Attempting to counter the stifled ability to express, Arabs.com interestingly points out that we must admit that we are ‘oppressed’ in order to actually combat that oppression. In his ‘message’, the founder of the website states his support for the freedom of choice and expression as well as the need for platforms without bias or guardianship.

Tweet
Yesterday I went to my first protest in London. What I saw there shocked me, and not because of the violence that the press is so hyper to write about, where the focus of attention …

Tweet
Mentioned this old old essay from 2003 in the theory reading group on Virilio so I thought it would nice to re-air it here.  This essay was actually an interactive multimedia presentation where clicking on …

This was the decade where nobody wanted to confront the difficult truths of climate change — that in fact, nobody knows if it can be stopped and if it can, then the biggest problem is population control. Meanwhile, I’m sorry for all you suckers who’ve never visited the Maldives. I’ve been there, and it’s beautiful.

A bomb, is among best media devices. A boogey-man always playing a light and shadow game. It lets you imagine the other with all its brutal contours. It also gives you opportunity to consume and produce passionate arguments. Imagine “we” as me and my neighbor. A kind of loose tribal allegiance.

Tweet
As some of you may recall a few months back when we set up the website, I said that at least a familiarity of new social media such as Twitter should be mandatory for all …

Tweet
 

Being “detained” at a peaceful demonstration last night (April 1) was on the edge of being extremely uneasy and beautifully fun. 

The Climate Camp was set up on the block of Bishops Gate where the European …

Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land provides a striking comparison of U.S. and international media coverage of the crisis in the Middle East, zeroing in on how structural distortions in U.S. coverage have reinforced false perceptions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This pivotal documentary exposes how the foreign policy interests of American political elites–oil, and a need to have a secure military base in the region, among others–work in combination with Israeli public relations strategies to exercise a powerful influence over how news from the region is reported.

The presumption that underlies the decision is that the BBC has always been impartial when it comes to Israel-Palestine. An exhaustive 2004 study by the Glasgow University Media Group, Bad News from Israel, shows that the BBC’s coverage is systematically biased in favor of Israel. It excludes context and history to focus on day-to-day events; it invariably inverts reality to frame these as Palestinian “provocation” against Israeli “retaliation.” The context is always Israeli “security,” and in interviews the Israeli perspective predominates. There is also a marked difference in the language used to describe casualties on either side; and despite the far more numerous Palestinian victims, Israeli casualties receive more air time.

The assault on Gaza exposed not only Israel’s callous disregard for international law but the gutlessness of the American press. There were no major newspapers, television networks or radio stations that challenged Israel’s fabricated version of events that led to the Gaza attack or the daily lies Israel used to justify the unjustifiable. Nearly all reporters were, as during the buildup to the Iraq war, pliant stenographers and echo chambers. If we as journalists have a product to sell, it is credibility. Take that credibility away and we become little more than propagandists and advertisers. By refusing to expose lies we destroy, in the end, ourselves.