I noticed Spirit of America the other day and I was heartened by it's intention to counter the heavy anti-US bias in the Arab news media. In particular, Al-Jazeera often distorts reality in their reporting, and these distortions fan the flames of US-hatred, which in turn results in attacks on coalition soldiers and contractors in Iraq. They probably sell more advertizing by making news stories sensational, such as "US soldiers slaughter women and children" when the reality may be "Insurgents fired at US soldiers from behind women and children, and US soldiers defended themselves, accidentally killing some innocent civilians." The NBC Nightly News this evening discussed Al-Jazeera's bias and some of the steps taken to deal with it. A group of our people is paid to sit around and watch it continuously; they take note of any discrepencies between Al-Jazeera's version and the military's version. They create something they call "The Matrix," which is a big table of what Al-Jazeera said, what actually happened, and what kind of distortion it was. Then they try to deal with it, but I don't think they are very effective yet, partly because they need more unbiased tv stations, which is where spiritofamerica comes in. They accept cash or equipment donations for setting up TV stations in Iraq. I think this is a worthy cause which could go a long way towards reducing deaths, injurries, and expenses suffered by the coalition. If I had any money, I might give them some.
Posted by seander at April 22, 2004 11:59 PM