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Fri Sep 2,10:16 AM ET 2005
By Andrew Gray | |
| The world has watched amazed as the planet's only superpower struggles with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, with some saying the chaos has exposed flaws and deep divisions in American society. | Here are the unbiased facts in this paragraph: "The world has watched as the US struggles with the aftermath of Hurricate Katrina." The rest is media bias. Additional adjectives and descriptors are all added to try to manipulate your emotional response the this news.
Especially watch, both here and throughout the article for nebulous assignments such as: "some say ... ," "many say ... ," "Commentators note ... ," these are red-flag lead-ins that what follows is something the writer would like to have you believe, but he doesn't have the cajones to say that he thinks it, and doesn't have a quotable source for ... i.e., probably a load of hooey." |
| World leaders and ordinary citizens have expressed sympathy with the people of the southern United States whose lives were devastated by the hurricane and the flooding that followed. | |
| But many have also been shocked by the images of disorder beamed around the world -- looters roaming the debris-strewn streets and thousands of people gathered in New Orleans waiting for the authorities to provide food, water and other aid. | Only the most shocking of images get chosen to beam around the world. Here's what get's left behind, on the cutting room floor, as not newsworthy: images of people helping each other, images of heroism and courage by people struggling in the midst of this disaster, images of selflessness and hope in the face of disaster and despair. There is a 100% guarantee that in the midst of any disaster there are these images, as well as sensational scenes of anarchy and violence that get published. That's bias in photo-journalism. |
| "Anarchy in the USA" declared Britain's best-selling newspaper The Sun. | |
| "Apocalypse Now" headlined Germany's Handelsblatt daily. | |
| The pictures of the catastrophe -- which has killed hundreds and possibly thousands -- have evoked memories of crises in the world's poorest nations such as last year's tsunami in Asia, which left more than 230,000 people dead or missing. | |
| But some view the response to those disasters more favorably than the lawless aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. | A response spearheaded in large part by the United States and a massive outpouring of support from American private citizenry. |
| "I am absolutely disgusted. After the tsunami our people, even the ones who lost everything, wanted to help the others who were suffering," said Sajeewa Chinthaka, 36, as he watched a cricket match in Colombo, Sri Lanka. | Here the writer quotes an individual who has attributed the moral destitution of the lowest dregs of our society, now getting all the headlines, to our national character. He's noticing the mismatch between his personal experience of disaster (tsunami), and what the US news media chooses to "beam around the world" to depict this American disaster. |
| "Not a single tourist caught in the tsunami was mugged. Now with all this happening in the U.S. we can easily see where the civilized part of the world's population is." | 100% guarantee that someone who lost everything during the tsunami came across something that didn't belong to them, and took it. It wasn't widely reported. Possibly there is a moral divide between residents of Sri Lanka and residents of New Orleans; it is not indicative of our national character. |
| SINKING INTO ANARCHY | |
| Many newspapers highlighted criticism of local and state authorities and of President Bush. Some compared the sputtering relief effort with the massive amounts of money and resources poured into the war in Iraq. | "Many newspapers highlighted criticism of ... President Bush" ... hardly surprising in any context.
Note the colorful choice of words in the sentence that follows. The bare facts (and note the red-flag lead in of "some [say] ... ") are: "Some compared the relief effort to the war in Iraq." How they could be compared doesn't seem immediately obvious does it? All the extra words and descriptors are media bias, and distract us from the fact that this is almost a stupid comparison to make! The writer does not pretend that there's any substance in his arguments, he's just manipulating the emotions of the reader. |
| "A modern metropolis sinking in water and into anarchy -- it is a really cruel spectacle for a champion of security like Bush," France's left-leaning Liberation newspaper said. | OK, attributed to "left-leaning Liberation newspaper...." |
| "(Al Qaeda leader Osama) bin Laden, nice and dry in his hideaway, must be killing himself laughing." | Let's hope so. |
| A female employee at a multinational firm in South Korea said it may have been no accident the U.S. was hit. | I'm sure she's a fine person, and very smart. |
| "Maybe it was punishment for what it did to Iraq, which has a man-made disaster, not a natural disaster," said the woman, who did not want to be named as she has an American manager. | ... though, apparently, somewhat superstitious ... |
| "A lot of the people I work with think this way. We spoke about it just the other day," she said. | To quote a writer I know: " ... we can easily see where the civilized part of the world's population is." A writer not above devoting three paragraphs to a little third world superstition here. |
| Commentators noted the victims of the hurricane were overwhelmingly African Americans, too poor to flee the region as the hurricane loomed unlike some of their white neighbors. | The kernel of truth, here? "The victims of the hurricane were too poor to flee the region, unlike some of their neighbors"
The rest is media bias (and note the red-flag lead in of "Commentators noted ... "). Additional adjectives and descriptors are all added to try to manipulate your emotional response the this news. And how appalling! This is shameless exploitation of the less than careful reader. The writer implies that New Orleans is a city of poor black people, and white people (all more prosperous than black people) didn't have to stay and suffer. |
| New Orleans ranks fifth in the United States in terms of African American population and 67 percent of the city's residents are black. | Here's why the victims are overwhelmingly African Americans: the city is overwhelmingly populated by African Americans! |
| "In one of the poorest states in the country, where black people earn half as much as white people, this has taken on a racial dimension," said a report in Britain's Guardian daily. | I always like to understand context, when a sentence is lifted from somewhere. So I searched on the word "Katrina" on the Guardian's website and found 33 articles and scanned all for the word "racial" ... no hits. Now when I look back at this sentence, I'm forced to admit it doesn't mention Katrina, or even Louisiana ... or the year 2005 (this probably was true sometime in history, while the Guardian was publishing).
If this sentence is true, and we're comparing apples to apples (i.e., black people in similar jobs to white people earn half as much as white people), then this fact itself represents a problem with a racial dimension; nothing to do with a hurricane, e.g. this is basically irrelevant to the disaster at hand and strictly inflammatory. |
| Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn, in a veiled criticism of U.S. political thought, said the disaster showed the need for a strong state that could help poor people. | I wonder if the Minister agrees that it was a veiled criticism of U.S. political thought. |
| "You see in this example that even in the 21st century you need the state, a good functioning state, and I hope that for all these people, these poor people, that the Americans will do their best," he told reporters at a European Union meeting in Newport, Wales. | Do you agree that this is a veiled criticism of U.S. political thought, reader? |
| David Fordham, 33, a hospital anesthetist speaking at a London underground rail station, said he had spent time in America and was not surprised the country had struggled to cope. | This sentence could mean either that he's not surprised at how hard we worked to cope, OR as the writer hopes we hear it, that he's not surprised our attempts to cope fell short. The writer's position is not implicit in the words. |
| "Maybe they just thought they could sit it out and everything would be okay," he said. | Expected better of the people of New Orleans than to assume there would be looting and anarchistic mayhem? |
| "It's unbelievable though -- the TV images -- and your heart goes out to them." | The TV images again; scary, after seeing some of the journalistic choices made in this article, to realize that what images go out are nothing but journalistic choices as well. I'll tell you what is certainly on the cutting room floor at the newsrooms: images of people helping each other, images of heroism and courage by people struggling in the midst of this disaster, images of selflessness and hope in the face of disaster and despair. Why are these images on the cutting room floor? |
| (With reporting by Reuters bureaux around the world) | |
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