Alex, is this true?

[sarettah]

Back in the day, I took several excellent poly sci courses (taught by Lloyd Daniels, now a state senator in Missouri (just giving credit where credit is due)...

The very first day of the first class, he gave us his opinion on "The News". He indicated that if you wanted to know the "Truth", that you had to get your information from multiple sources and additionally, you had to be aware of the slant of each source in order to pick out the truth....

For the past 20 years, that is how I have gone about getting my information...

I watch the mainline news, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN... I also watched the McNeil-Liberal hour when it was on, I read several different mags, Time, US NEWS, Covert Action Quarterly (when I can find it), The Hammer... I watch a lot of the Sunday Morning Talking Heads, And now that we have the Internet, I hit various News Agencies from various countries...

All very informative, and somewhere in between all the slants and propoganda is the truth....

I like BBC news, but they are no different from the rest, they have their slant, both regionally and internationally.. They just present it in a way that makes it look very broadminded...

I like CNN for the quickfix.....

ABC's Peter Jennings and Ted Coppell have always impressed me (Jennings is a Canadian, for the record)..

But, they still all have their slant....

As long as PEOPLE are involved in producing the news, from first deciding "what" is news, to deciding "How" the news will be presented, you will not be able to get "the Truth" from any one source.....

Some interesting sites to get alternative views of the current US-UN-Iraq situation:

Iraqi News Agency - Official State News - All Propoganda, all the time - Read some of Hussein's Speeches, this guy is nuts

Iraqi News - Mainly Opposition Viewpoint - Looks good, but still lots of Slant, mainly Anti Saddam Hussein - also links to it's version of other regional News, Afghani, etc.

Arab News, The "Official" Saudi Viewpoint

Arabic News, Regional News from the Arab Viewpoint


Edited in.....

I forgot to mention that John Stewart's News show on Comedy does a great job... Lot's of time he gets more truth in a single sentence than all the other sources in their hourlies... Recent quote (not exact probably)... On finding the Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction and in particular, How we know that Iraq has the WMD's... "They (meaning the U.S. Administration) has the invoices"............



Last edited by sarettah at Mar 4 2003, 01:19 PM