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juana-the-iguana · 6 months

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Navigating media during war

Here are some tips to navigate the conflict without a paid subscription. Disclaimer, I am based in the United States and this advice is for people in the US. These tips may apply for all wars, but I wrote this with the Israel-Hamas conflict in mind.

My qualifications: I am a reporter who has worked on both local, state, national and international stories. I have covered breaking news, and have done enterprising news and investigative journalism. I will graduate with a MA in Journalism in a month.

Reasons to question my authority: I have less than five year of professional experience. I have never reported on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or anywhere else in the Middle East. I speak neither modern Hebrew nor Arabic.

Moving on:

The best tip I can give you is pick a few good news sources and wait two days after any given event or incident before claiming to understand what happened.

In the United States, our news industry is incentivized toward breaking news, which means that organizations sometimes air information without having time to thoroughly fact check it. This becomes especially evident in times of war, when it is hard to obtain information and even on-the-ground reporters don't have the full picture of what's happening.

You are not going to find a perfect news organization. They're all going to fuck up in some capacity. If you have a strong stance on this issue, you're going to be more sensitive to those mistakes and real or perceived biases. (And, for the record, it is possible for one organization to hold multiple biases depending on the time of day, presenter and facet of the war being discussed.) That's why it is genuinely important to consume multiple news sources.

So if you're wondering why I chose these sources it's because a) they're free, b) they issue corrections when they're wrong and c) they do not engage in disinformation.

In no particular order: BBC, Reuters, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, AP. You should not rely on only one of these. You should fact-check these against bias sources that don't outright lie.

Now onto the sources you should avoid. Let's get into disinformation: What is it?

Disinformation is the intentional spreading of false information. It's lying. Misinformation is inaccurate information that is spread around, but not done with malice.

All news organizations have misinformation at some point. You should NEVER trust a news organization that engages in disinformation, about anything, unless several years have passed, the people responsible for the disinformation have been thoroughly purged from the group and they cite every goddamn thing they said.

The two big organizations I recommend avoiding because they engage in disinformation are Fox News and Al Jazeera.

Fox News lied about the 2020 election in the United States and actively contributed to an attempted insurrection. Al Jazeera is an arm of the Qatari state and has lied repeatedly about, well, just about everything of interest to the Qatari government, but especially Israel. They have made several highly consequential lies in this ongoing conflict that have had tangible, catastrophic consequences on the entire globe.

Advocacy groups are not news outlets.

Also, don't trust terrorist organizations. Yes, the UN, WHO, Amnesty International and pretty much every NGO under the sun and the vast majority of news organizations cite them, but that's not because they're reliable, it's because they're the only group releasing information from Gaza.

You shouldn't take the IDF at face value either, but if what the IDF is saying is verified by the US, EU and/or other reliable, third parties, then that information is probably true.

No news source is perfect. That's just a fact. I cannot stress the importance of looking at multiple sources.

Here are some things to look out for when watching/reading the news.

- If a news source is attributing facts to two different sources, ask yourself, "why?" Information is hard to come by. Sometimes one source doesn't report everything you want to know. But sometimes you know your source is unreliable, you don't have any alternatives, so you want to distance yourself from that. What does this look like?

You might see people cite two sources to report death counts in Gaza: the Palestinian Health Ministry, which is run by Hamas, and Save the Children which analyzes information about the number of children killed. Save the Children gets the estimated number of deaths from Hamas.

- Does it make sense to have this information at this time? If there was an explosion and a government states that 500 people died in it, well, how much time did it take them to count those bodies? Does that sound feasible?

- When you're listening to eye-witness interviews, do their perspectives or narratives match up with the physical scenes you are seeing? They might not be lying, it could be a miscommunication, but for the context it is presented in, it might not be accurate.

Language to look out for:

Occupation, blockade, siege, war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, ethnic cleansing, legitimate military targets and apartheid are all distinct things. All of them, with the exception of apartheid, have specific legal definitions. If people are using these things interchangeably, maybe they're sharing opinions. That doesn't mean that what they're saying isn't valuable, but it does mean that you probably shouldn't cite them when debating international law.

