Media (News channels)
"If he were allowed contact with foreigners he would discover that they are creatures similiar to himself and most of what he has been told about them is lies. The sealed world in which he lives would be broken, and the fear, hatred and self-righteousness on which his morale depends might evaporate" (Orwells, 1984)
This pretty much sums up wat i think of all forms of media. I started writing this last night when i got really annoyed with some tv show but i didn’t expect to get this long and this off topic.Guess it really hit a nerve. So i decided to split this into 2 sections media(news) and media (movies).Be prepared for some venting galore. I think I have the authority to speak on all this cos’ I used to live on tv (and still do), in fact I can go as far as say that I doubt there exists a movie, news item, cartoon I haven’t come acorss whether it be kurdish (to be fair they're very few kurdish items out there), english, arabic even questionable french ones (for the sake of being artsy). Yes I am that sad and that addicted.
I definitely think media is grossly responsible for a lot of what is happening in iraq and the rest of the world. This works for both, movies and news, I think they’re competing for who misrepresents the world more award. Thinking of it I haven’t seen a news channel I liked or I can fully trust I always end up taking a little from each channel like a bit of mix and match.
CNN
This is the first news channel I came across, due to the first gulf war. I think it started ok, till it decided it did 2 things i really hate about news channels
First one is u know that thing where they wont tell u which side they support but ull inherently know it’s the side they got the worst representative to speak for. The late 90’s most intro could have just said “and now for an Arabic perspective lets get .. generic smelly man’. I used to wonder why don’t they at least get an arab who can put 2 english words together and whose vocab went beyond ‘death to america’. Now only when they want to specifically annoy me (like when defending saddam) do they get ppl who can actually speak english
The other thing I hated about it was this ‘welcome to the rest of the subhuman world outside ure borders’ programs this usually involves a leggy woman or man who would go to the worst area of a third world country and leave feeling good about him/herself for doing her bit for humanity. Something like ‘look at me feeding the poor’ ‘look at me shedding a tear for the ppl of this rubbish country’ ‘check me out ain’t I the greatest’. Or they would go something like get u the worst part of any city and call it modern. I remember once watching this program where the intro went something like 'the most modern country in the middle east' i was expecting something like bahrain or the uae, instead i see some clip of amman,jordan (u can imagine my delight) and not even the decent part of amman,no that horrible crowded street souq (of course complete with women covered in black and oriental music in the backgroumd) i mean cmon they have centres and malls why dont u show that.. if u wanna go on about the modern city show something modern about it.
Another time before the war I switched it on and they had an editorial over kurds, I was like great this must be good and i was expecting barham salih or someone like him to come on. Instead we had this one woman covered in layers of cloth with her like 8 or 9 kids ( I can’t remember how many they were but they didn’t fit on the screen at the same time), who for some reason was drinking water out of the sewers (we have mountain springs and rivers yet she was content drinking for the sewers)and living in a house that was made of tin, by the way this place was meant to be sulaymania what we consider to be one of the most advanced cities in Iraq. This sulaymania only consisted of a couple of tinhouses and no ppl. It really annoyed the hell out of me I went to sulaymania after the first gulf war and have no recollection of ppl drinking from sewers back then so I don’t see why they should be now, also there are other thigns than tin houses in sulaymania if the camera man bothered zooming out a bit. And I am really getting fed up of them hunting down ppl who cant speak English , u want to make news in English get ppl who can speak English for a change and in a city like sulaymania it shouldn’t be that difficult.
Jazeera
Aah where to start, I’m going to try not wasting too many words on this channel, but its difficult. When it came out in 96, believe it or not, it was actually a reasonable channel, ppl probably turned to it cos’ they got fed up of cnn and wanted more regional news, and I think they used that as factor in gaining an audience. They even had a handful of good reporters (Who surprisingly disappeared over the yrs) anyway so slowly they started slipping in their small doses of hate, it usually started with programs like “the other direction” where they got ppl who were on total opposite sides of the spectrum and ended up competing for who can scream highest. But then the leaders of these hate campaigns started showing up more the news channel and the reporters started having shady links. And by the time it was the Afghanistan war, that projectile diarrhea really hit the ceiling (to put it subtly). This is when hate was spewing left and right from the channel and continued to whirlwind out of course till now, hence iraq. I mean a news channel that has comfortable links with terrorist groups or presenters like ahmed mansour who was hanging out with the falloujah fighter in april. I remember reading either in elaph or sharqalawst the editor saying that he was seriously expecting that ahmed mansour to just drop the mic any second and pick up a klashinkov because of the way he was reporting. I’ve almost successfully boycotted jazeera for a long time now, I do however see it every now and then in passing and even those few minutes still manage to boil my blood, especially that version of an open forum they have that involves one guy who thinks differently from them and 6 guys and the mediator who will attack him whenever he opens his mouth
BBC
Ah my love-hate relationship channel. I mean they are so easy to hate but when they get things right they do that so well. So it’s more like an abusive relationship lets say.
