[flagged]
It's funny to see the evolution of language. Quotation marks indicated that something was a direct quote. Then people started to use them as a sarcasm indicator. Now we're to the point where people can't even recognize them as indicating a direct quote.
Israel invades Lebanon due to risk of Hezbollah attacks
rather than:
Israel says "risk of Hezbollah attacks" reason for invasion
“40 beheaded babies” and mass/systematic rape propaganda accepted with zero verification (journalism 101) and, once debunked, zero retractions were made
Hamas-run, but not Likud-run
Condemnation of atrocities by Israel and the US that comes from Israeli and Western voices is given significantly more weight than the same claims coming from Palestinian or Arab voices. After all, the native lacks the capacity to be objective.
Israeli gov statements are taken as undeniable fact, while Palestinian (Gaza or West Bank) gov spokespeople or even Palestinian people in general are barely even platformed
Over-representation of Zionists in editorial teams of every major newspaper and news channel across all Western countries, which (naturally) led to coordinated suppression of any Palestinian voice internally and externally (started to change only relatively recently).
And the list goes on.
https://cfmm.org.uk/resource/bbc-on-gaza-israel-one-story-do...
On the BBC specifically, try reading through their articles, especially from early on, and tell me what the editorial slant is. Yes, most of the content is neatly wrapped in quotation marks, but what picture were they trying to paint?
On UK media in general: https://www.declassifieduk.org/beheaded-babies-how-uk-media-...
My point is that both UK and Western media immediately jumped on and recirculated the claim in the first few days without confirmation. This was just enough to sear the image of beheaded babies into the minds of viewers & readers in the West, helping to justify Israel’s campaign to starve out the “human animals” and raze Gaza (a least in the mind of the avg citizen).
I think this was just a stylistic choice and that this whole thread is a weird tangent.
But generally, yes, I think cynicism has run amok among the very-online.
I believe BBC and other outlets with journalistic standards use quotes when reporting what officials say and only drop the quotes when they have independent verification, like eyewitness reports from one of their own journalists.
Iran says Strait of Hormuz is 'open' but tracking shows few ships moving - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwydexp39ddo
I see how it would read as bias if one interprets them as scare quotes, but it really does just mean "this is verbatim" when used here.
The Epstein stuff is extremely disappointing of course, but his analysis is still quite sober and valid.
You still didn't answer.
The BBC's main sin in relation to Trump is sane-washing, treating his bizarre outbursts as if they were reasonable things for a US president to say. Eg. were he to say "I have a solid gold prostate!" they'd have an Anthony Zurcher piece entitled "Is Trump's prostate really made of gold?" with a quote from a doctor saying "while it seems unlikely and would probably be uncomfortable, having a gold prostate would be unlikely to cause any noticeable side effects as the metal is inert" and a discussion of the benefits of replacing a cancer-prone organ with a noble metal.
Not reporting on Trump is not an option because his words and actions have huge ramifications for the world.
I think in general the press has gotten much better at just straight up saying that Trump is lying or wrong, as opposed to previous policy of only reporting counter claims from other parties.
They are simply reporting what sources have said:
Houthis 'take control' of Perim Island - government source published at 09:00
Houthi rebels have "taken control" of Perim Island in the Bab al-Mandab Strait, according to a source. Earlier, we were reporting that the group had reached the key island.
The AFP news agency also says Houthis have "taken over" Perim Island, also referred to as Mayyun, according to eyewitnesses and a local government official.
"Boats carrying armed Houthi fighters reached Mayyun Island after government forces withdrew from it yesterday," the official tells AFP.
Reporting discourse is different from reporting fact, and I do not know the BBC for reporting unverified discourse or facts.
Activists decry police murder of protester
Activists decry police "murder" of protester
The first implies that the police murdering the protestor is an established fact. The second makes it clear that it is the activists who used the term "murder" rather than it being a non-contentious fact.
Mayor denounces "radical activists" rioting and damaging city property in response to an officer-involved incident that resulted in one fatal kinetic altercation with a "loud and provocatively dressed" man.
Ah, the past exonerative tense. https://archive.is/wPVdy
Read McSweeney's guide to ambiguous grammar, where they lead you step by step from the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog to the ultimate say-nothing sentence speed was involved in a jumping-related incident while a fox was brown, and the punchline is you can then translate "the St Louis County Police Department was involved in an officer-involved shooting after officers came under heavy gunfire" to "a police officer shot a black person" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Michael_Brown)
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/an-interactive-guide-to-...
But no, that's the language issued by police departments covering their asses. Journalists are a little bit covering their asses in making clear what is a quote and what isn't, but they're still responsible for what they choose to quote, and to be clear on whether they have verified the claims they're quoting.
Ideally, unverified claims shouldn't even be in an article. But when there _has_ been some kind of stramash, they just don't know who did what, the need to rush out an article to get clicks means they'll just quote both sides and try to give them equal prominence until they can do more verification.
oh like this article that says a child was hit by a "LAPD bullet" as though wild bullets roam the streets of LA looking for children instead of being fired from a gun by a person who made a decision.
It's generally police officials that use that terminology.
tl;dr: two countries, divided by a common language.
It is not about the quotes being verified or unverified. It is about something said by somebody, that you are reporting.
If you’re reporting that “Government sources say Houthis have ‘taken control’ of an island” then the fact that government sources used the words ‘taken control’ is itself interesting.
The headlines “Russia ‘will be defeated’ in Ukraine says Zelensky”, “Russia ‘will be defeated’ in Ukraine says Putin”, and “Russia ‘will be defeated’ in Ukraine says Taylor Swift” all tell of vastly different news events.
That single quoted phrase was set in the context of other words, and that context defined its meaning. We know this to an extent that almost no one could have imagined since LLMs have become a huge part of the world.
My favorite example of this is how no article in Britain during Corbyn's leadership of the labor party would ever quote an entire sentence that he had said. Thousands of articles, and the quotes were all fragmentary phrases and lone words framed in editorial.
edit: Brits and the BBC especially do this more than most, likely because of their bizarre libel laws (that were once even worse than they are now.)
> actually verifying the truth
That's the job of the reader, not the journalist. Unless you're living under oppression. So you have misunderstood the purpose of reporting.