Now let's elaborate on "occupation" for a second. Egypt occupied Gaza from 1949 to 1967. Then Israel occupied Gaza until 2005. In 2007 Israel started the blockade on Gaza and last month, after the 10/7 massacre, they started a siege. As noted above, these are distinct things.

If people are talking about occupation or settlements in the context of this conflict it means either one of four things:

- They are talking about the West Bank, which is under occupation and where settlements do exist

- They are talking about the history of Gaza pre 2005

- They do not know that Gaza isn't under occupation and that there are no longer settlements there (which means that they are not an informed source)

- Or they assume the entire Israeli state is occupying Palestine which, whether you like it or not, is not factually or correct

Just because something feels wrong doesn't mean it is illegal. Occupations, blockades, sieges, the use of white phosphorous and bombing areas where you know there are civilians are all legal in certain contexts.

Legality might not matter to you personally, but when you're watching the news and trying to assess who is sharing facts and who is sharing opinions, you should keep this in mind.

Other notes:

- Rockets need fuel. Ventilation systems in tunnels need fuel.

- Movies and tv shows are filmed in Gaza and the West Bank. If you see a photo of someone in a body bag texting or women laughing while painting a baby doll red, it might be a behind-the-scenes video from one of those things.

- There are a lot of AI generated pictures being used, especially in propaganda. Count fingers, arms, legs and look at backgrounds to see if what you are seeing makes sense. But for the love of god, if you don't like something, that doesn't mean it's AI.

- There are a lot of photos circulating from past wars. Be careful before you reblog. Reverse Google image search is your friend.

- If you are not sure if something is real or not, wait a week. If the US, EU and dozens of journalists say it is true, believe it.

Finally, social media. When is it appropriate to use social media for news?

News aggregates are usually okay. I'm talking places like r/worldnews. They are pulling from other news organizations, so they can repeat those flaws, but they give you a mix of headlines from multiple sources. And they'll very often post large parts, if not the entirety, of articles from sources from the New York Times, Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal that have paywalls in the comments. But also beware the comments because they can be disgusting.

Social media is also very good for sharing the individual human experience. The issue with that is that you can't always vet the person on camera or being spoken about, so they could be lying, spreading misinformation and it isn't the whole picture.

This needs to be said again and again: social media dehumanizes people. You know this, but you will fall victim to it anyway. Your algorithm will do its best to show you the best versions of the people and groups you like, and the worst versions of the people and groups you don't like to make you feel justified in adopting dehumanizing beliefs.

For anyone interested, I'm going to update the list of news sources I think are trustworthy in the next few days. I've found a few small, independent and/or foreign outlets that use open source intelligence (OSINT) in their reporting and they seem pretty reliable to me, but I want to vet them a bit further.

EDITED: Removed the name of a news organization that I previously said I thought was reliable. They did not issue a correction after uncritically repeating Hamas's lie that the al-Ahli hospital parking lot bombing was an Israeli airstrike that killed 500 people, and spent days repeating these false claims as if they were fact.

#israel #palestine #i/p #hamas #media literacy #journalism

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good-old-gossip · 4 days

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Palestinian prisoners are facing the “harshest and cruellest” systematic violations by Israeli prison guards ever recorded, a Palestinian advocacy group has said.

In a report published Tuesday, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society (PPS) detailed the abuses faced by Palestinians in Israeli jails since 7 October, which have led to the death of at least 16 prisoners, though the actual number is likely higher.

At least 8,430 have been arrested from the occupied West Bank in 200 days since the war started, the report said. The figure does not include thousands of people arrested from Gaza. According to PPS, the Gaza detainees have forcibly disappeared as Israeli authorities refuse to release information about their numbers and whereabouts.

There are currently 9,500 prisoners in Israeli jails, the report said, a figure that does not include Gaza detainees.

The Palestinian government media office in Gaza estimates that 5,000 Palestinians have been arrested from the Strip since the Israeli ground invasion began.

Of the 9,500 prisoners, 3,660 are held in “administrative detention” for indefinite periods without charge or trial.

