Israeli Doctor Blows Whistle on War Crimes
Israeli Doctor Blows Whistle on War Crimes
An anonymous physician, in a letter viewed by Haaretz, has warned Israeli officials about what's going on at a field hospital inside a notorious detention center. By Brett Wilkins Common Dreams A doctor at an Israeli field hospital inside a notorious detention center where hundreds of Pa
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While I have no doubt that there are war crimes happening, has anyone heard of this outfit?
No, but most of what they are quoting is from a major Israeli newspaper. This was out several days ago, but didn’t get picked up here in the states.
MBFC for Constitution News:
Overall, we rate Consortium News Left Biased based on story selection and advocacy that strongly favors the left. We also rate them as Mostly Factual in reporting due to one-sided opinion-based reporting that is difficult to verify. [...]
In general, Consortium News holds strong left-leaning biases with a focus on anti-war and anti-imperialism perspectives. Most information is properly sourced, but many stories are opinion-based and sometimes cannot be proven correct or incorrect.
Ad Fontes Media rates Consortium News in the Hyper-Partisan Left category of bias and as Mixed Reliability/Opinion OR Other Issues in terms of reliability. Consortium News was launched in 1995 as the first investigative news magazine based on the Internet. The founder, journalist Robert Parry, was dedicated to breaking the pattern of “silliness and propaganda” that he saw in American journalism. Consortium News is published by the Consortium for Independent Journalism Inc.
Just some additional context.
Robert Earle Parry (June 24, 1949 – January 27, 2018)[1] was an American investigative journalist. He was known for his role in covering the Iran–Contra affair for the Associated Press (AP) and Newsweek, including breaking the Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare (CIA manual provided to the Nicaraguan contras) and the CIA involvement in Contra cocaine trafficking in the U.S. scandal in 1985.
Just some additional additional context.
No, but here's an archive of the account of it in Haaretz, you should probably read that one.
No. Their MBFC page is an interesting read:
It is considered the first alternative investigative journalism internet news source. Consortium News covers stories deeply and has been responsible for uncovering scandals and important information that was not found/covered by the mainstream media.
They also get a bit philosophical about the nature of truth, which I don't think I've ever seen before.
Haaretz actually reported this first (there's an archive link in the article) and they're high credibility.
Does that matter? Would you value it more if it came from a organisation you had heard of like Fox?
There are millions of news organisations and independent journalists out there reporting on stories. Luckily the supply of news and information is not solely in the hands of ~20 large publications.
Instead of attacking the size or popularity of a news site, look at the content. I’ve quickly browsed the front page and this looks legit as any other small time source. Nothing seems to be fake news. It’s certainly left leaning, but it’s not like you’ll ever find a large left leaning newspaper so any left source is going to be a smaller operation.
It does matter. Anyone is susceptible to propaganda, and one of the classic ways to promote propaganda is to create a source that seems credible but which is presenting biased information, either in what they conver or how they cover it. Given the information war being waged with real lives at stake, it is not inappropriate to ask other people what they know about an unfamiliar site.
And they may look legitimate to you, but someone else might notice something you've overlooked, or they may know something about the source. Kudos to OP for asking the question and trying to be a more discriminatory consumer of news instead of just accepting whatever comes across their path as truth.
Every source is biased, bias is not inherently a problem. Having a leftist perspective on news is not a problem.
What is a problem is fake news.
What is a problem is a handful of large news sites that dominate what news people get access to.
What that user has done is to muddy the waters by doubting the article not due to the quality of the information but due to lack of brand recognition. That is worthy of contention not kudos.
It serves no useful purpose other than to detract from the article at hand.
What is a problem is fake news.
Indeed. That's why that user asked the simple question. They're trying to determine the veracity of the information from that website.
Bias and factuality are different concepts. One source can print wildly biased, yet probably true information. While another can provide absolutely unbiased disinformation.
Except the user didn’t ask, is this accurate news, they asked “has anyone heard of this outfit?”
This is a sidestep from the actual question to instead focus on attacking the source rather than the content.
I dunno, my dude. That's still quite a reach to go from a simple question to automatically determining that it's a hatchet job.
I'm not saying you're wrong, just that you're assuming a lot more than I normally works from a singular question.
There's a significant difference between the two questions in your first sentence: quality of verifiability. The goal here is to determine accuracy anyways. Asking that directly will never get you an answer that you should accept at face value.
If I ask "is this accurate?", any sourceless responses lack weight. "yes" holds as much proof as "no."
But "has anyone heard of this" is a much lower barrier of veracity. Answers themselves won't determine the accuracy of the article, just whether or not anyone can help establish credibility.
It's important to question and verify sources, no matter who it is. Criticizing someone who does makes you no better than anyone pushing propaganda.