on an issue[1], therefore the whole media artifice is ridiculously biased and crumbling... or something.
[1] Note - not a neutral stance, because they gave holocaust deniers disproportionate airtime in comparison to the weight of evidence.
The definitions at dictionary.com support my original claim.
And the point with Godwin's law is that if you need to resort to absurd comparisons with Hitler or the Holocaust, then you obviously don't have much of an argument.
If you want to fabricate some new phony norm, please give it a unique name rather than misappropriating a name from a completely unrelated phenomena.
Your point above seems to be that one time, somewhere, a TV program took a ridiculous stand on an issue[1], therefore the whole media artifice is ridiculously biased and crumbling... or something.
My point is that this was one particularly egregious instance that is part of a larger pattern. Go read some media criticism: the idea that media organizations are obsessed with "balance" and "neutrality" to the detriment of actual truth telling is not something I invented.
[1] Note - not a neutral stance, because they gave holocaust deniers disproportionate airtime in comparison to the weight of evidence.
So, now, in order to be neutral, you have to evaluate competing claims based on evidence...
impartial - adj: not prejudiced towards or against any particular side or party; fair; unbiased
neu·tral -adj ... 2. not aligned with or supporting any side or position in a controversy.
How are these not synonyms?
Ditto with Godwin's Law - go and look at the Wikipedia entry:
Godwin's law does not claim to articulate a fallacy; it is instead framed as a memetic tool to reduce the incidence of inappropriate hyperbolic comparisons. "Although deliberately framed as if it were a law of nature or of mathematics, its purpose has always been rhetorical and pedagogical: "I wanted folks who glibly compared someone else to Hitler or to Nazis to think a bit harder about the Holocaust," Godwin has written.[10]
Which (again) is the original point: You have one unattributed example (involving Nazis!) of biased reporting, which you're trying to build a whole argument on. That doesn't work - you have an infinity of potential claims (eg. the FSM did it), so unless you have an infinite amount of time you can't possibly deal with them all. But you can give them weight/air time according to the weight of evidence behind them. Framing that sort of judgement as "inherent bias" is specious reasoning.
The difference is time. Judges are impartial, but they are not neutral: the whole point of judge's role is to become non-neutral. By the time a journalist has conducted interviews, done research, assembled their notes, and started writing a story, they should not be neutral either: they should have come to some conclusions about the world that a completely ignorant (read: neutral) reader would not share precisely because they've done research.
Ditto with Godwin's Law - go and look at the Wikipedia entry
You are misrepresenting the article. Read the first sentence: Godwin's law is a humorous observation... That's it. An observation. That is funny. Observations are not normative. Your insistence that they are is a category error.
You have one unattributed example (involving Nazis!)
First of all, the example involves Holocaust deniers, not Nazis. There's actually a pretty spectacular difference between the two: Holocaust deniers, vile that they may be, have generally not killed anyone.
Secondly, if you want a cite, feel free to read http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/18/national/18holocaust.html
I could continue to rebut your argument, but I suspect that I'm wasting my breath.
> remarkably neutral compared to most US news sources
Then go and watch Fox and CNN.
"PA offered to concede almost all of East Jerusalem, an historic concession for which Israel offered nothing in return."
East Jerusalem is not for the Palestinian Authority to give away, it was never their property [1]. This shows AlJazeera's bias in the matter. Also, when Tzipi Livni is quoted in the article, the reporter follows it with "That is the Israeli framing." -- quotes from PA spokesmen aren't followed by such comments.
[1] East Jerusalem used to be part of the British Mandate, until 1948, when the UN proposed it would become a Corpus Separatum, administered by them. The Arab League turned down the offer, Jordan invaded it instead. In 1967, Israel took control of the area. At no point in time has East Jerusalem been under rule of the Palestinian Authority.