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mariacallous · 3 months

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In November 1988, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) met in Algiers and issued a Declaration of Independence, proclaiming the state of Palestine. The declaration grounded the new state in the 1947 U.N. Partition Resolution, which called for two states, one Arab and one Jewish. The PLO’s goal, as with Hamas today, had previously been the “liberation” of all of Palestine, from the river to the sea. In the 1988 declaration, the PLO reversed that position. Four weeks later, the PLO recognized Israel’s right to exist.

Immediately following the proclamation, Algeria, the host country, announced its recognition of the state of Palestine. And almost immediately, the United States launched a worldwide effort to persuade other countries to withhold recognition and thwart the Palestinians in their campaign to gain admission into international organizations.

Today, 139 countries recognize the state of Palestine, but this does not include the major Western democracies. The state is a member of many international organizations but not the United Nations, where the United States, through the Security Council, has blocked admission. Yet since 2012, Palestine has been recognized by the United Nations as a non-member observer state.

Now, triggered by the war in Gaza, this may change. British Foreign Secretary David Cameron, has stated that the United Kingdom is considering recognizing Palestine and supporting its membership in the United Nations. More importantly, it has been reported that this is also under consideration by the U.S. State Department.

Prior to Oct. 7, 2023, recognition by the United States and admission of the state of Palestine to the United Nations would have been a major accomplishment for Fatah (the biggest secular Palestinian political party), the PLO, and for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who also holds the title of President of the state of Palestine.

This would not have fundamentally changed the widespread Palestinian judgment that the entire Oslo Accords process was a disaster for the Palestinians, but it would have kindled a small spark of hope and would have counted for something in Fatah’s struggle with Hamas, which replaced the PLO as the home for Palestinians who remained committed to liberating all of Palestine and to the use of armed struggle to do so.

If it happens now, Hamas, whose popularity among Palestinians has grown and will grow further if there is a release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the Israeli hostages, will likely take credit. It will maintain that this recognition, which the PLO was not able to accomplish, demonstrates that only armed struggle produces results.

And within Israel, such moves will likely increase the political fortunes of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. U.S. President Biden’s advocacy of the two-state solution is already being used by Netanyahu as a central theme in his effort to win the next Israeli election, despite his dismal polling numbers. He claims that, were it not for him, Israel would be presently facing a Hamas-controlled state in the West Bank, and that only he can stand up to U.S. pressure.

Key figures in the Israeli center who might challenge Netanyahu in the next election are sufficiently concerned that they have asked Washington to stop talking, at least in public, about the two-state solution. Unilateral recognition of Palestine by the United States would be used by Netanyahu in his efforts to stoke Israeli fears.

That said, U.S. recognition of Palestine and its admission to the United Nations can be hugely important in the effort to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but to do so, such steps must be part of a comprehensive peace plan, one that acknowledges the new reality that Oct. 7 has created for Israelis. That day, Israelis underwent a trauma whose impact will endure. Israelis lost a sense of security that had long become part of their lives. They lost trust in their government and in their military, their intelligence services, and their technology. Hamas’s slaughter awakened the historic memories of the Holocaust and of centuries of pogroms.

Post-Oct. 7, no Israeli government will ever agree to a Palestinian state in the West Bank unless there is substantial confidence that it will not be a threat to Israel. No set of written arrangements, including provisions that say the Palestinian state will be demilitarized, will supply Israelis with the degree of confidence that is necessary before they will risk a sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank.

If there is an answer, it will require abandoning the defunct Oslo paradigm, which sees Palestinian statehood emerging as a result of successful end-of-conflict negotiations. The alternative is a sovereignty-in-Gaza-first approach: to test Palestinian statehood in Gaza first, and only if it is successful over an agreed period, to then move to negotiations on extending Palestinian sovereignty to the West Bank.

The Gaza-first approach to Palestinian statehood has a long history. Its strongest Israeli proponent was Shimon Peres. Back in 1995, at Peres’s request, I presented to Yasser Arafat a 20-point Gaza-first proposal I had developed. Arafat abruptly rejected it, not unreasonably, fearing that Gaza-first would become Gaza-last. But that was in the heyday of the Oslo Accords, when other paths to statehood seemed possible. Today, for Israelis, actual lived experience with a trial state in Gaza may be the only path to the two-state solution.

