Iraqi Elections - Different Views of the Same Thing
It's always easy to say that media in it's various forms is biased. That the media looks at the same thing and comes to different conclusions based on their preexisting view points. Well the first Iraqi elections have just closed. There were bombings and attacks as expected but not at the level feared. People came out to vote, surprisingly so considering the usual arab level of violent rhetoric. You remember the usual quotes "Blood running in the streets" "Infidel dogs will blah blah blah" Well the voting has now been sandwiched between the punditry and the rhetoric of the elections. What say the news sources?
The Sunday Independent doesn't go very far at all to hide it's leftist leanings with this headline,
The Sunday Independent'What a bloody charade' to describe the elections. The article doesn't say much except for the sort of churlish pablum you'd hear from a disaffected teenager who thinks he knows more than he actually knows.
AL Jazeera has an article about the elections "Attacks plague Iraqi election day"
AL Jazeera story I read through the whole article and you'd be hard pressed to find out how election turnout was or what anybody thought about the elections from this collection of words. Instead you get a list of each and every attack that has occurred on this election day. A bit less loony than the word vomit from the Independent but not anything that a 11 grader on the school newspaper would have been allowed to write.
Now on Xinhua, the Chinese news service gives a good neutral headline. "Iraq election proceeds amid fatal attacks"
Xinhau Iraqi election story No commentary, just the facts mamn. The first story to show any information about turnout. Don't know if it's accurate information "Voter turnout was low in the mainly Sunni-populated cities like Fallujah, but long lines of voters were seen in front of the polling stations in some Shiite Muslim and mixed Shiite-Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad and in southern cities like Basra." But that seems as neutral as possible. To understand the way the Chinese look at these things it's necessary to understand, well it's necessary to understand Chinese history, Chinese politics and the world situation as well as the way Chinese view the world situation. Okay, it's complicated. In a nutshell, China wants to be a big boy, they think they are a big boy, resent that they aren't a big boy and are prone to outbreaks of violence. Basically a self contained unit of seething anger that is afraid of the big guy on the block and could blow up at any time. Ah but that's another story.
Ever the pessemistic naysayer, Newsweek already has this story written and in the bag "Newsweek: Why election won't stop insurgency" MSNBC has the article- "Iraqis vote in historic election despite violence"
MSNBC story Fair and balanced here, they mention the happy voters and the violence in the first paragraph.
They give the projected voter participation at the 52 percent supposed by Iraqi officials.
Fox goes out further as you would expect them to and state that 72 percent have come out to vote.
Fox Iraqi Election story They balance out the violence reporting with the joy and jubulation of voter reporting and as you would expect they lean toward the positive voter participation part of the story. It's all the same thing with different slants and different reporting on the same story. If you need to have news that always agrees with your world opinion you know where to go and you know when to shut your ears. It's always the better bet to read all of the views and somehow, somewhere you can pull out the real information. Easiest way to do that is to hit Google news, follow the bottom link on a story which leads you to all 'related' news stories and you will get a chance to click through everybodies viewpoint of the same thing.
Posted by gilbert davis
at 9:58 AM EST
