• manualoverride@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      A news channel created by the state of Qatar and initially staffed by ex BBC presenters who were paid massive amounts to attempt to astroturf over their human rights abuses and corruption.

      Edit: forgot to add, Qatar also imposes censorship on journalism and uses Al Jazeera to push their “truth”. Hence the irony.

      • PearOfJudes@lemmy.ml
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        10 hours ago

        Totally fair. I personally think Al Jazeera has been a positive force, spreading the word on the Gaza Genocide, the Sudanese massacres & conflict, and their unapologetic leftism. And the Qatar government hosted peace talks between Israel and Palestinian groups. I have never heard that BBC presenter thing though.

      • technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        22 hours ago

        OK yeah but every major “news” channel is like this.

        Claims that AJ is exceptionally bad are often motivated by imperialism, islamophobia, zionism, etc.

        • Zerush@lemmy.ml
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          19 hours ago

          Well, until now almost all articles I read in AJ are well contrastable, less biased as much other western media.

        • manualoverride@lemmy.world
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          20 hours ago

          I don’t think I ever said they were particularly bad… just stating facts here. The opinion that “every major news channel is like this” however is troubling. All news channels have their influences, you just have to identify what they are and adjust critical thinking accordingly.

        • ThirdConsul@lemmy.ml
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          20 hours ago

          OK yeah but every major “news” channel is like this

          That’s literally “whataboutism”.

          • Chaotic Entropy@feddit.uk
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            18 hours ago

            Ignoring real censorship in the UK because the originating nation of the news source also has censorship… is whataboutism.

            • khannie@lemmy.world
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              18 hours ago

              Not at all. I agree with the premise as I said so there was no whataboutism in there. I merely pointed out that a news source from a nation that allows nothing even vaguely approaching what the UK has, to be ironic.

      • Lay@piefed.social
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        16 hours ago

        Al Jazeera was at the forefront of the Jihadist campaign against Iraq and Syria, consistently referring to ISIS members as revolutionary forces fighting against these two governments, even though almost everyone else recognized them to be terrorists at the time. Although the tone of their narrative has changed over the past six years or so, this does not change what their motives were.