Here are the main components of what a “Gaza-first plan” might look like—one that integrates U.S. recognition of the state of Palestine into a path to peace:

The United States (or a group of Arab states including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Qatar) will put forward a plan for a trial Palestinian state in Gaza, with permanent status negotiations between Israel and the state of Palestine to be held only after a successful, three-year demonstration by the new state that it is stable, committed to peace with Israel, and has been successful in achieving de facto sovereignty over Gaza. The State of Palestine would have to attain respect for its authority from nonstate actors, especially Hamas. Hamas would have to relinquish its ability to initiate hostilities, including the possession of heavy weapons, missile production, and weapons smuggling.

If the PLO accepts this Gaza-first test of Palestinian sovereignty, then the United States would stop blocking Palestine’s admission to the U.N. and commit to recognizing the state of Palestine once it establishes de facto sovereignty over Gaza.

The PLO or Fatah, under Arab auspices, would then begin negotiations with Hamas over the group’s future. The goal will be agreement that once Israel withdraws from Gaza, Hamas will accept the authority of the Palestinian state. Further, agreement will be sought on conditions that Hamas-affiliated candidates will have to meet in order to participate in Palestinian elections, including acceptance of the Declaration of Independence’s language that Palestine “rejects the threat or use of force, violence and terrorism, against … the territorial integrity of other states.”

If the PLO-Hamas negotiations are successful, Israeli forces in Gaza will be rapidly replaced by security forces from the Palestinian Authority. If they are not successful, then Palestine will receive assistance from other Arab states, or an international force, to establish its sovereign control of Gaza, leading to Israel’s exit.

Once the state of Palestine establishes control over Gaza, it would be recognized by the United States and Israel—but with its recognized sovereignty, at this point, limited to Gaza. Upon Israeli recognition of the state of Palestine, the Palestinian Authority will cease to exist. All its administrative functions and assets and bureaucracy in the West Bank will be assumed by the state of Palestine.

The emerging state will hold its first elections in both the West Bank and Gaza. All candidates for office will be required to meet the conditions discussed above.

Upon the election of the first government of Palestine, the two states, Israel and Palestine, will exchange ambassadors and pledge peaceful coexistence. The United States will sponsor negotiations between the two states on lifting the blockade of Gaza and on how to prevent weapons smuggling into Gaza.

To demonstrate that it is serious about future negotiations over the West Bank, Israel will also agree to a complete halt to the expansion of West Bank settlements, and to control and punish violence and intimidation of Palestinians by Israeli settlers.

After the transfer of power to the state of Palestine, the settlement freeze, and the opening of negotiations on lifting the blockade of Gaza, Saudi Arabia will normalize relations with Israel.

Upon a declaration by Palestine that it has attained de facto sovereignty over Gaza, the three-year trial period will commence. If it is successful, as judged by an implementation commission composed of the United States and the Arab countries that have recognized Israel, then Washington will convene permanent status talks between the two states. Those negotiations will be based on the final status parameters articulated by then-U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in 2016. These not only included the demilitarization of the Palestinian state and security provisions for Israel, but also a commitment that the borders of Palestine in the West Bank will be based on the 1967 lines, modified by equal land swaps, and with a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem.

Making Palestinian statehood a reality would allow Palestinian moderates to take over Gaza from the Israelis without appearing to be Israeli subcontractors or a police force furthering the occupation. Without this fundamental change in its role, the notion of a “revitalized Palestinian Authority” taking effective control of Gaza, as Biden has proposed, is delusional.

Much will depend on the size and capabilities of Palestine’s security forces. But most of all, success or failure will depend on whether the Palestinian people themselves believe that this statehood trial really offers a path to comprehensive independence. If so, succeeding in the trial will have widespread Palestinian support, and this in turn will affect Hamas’s willingness to accept the authority of the state. Essentially, Hamas will be faced with a choice between marginalization or evolution.

Ironically, this approach may also appeal to many Israelis who currently oppose a Palestinian state. This is because, apart from fierce right-wing ideologues, most of the Israeli opposition to a Palestinian state rests on the belief that real peace with such a state is not possible. For those firmly of this view, a Gaza-first test may appeal to them, if only because they believe that Palestine will prove to be a failed state.

