A short introduction

This blog concerns mostly global, economic and political issues. Feel free to comment.

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Comparative Journalism

Something I have always enjoyed doing, is comparing the press releases of different news agencies and institutions regarding well... this is already where things get tough. While one party can claim something happening, the others can claim exactly the opposite (be it non-event or another event). And all that springing forth from the same physical reality. But that is only when we get lucky enough for either one of the parties to presume we still live in a world that allows us no access to information apart from the parties directly involved. Nowadays, it is all about terminology and a selective scope.

Terrorists are attacking the Syrian government now, too. Whereas the Fars News Agency from Iran claims the World March on Jerusalem to be world news, this world-shocking occurrence seems to be ignored by all other news outlets.

As interesting as some of the often contradictory reporting on these events could be, I will try to focus mainly on major press agencies and news outlets, to compare their onesided or lopsided views on events, which betray different world-views and quite frankly, at times different worlds.

Immediately however, a number of problems arise. Due to the canalization of news that takes places in these countries, Itar Tass, Xinhua, Fars, Sana and other 'national' news agencies can be seen as mirroring official views in those countries. Regarding Western countries, this becomes a lot more difficult, given the enigma of 'free press'. The New York Times hardly reflects official American government policy. Neither does Reuters, AP, ... It could be possible to instead analyse the news media in Russia, China and others. However, the translations are very limited and can therefore be harder to analyse.

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