I remember my dad saying how annoyed my grandfather was when they used to watch the news and the bbc used to always refer to the kurds when they were fighting for their lives as rebels or insurgents and how it was hardly ever mentioned wat the likes of saddam were doing to Iraq. But then in the mid 80s they showed that panorama program regarding saddams rule apparently that documentary was groundbreaking. And that followed with their coverage of Halabja. U see how they switch from total hate to total love. Back on the rubbish side of bbc.. during the war how many Iraqis did they get to give their opinion on the war… in my perspective 0 I was waiting for one Iraqi to come on and they didn’t show up until after april 9. Who were we blessed with during that time instead, abdul barry antwan, anyone who is familiar with him knows that he is the visual equivalent to stomach bile except more disgusting. And he was on ALL the time, who the hell qualified him to speak for the Iraqi ppl. This creature of the underworld who was living on saddams payroll and still has no shame in complimenting his heroism was put there to talk on behalf of us, I had to switch it off else I would have seriously damaged my tv set.
And to make it worse, every single time they needed a view on the war in iraq they would only ask jordanian or egyptians. Here's a simple lesson u see the word iraqi… wat is it close to? iraq or jordan? I notice there is a lot in common(the letter 'r') and it might seem like a slip of the tongue but look carefully not the same.
Anyway so how did they make up for this…john simpson… excellent reporter he was in Kurdistan during the war and he even got injured reporting due to ‘friendly fire’ (God I hate that word u die and its friendly… wat does it do? give u a little hug before it lets u go) anyway his translator a kurd called Kameran was killed, and he's talked about him alot when he can in fact when when they made a documentary regarding friendly fires he went to visit Kamarans family and thank them personally for the help Kamaran was to them.
Another comfort during the war was Stephen Sackur. I for one was really grateful for his few reports during the war honestly it did control my anger. He is one of the best reporters bbc has, he’s their european correspondent but the part of him thats relevant to this post is that he has an Iraqi wife who fled iraq with her mother in the early 80s and her father was executed by Saddam. So his few stories were about her asking him to search for her old home, him finding the house and the one link that I found somewhere else was their reaction to saddams capture (this was actually on a bbc's radio 4 but the transcript is available on normblog)
Urge u all to read these links:
Painful memories of home
Reclaiming the past
Hope of something better
Now see-sawing back to the hate stuff, a few months ago there was an explosion in damascus, syria, later ended up being staged either by syria itself or by some islamists. Anyway at the beginning we were watching bbc and the first thing they said was that it was the kurds full stop. Like they weren’t suffering enough already, this after the random jailing, torturing and murder syria was doing to the kurds at the time, which surprisingly got very little coverage. The last thing they needed was someone to push them to harm more kurds, I mean even the syrian government denied it was the kurds, so wat basis was the bbc getting for this info... that really annoyed me for a long time. But I am not sure why I still find myself using them as a trusted news source. I think they play both sides really well (not as bad as arabiyah though who i think are doing this just to look good to both sides)
Honestly I mean seriously if Salam didn’t start blogging which led to creating a spawn of other blogs would any of u know this much about iraq from ure news sources.
I'm fed up with all these channels becoming mini PR offices to whomever gives them the most money. Actually wait i take that back maybe I should open a genetic lab and create a race or a group of ppl so repulsive but loaded with money and I can prove to u that not only would they represent me (or the race I created)in a good light but I can also get them to fight to represent me. Maybe ill make them square off through some humiliating dance on this creeky table I have, and I wont just simply hand them the money no.. ill put the money up a bulls rectum and tell them to pull it out with their teeth.