For the centrists seeking to lead Israel, a Gaza-first trial is a pragmatic option that serves to neutralize Netanyahu’s claim that only he can prevent the imposition of a Palestinian state with West Bank sovereignty. Further, testing sovereignty does not tie Israel’s hands if a Palestinian state is unable to gain actual sovereign power over Gaza. At the same time, a trial state in Gaza potentially offers Israel a chance that it would not otherwise have: a way to permanently withdraw from Gaza, rather than having to face an interminable insurgency.

Gaining Saudi recognition of Israel by committing only to good-faith testing of Palestinian sovereignty will significantly enhance interest in the plan for all Israelis.

For the moderate Palestinian leadership, this framework provides a major achievement towards a full end to the occupation, with actual sovereignty in some part of Palestine. And recognition by the United States will mean a Palestinian Embassy in Washington, a U.S. ambassador to Palestine, and worldwide acceptance of symbols of Palestinian sovereignty including passports and a currency.

Palestinians will be wary, as Arafat was in 1995, that Gaza-first will become Gaza-last, but such fears will be alleviated by a permanent halt to Israeli settlement expansion.

For those on both sides who are deeply committed to resolving the conflict, a Gaza-first approach provides an opportunity to demonstrate that lasting peace is possible, as well as an opportunity to develop new approaches to final-status arrangements outside the Oslo paradigm. Most importantly, it offers a credible path to the end of the conflict, without playing into Netanyahu’s hands.

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self-hating-zionist · 8 days

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“If Jews born in Brooklyn have a right to a state in Palestine, then Palestinians born in Jerusalem have a right to a state in Palestine.”

Christopher Hitchens was a British journalist and author who wrote 18 books on faith, culture, politics, and literature.

In an interview with Charlie Rose on November 6th, 2001, he expressed his dislike/ for the original concept of Zionism and his advocacy for a Palestinian homeland.

#christopher hitchens #gaza #free palestine

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venusintheblindspots-blog · 6 months

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You know one thing I’m *not* surprised about?

The lack of support and advocacy from SciFi and Fantasy authors and their fanbases in regards to the genocide of Palestinians.

White people have proved time and time again that the only time they can understand oppression and injustice, the only time they can humanize victims, is when they look like them.

#free palestine #free sudan #free congo #free the global south from colonial powers

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tieflingkisser · 5 months

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Israel turns to a new AI system in war on Gaza | The Listening Post

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More than 60 days into the Israel-Gaza war, two Israeli news outlets - +972 magazine and Local Call - published a report on The Gospel, a new artificial intelligence system deployed in Gaza. The AI helps generate new targets at an unprecedented rate, allowing the Israeli military to loosen its already permissive constraints on the killing of civilians.

Contributors:

Marwa Fatafta - MENA Policy and Advocacy Director, Access Now

Omar Shakir - Israel and Palestine Director, Human Rights Watch

Sophia Goodfriend - Journalist

Tal Mimran - Former legal adviser, Israeli Ministry of Justice and Israeli military

On our radar:

The exchange of hostages between Israel and Hamas late last month created some challenges for the Netanyahu government - and its messaging. Producer Meenakshi Ravi looks at how Israeli media has been reporting on the story.

Mariam Barghouti: “The media is complicit in the Gaza war”:

As the world is focused on the events unfolding in Gaza, Israel has also escalated its attacks on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, where Hamas has no authority or military presence. Journalist Mariam Barghouti joins us to discuss the intensification of surveillance technologies, the clamp down on speech and the rise of violence in the West Bank.

Contributor:

Mariam Barghouti - Palestinian Writer and Journalist

#free palestine #palestine #israel #ai bullshit #news #Youtube

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readingsquotes · 2 months

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"Long before 9/11, U.S. terror laws were shaped by a distinctly anti-Palestinian agenda and often promoted by pro-Israel organizations, a new report published on Wednesday reveals.

“In the history of U.S. terrorism law, Palestine is the elephant in the room,” said Darryl Li, an anthropologist and legal scholar at the University of Chicago and author of the report.

The legal analysis, co-published by the Center for Constitutional Rights and Palestine Legal, a group that fights the legal harassment of pro-Palestine activists, draws on five decades of legislative history to trace how moments of upheaval in Israel and Palestine were exploited by Israel advocates in the U.S. to expand counterterrorism legislation and enshrine antidemocratic principles in a range of domestic laws.

