What can we do to change this? Come on! Let's not be defeatist!
Can we compel news media to stop writing misleading headlines and snippets?
Yesterday (2 June 2024), Australian news anchor and columnist Rita Panahi reposted the outrageous BBC headline reporting on the 31 May knife attack in Mannheim, Germany, in which a police officer was killed and several people injured.
Her “X” post drew the following response:
and the point is not the specific news outlet but that here is another example of a terrorist not being labelled as such as well as potential mischaracterization of the event in question. How far do we have to read into the article (for those who actually read beyond the title and snippet) to learn the identities of the attacker and the attacked?
Can this longer “X” post tell us what we need to know?
We still don’t know who “the man/attacker” was. And are we supposed to go — Ah! Far-right anti-Islam demonstrators! They deserve what they got. — after reading this?
Will a Google search help us? Here are the more well-known media listed at the top of the results of the search, ‘knife attack in Germany’:
France 24: Police officer dies after attack at anti-Islam rally in Germany
Times of Israel: Germany policeman dies after being wounded in stabbing attack at anti-Islam rally
Euronews: Far-right activist and others hurt in stabbing in Mannheim
Reuters: German policeman attacked by knifeman during protest has died
You get the idea.
On the next page of the results, we get titles that tell us that the attacker was from Afghanistan and one of the injured was Michael Stuerzenberger. The latter is consistently referred to as an extreme right-wing agitator and they write that no motive is yet known for the attack.
Here is the circumstance of the attack, as reported by the Reuters article in the list above:
A livestream broadcast from central Mannheim showed anti-Islam activist Michael Stuerzenberger preparing to address a small crowd at an event put on by the anti-Islam Pax Europa Movement.
I could not find much information on the Pax Europa movement that Reuters labels as ‘anti-Islam;’ the information page I did find for the movement sounded very different. Their position paper (from 2009) states that they do not associate with extremism on either the left or the right, supporting religious freedom for all and freedom of speech for all. Some news reports, while still calling the rally an anti-Islam rally, do specifiy that Pax Europa is against radical Islam or Islamism (click here for one example) and not against Moslems or Islam as a whole.
Would it be too difficult for media outlets, suppposedly with investigative journalists on staff, to search out how Pax Europa defines itself and include that information in their articles so readers can make informed choices about how they regard what took place?
BTW — if you want to see what happened, and have the stomach to see the actual attack, in which the terrorist stabbed the knife into the police officer’s neck as he bent over to help one of the injured, then look here. But I just told you what you will see, so you don’t have to.
Here is an example of how titling should be done.
Well, we cannot be sure, yet, that the Afghani is a jihadist or if he just thought the rally was against run-of-the-mill Moslem haters and took it upon himself to take revenge. So I would change the title above to “stabbed in knife attack by Afghan man” until more about him is known. You might have a better suggestion.
So now, the big question is:
What can news consumers around the world do to compel news agencies to report the news with sufficient information to allow readers to arrive at informed opinions about the news?
And what can we do to compel news agencies to write headlines and snippets that accurately reflect the content of their reports rather than support biased opinions of the editorial staff at the outlet?
Of course, organizations such as “Honest Reporting” take a stab at making news agencies correct inaccuracies (and out-right lies), but it appears this is insufficient.
Looking forward to your ideas in the comments section below.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Israel is not supported on the Substack payment platform; therefore, I set up a way to make one-time donations or ongoing subscriptions in your own currency using Paypal (Buy me a Coffee, below). Israelis can send me a private message for another option.
Articles will always be free for all subscribers but a paid subscription or donation is a way to help me sustain myself while doing all the work involved in putting these articles together and would be greatly appreciated.
Thank-you to all those who have supported my work by subscribing and by donating coffees.
Sheri
That's why I cancelled my BBC Account, my Guardian account. My NYT. Account
All of them.
They are all biased.
I subscribe to none of those publications, and don’t mind admitting it, given how bad their “coverage” of events generally is.