Any takers?.(Read More..)
This pretty much sums up wat i think of all forms of media. I started writing this last night when i got really annoyed with some tv show but i didn’t expect to get this long and this off topic.Guess it really hit a nerve. So i decided to split this into 2 sections media(news) and media (movies).Be prepared for some venting galore. I think I have the authority to speak on all this cos’ I used to live on tv (and still do), in fact I can go as far as say that I doubt there exists a movie, news item, cartoon I haven’t come acorss whether it be kurdish (to be fair they're very few kurdish items out there), english, arabic even questionable french ones (for the sake of being artsy). Yes I am that sad and that addicted.
I definitely think media is grossly responsible for a lot of what is happening in iraq and the rest of the world. This works for both, movies and news, I think they’re competing for who misrepresents the world more award. Thinking of it I haven’t seen a news channel I liked or I can fully trust I always end up taking a little from each channel like a bit of mix and match.
CNN
This is the first news channel I came across, due to the first gulf war. I think it started ok, till it decided it did 2 things i really hate about news channels
First one is u know that thing where they wont tell u which side they support but ull inherently know it’s the side they got the worst representative to speak for. The late 90’s most intro could have just said “and now for an Arabic perspective lets get .. generic smelly man’. I used to wonder why don’t they at least get an arab who can put 2 english words together and whose vocab went beyond ‘death to america’. Now only when they want to specifically annoy me (like when defending saddam) do they get ppl who can actually speak english
The other thing I hated about it was this ‘welcome to the rest of the subhuman world outside ure borders’ programs this usually involves a leggy woman or man who would go to the worst area of a third world country and leave feeling good about him/herself for doing her bit for humanity. Something like ‘look at me feeding the poor’ ‘look at me shedding a tear for the ppl of this rubbish country’ ‘check me out ain’t I the greatest’. Or they would go something like get u the worst part of any city and call it modern. I remember once watching this program where the intro went something like 'the most modern country in the middle east' i was expecting something like bahrain or the uae, instead i see some clip of amman,jordan (u can imagine my delight) and not even the decent part of amman,no that horrible crowded street souq (of course complete with women covered in black and oriental music in the backgroumd) i mean cmon they have centres and malls why dont u show that.. if u wanna go on about the modern city show something modern about it.
Another time before the war I switched it on and they had an editorial over kurds, I was like great this must be good and i was expecting barham salih or someone like him to come on. Instead we had this one woman covered in layers of cloth with her like 8 or 9 kids ( I can’t remember how many they were but they didn’t fit on the screen at the same time), who for some reason was drinking water out of the sewers (we have mountain springs and rivers yet she was content drinking for the sewers)and living in a house that was made of tin, by the way this place was meant to be sulaymania what we consider to be one of the most advanced cities in Iraq. This sulaymania only consisted of a couple of tinhouses and no ppl. It really annoyed the hell out of me I went to sulaymania after the first gulf war and have no recollection of ppl drinking from sewers back then so I don’t see why they should be now, also there are other thigns than tin houses in sulaymania if the camera man bothered zooming out a bit. And I am really getting fed up of them hunting down ppl who cant speak English , u want to make news in English get ppl who can speak English for a change and in a city like sulaymania it shouldn’t be that difficult.
Jazeera
Aah where to start, I’m going to try not wasting too many words on this channel, but its difficult. When it came out in 96, believe it or not, it was actually a reasonable channel, ppl probably turned to it cos’ they got fed up of cnn and wanted more regional news, and I think they used that as factor in gaining an audience. They even had a handful of good reporters (Who surprisingly disappeared over the yrs) anyway so slowly they started slipping in their small doses of hate, it usually started with programs like “the other direction” where they got ppl who were on total opposite sides of the spectrum and ended up competing for who can scream highest. But then the leaders of these hate campaigns started showing up more the news channel and the reporters started having shady links. And by the time it was the Afghanistan war, that projectile diarrhea really hit the ceiling (to put it subtly). This is when hate was spewing left and right from the channel and continued to whirlwind out of course till now, hence iraq. I mean a news channel that has comfortable links with terrorist groups or presenters like ahmed mansour who was hanging out with the falloujah fighter in april. I remember reading either in elaph or sharqalawst the editor saying that he was seriously expecting that ahmed mansour to just drop the mic any second and pick up a klashinkov because of the way he was reporting. I’ve almost successfully boycotted jazeera for a long time now, I do however see it every now and then in passing and even those few minutes still manage to boil my blood, especially that version of an open forum they have that involves one guy who thinks differently from them and 6 guys and the mediator who will attack him whenever he opens his mouth
BBC
Ah my love-hate relationship channel. I mean they are so easy to hate but when they get things right they do that so well. So it’s more like an abusive relationship lets say.