“Many foundational antiterrorism laws arose during or were adapted to pivotal moments in the Palestinian liberation struggle, often pushed by Israel-aligned groups to reflexively cast the veil of ‘terrorism’ almost uniquely on Palestinians,” the report notes. “The same Zionist organizations that pushed for expanded antiterrorism laws — most notably the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) — now brazenly tar all advocacy of Palestinian liberation as support for terrorism.”

#palestine #free palestine #isreal #gaza #colonization #apartheid #us politics #war on terror

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mightyflamethrower · 4 months

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Bill Maher Brutally Eviscerates Palestinian Grievances in Less Than 10 Minutes

I’m waiting for Bill Maher to roll out an inaccurate commentary that rips conservatives, but he hasn’t done that lately. The liberal HBO host has been chiefly directing his firepower toward those on his side of the aisle for their historically illiterate and illiberal tendencies. The HBO host has been riding an asphalt roller over the far left for their pro-Hamas advocacy that’s now infested the highest echelons of American academia. He rightfully torched the college presidents who couldn’t condemn or say that chants for Jewish genocide constitute harassment. The comedian also noted that these institutions are factories for breeding a “bunch of f**king idiots,” along with brainwashing its student bodies into thinking that antisemitism is a requirement for leftist activism.

Maybe we should have seen this coming from the 2012 Democratic National Convention, where, yes, the Democratic delegates booed God, but also the resolution recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The warning signs were there, but Hamas’ October 7 attacks and Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip to eliminate the terror group have ignited a wave of antisemitism not seen since the National Socialist German Workers’ Party rose to power. Maher has had enough of these people who chant “from the river to the sea” and used simple history lessons to shut down this narrative, along with this message to the pro-terrorist TikTok crowd: grow up.

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Maher noted that after World War II, Germans in Poland, Russia, and Czechoslovakia were purged and driven back to Germany proper for reasons that don’t need mentioning. In North America, Mexico lost most of the Southwestern United States, including California, in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. And Jews across the Arab world have been ethnically cleansed. The HBO host's point was that the Palestinians aren’t unique. They’re not the only people who’ve been displaced, and they should quit their whining and grow up.

Israel has nuclear weapons, the largest tech sector besides Silicon Valley, and a thriving economy. They’re not going anywhere, so get over it. And this isn’t about land either. The Palestinians had a chance for a homeland in 1947, 1993, 1995, 1998, 2000, and 2008. They turned down all the offers because the Palestinian Authority and Hamas agreed on one action item: destroying Israel. There can be no peace or negotiations when one side views killing everyone sitting at the opposite end of the table as their central bargaining position.

Later, in his New Rules commentary, Maher said that Arabs tried to destroy Israel in 1947, 1967, and 1973—they all lost. While Palestinians whine, they could take lessons from those who’ve been displaced. Mexico doesn’t chant from the Rio Grande to Portland, Oregon. They “got real” and built the 14th largest economy because they knew the United States wouldn’t return Phoenix. As for the colonizer argument, well, read about the first Muslim empire that exploded out of Saudi Arabia following the death of the Prophet Mohammed. As Maher noted, there’s a reason why a sword is on their national flag.

In less than ten minutes, Maher expertly dissects almost every central talking point peddled by Palestinian activists and their bountiful allies on America’s college campuses. It doesn’t take a seasoned academic to do this—just read any history book. And that’s the funny part. Maher isn’t a historian by trade. He’s a stand-up comic and was able to torch the most common pro-Hamas nonsense we’ve seen splashed on the front pages of newspapers.

And when you do read about the history of any civilization at any period, you’ll know that it’s riddled with pervasive brutality and filled with misdeeds and past injustices. Get over it. History is violent, with numerous accounts of what we would now call ethnic cleansing. The irony is the pro-Palestinian crowd is too stupid to know that’s what they’re promoting with their rallies against Israel: a complete genocide.

