19043: Esser: Re: 19031: Walton: RE: 19012: (Ives) While U.S. Tries to Mask its Role... (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser torx@joimail.com

On the subject of "interesting editorial bias": I am not defending
Workers World (WW) here, since there's other reporting that I like
better; but you're stating that news stories are to be non-passionate
and supposed to support factual statements and choose only to take
offense at WW reporting, when there are many more articles that
deserve your critical examination. The Associated Press, Agence
France Presse and Reuters, to name only a few, do also exactly what
you dislike. These major agencies take a lot of their reporting
straight from the mouth of despicable characters with a violent past,
presenting it as balanced rews and inflate or deflate numbers of
protesters for example at will or parrot the biased reporting of
french language media in Haiti that is clearly on the side of Apaid,
Chamblain and others. These major news sources constantly leave out
little unpleasant details, such as the fact that the opposition has
nowhere near the popular support that Aristide still enjoys, that
they couldn't win an election because the masses know about their
agenda and that's why the opposition doesn't want elections and that
their leadership is comprised of sweatshop owners and others with a
unsavory history and contempt for the democratic process. If we are
to criticize reporting why not be fair and consistent: let's apply
the same standards to all. The AP stories and others also often are
mistaken for decent journalism or genuine news articles and when you
speak to people on the ground in Haiti covering the same events the
notion these articles are based on factual statements dissolves in
thin air.



Robert Walton wrote:
> Normally, a "news" story is composed of non-passionate topical and
> supporting factual statements.  A news story may also include
> quotations or
> attributions (identified as such)which may be quite impassioned or
> non-factual.
>
> Workers World Newspaper- http://www.workers.org/wwp.php  has an
> "interesting" editorial bias which has extended to their news
> reporting.
>
> My concern is that their story might be erroneously mistaken for a news
> article.  This is not to say that the WWN should be dismissed out of
> hand
> since it depicts a Marxist-Socialist point of view with reasonable
> accuracy.