I remember my dad saying how annoyed my grandfather was when they used to watch the news and the bbc used to always refer to the kurds when they were fighting for their lives as rebels or insurgents and how it was hardly ever mentioned wat the likes of saddam were doing to Iraq. But then in the mid 80s they showed that panorama program regarding saddams rule apparently that documentary was groundbreaking. And that followed with their coverage of Halabja. U see how they switch from total hate to total love. Back on the rubbish side of bbc.. during the war how many Iraqis did they get to give their opinion on the war… in my perspective 0 I was waiting for one Iraqi to come on and they didn’t show up until after april 9. Who were we blessed with during that time instead, abdul barry antwan, anyone who is familiar with him knows that he is the visual equivalent to stomach bile except more disgusting. And he was on ALL the time, who the hell qualified him to speak for the Iraqi ppl. This creature of the underworld who was living on saddams payroll and still has no shame in complimenting his heroism was put there to talk on behalf of us, I had to switch it off else I would have seriously damaged my tv set.
And to make it worse, every single time they needed a view on the war in iraq they would only ask jordanian or egyptians. Here's a simple lesson u see the word iraqi… wat is it close to? iraq or jordan? I notice there is a lot in common(the letter 'r') and it might seem like a slip of the tongue but look carefully not the same.
Anyway so how did they make up for this…john simpson… excellent reporter he was in Kurdistan during the war and he even got injured reporting due to ‘friendly fire’ (God I hate that word u die and its friendly… wat does it do? give u a little hug before it lets u go) anyway his translator a kurd called Kameran was killed, and he's talked about him alot when he can in fact when when they made a documentary regarding friendly fires he went to visit Kamarans family and thank them personally for the help Kamaran was to them.
Another comfort during the war was Stephen Sackur. I for one was really grateful for his few reports during the war honestly it did control my anger. He is one of the best reporters bbc has, he’s their european correspondent but the part of him thats relevant to this post is that he has an Iraqi wife who fled iraq with her mother in the early 80s and her father was executed by Saddam. So his few stories were about her asking him to search for her old home, him finding the house and the one link that I found somewhere else was their reaction to saddams capture (this was actually on a bbc's radio 4 but the transcript is available on normblog)
Urge u all to read these links:
Painful memories of home
Reclaiming the past
Hope of something better
Now see-sawing back to the hate stuff, a few months ago there was an explosion in damascus, syria, later ended up being staged either by syria itself or by some islamists. Anyway at the beginning we were watching bbc and the first thing they said was that it was the kurds full stop. Like they weren’t suffering enough already, this after the random jailing, torturing and murder syria was doing to the kurds at the time, which surprisingly got very little coverage. The last thing they needed was someone to push them to harm more kurds, I mean even the syrian government denied it was the kurds, so wat basis was the bbc getting for this info... that really annoyed me for a long time. But I am not sure why I still find myself using them as a trusted news source. I think they play both sides really well (not as bad as arabiyah though who i think are doing this just to look good to both sides)
Honestly I mean seriously if Salam didn’t start blogging which led to creating a spawn of other blogs would any of u know this much about iraq from ure news sources.
I'm fed up with all these channels becoming mini PR offices to whomever gives them the most money. Actually wait i take that back maybe I should open a genetic lab and create a race or a group of ppl so repulsive but loaded with money and I can prove to u that not only would they represent me (or the race I created)in a good light but I can also get them to fight to represent me. Maybe ill make them square off through some humiliating dance on this creeky table I have, and I wont just simply hand them the money no.. ill put the money up a bulls rectum and tell them to pull it out with their teeth.
Any takers?.(Read More..)
posted by Dilnareen @ | Permalink 