#Youtube

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kawaiimunism · 9 days

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the second half of Uri Berliner's takedown of NPR contains some of the most loser shit I've read recently (as expected from someone whose problem with NPR is that it's too progressive lol)

gee, if only there was some way to reference existing research on systemic racism in the so-called u.s.

you're right, uri, grassroots employees shouldn't have a say in editorial standards. if you want diversity of viewpoint, editorial standards should be the sole purview of the editorial board. can't believe SAG-AFTRA would advocate for the interests of workers' groups like that

(/s lol)

this dude trying to play dumb about Don't Say Gay "oh but the law doesn't even have 'gay' anywhere in its text you're misrepresenting it!" as though he doesn't know full-well why everyone called it that (hint: the NPR articles you're mad about explain the nickname)

and speaking for myself, the Latine folks I know are actually pretty divided on "Latinx"—some like it, some hate it, others don't care. and didn't you just say NPR has an internal Latinx advocacy group? do you know their position on the topic?? do you know Latine NPR employees who disagree with Mi Gente that you could discuss this with before going straight to the execs? why do you feel comfortable being the arbiter of this issue? what the hell man

Okay, so this one is variously disgusting:

Dude tips his hand right away by calling it the "Israel-Hamas war."

"jumped from the faculty lounge to newsrooms" lmfao universities have been wildly hostile to Palestinian liberation advocates how are you this out of touch?

When I do a site-search of npr.org for "hamas", the first three articles are all about the October 7 attack. NPR's reporting on rising antisemitism has been kind of lopsided in focusing on accusations of antisemitism while keeping fairly quiet about actual incidents/attitudes thereof, but I suspect accurate reporting on the topic (that is, existing antisemites attempting entryism into Palestinian solidarity movements) wouldn't please this guy.

NPR has tried to be neutral about the Gaza genocide in a way that I think is revolting, but Uri and I obviously disagree about why that's revolting.

The bird names piece is an article about the lack of diversity in bird-watching as a hobby. The bulk of the article talks about how the bird-naming convention of "[discoverer's name] [type of bird]" has led to a lot of birds that are named after horrible racists, and the ensuing conversation within birdwatching about whether/how to change those names. That's it. That's all it says. EDIT: I guess "discoverer" should be in a second set of quotes here, because English-language names for "New World" birds are generally going to be derived from the first settler to decide to name it.

The article "justifying looting" is an interview with Vicky Osterweil, the author of In Defense of Looting. The headline of the article literally calls it "One Author's Controversial View."

Fears about crime are racist and NPR was right to report on it lmao

When he says "suggesting that Asian Americans who oppose affirmative action have been manipulated by white conservatives," the way the story in question "suggests" that is quoting Asian-Americans who feel manipulated by white conservatives.

I haven't read the Beatles story he's talking about. It's kinda long and doesn't really interest me, so I won't comment on it.

I think this bit is the most revealing part of the whole piece. It kinda lays bare the exact ways that Uri is full of shit. He spends most of the latter half of the piece talking about how NPR's push for diversity of identity has coincided with a decrease in diversity of opinion, and that more ideas should be given a seat at the table, but he clearly doesn't actually believe that. Sure, bring in the MAGAs, bring in the Republicans, let the right have a say. But defending looting? Shining a light on racism in hobby spaces? Discussing racism in American attitudes towards crime? Well that's obviously beyond the pale! Obviously those ideas don't get a seat at the table.

Berliner clearly believes that some ideas are dangerous or ridiculous and shouldn't be platformed on that basis, but his main criteria for deciding which ideas shouldn't be platformed seem to be (1) how far outside the mainstream they are (e.g. the Defense of Looting piece) and (2) how ~divisive~ they are (e.g. the stuff about racism). Bringing on Republicans to explain why diversity sucks and trans people should be put in camps? Totally fine, I guess.

This little spiel reveals Berliner for what he is: A status quo warrior burned that the future is leaving him behind. NPR isn't alienating American society, it's embracing the vaguely-progressive left-lib attitudes that are becoming increasingly mainstream across the so-called U.S, paying occasional lip-service to more radical ideas while being very careful to avoid endorsing them.

#he makes some okay points in the first part of the piece tho #the mueller report russiagate shit was embarrassing and dismissing the lab-leak hypothesis for c19 out of hand was premature

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