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4 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
has been accused of pushing Israeli propaganda...
ETA- I just came across, and rec'd your thread in GD that showed Middle Easterners mocking ISIS. Good stuff! This same video was at the HuffPo link in that OP, so I can see why you might not have known of MEMRI's origins. Perhaps they don't either. In any event, the info I provided is just a PSA... No hard feelings, I hope...
Accusations of bias
Brian Whitaker, the Middle East editor for The Guardian newspaper at the time, wrote in a public email debate with Carmon in 2003, that his problem with MEMRI was that it "poses as a research institute when it's basically a propaganda operation".[5] Earlier, Whitaker had charged that MEMRI's role was to "further the political agenda of Israel." and that MEMRI's website does not mention Carmon's employment for Israeli intelligence, or Meyrav Wurmser's political stance, which he described as an "extreme brand of Zionism".[3] Carmon responded to this by stating that his employment history is not a secret and was not political, as he served under opposing administrations of the Israeli government and that perhaps the issue was that he was Israeli: "If your complaint is that I am Israeli, then please say so." Carmon also questioned Whitaker's own biases, wondering if Whitaker's is biased in favor of Arabs—as his website on the Middle East is named "Al-Bab" ("The Gateway" in Arabic)—stating: "I wonder how you would judge an editor whose website was called "Ha-Sha-ar" ("The Gateway" in Hebrew)?[5]
Norman Finkelstein has described MEMRI as "a main arm of Israeli propaganda". In 2006, Finkelstein accused MEMRI of editing a television interview he gave in Lebanon in order to falsely impute that he was a Holocaust denier. In an interview with the newspaper In Focus in 2007, he said MEMRI uses "the same sort of propaganda techniques as the Nazis" and "take[s] things out of context in order to do personal and political harm to people they don't like".[42]
Selectivity
Several critics have accused MEMRI of selectivity. They state that MEMRI consistently picks for translation and dissemination the most extreme views, which portray the Arab and Muslim world in a negative light, while ignoring moderate views that are often found in the same media outlets.[3][39][39][40][41] Juan Cole, a professor of Modern Middle East History at the University of Michigan, argues MEMRI has a tendency to "cleverly cherry-pick the vast Arabic press, which serves 300 million people, for the most extreme and objectionable articles and editorials... On more than one occasion I have seen, say, a bigoted Arabic article translated by MEMRI and when I went to the source on the web, found that it was on the same op-ed page with other, moderate articles arguing for tolerance. These latter were not translated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_East_Media_Research_Institute
Brian Whitaker, the Middle East editor for The Guardian newspaper at the time, wrote in a public email debate with Carmon in 2003, that his problem with MEMRI was that it "poses as a research institute when it's basically a propaganda operation".[5] Earlier, Whitaker had charged that MEMRI's role was to "further the political agenda of Israel." and that MEMRI's website does not mention Carmon's employment for Israeli intelligence, or Meyrav Wurmser's political stance, which he described as an "extreme brand of Zionism".[3] Carmon responded to this by stating that his employment history is not a secret and was not political, as he served under opposing administrations of the Israeli government and that perhaps the issue was that he was Israeli: "If your complaint is that I am Israeli, then please say so." Carmon also questioned Whitaker's own biases, wondering if Whitaker's is biased in favor of Arabs—as his website on the Middle East is named "Al-Bab" ("The Gateway" in Arabic)—stating: "I wonder how you would judge an editor whose website was called "Ha-Sha-ar" ("The Gateway" in Hebrew)?[5]
Norman Finkelstein has described MEMRI as "a main arm of Israeli propaganda". In 2006, Finkelstein accused MEMRI of editing a television interview he gave in Lebanon in order to falsely impute that he was a Holocaust denier. In an interview with the newspaper In Focus in 2007, he said MEMRI uses "the same sort of propaganda techniques as the Nazis" and "take[s] things out of context in order to do personal and political harm to people they don't like".[42]
Selectivity
Several critics have accused MEMRI of selectivity. They state that MEMRI consistently picks for translation and dissemination the most extreme views, which portray the Arab and Muslim world in a negative light, while ignoring moderate views that are often found in the same media outlets.[3][39][39][40][41] Juan Cole, a professor of Modern Middle East History at the University of Michigan, argues MEMRI has a tendency to "cleverly cherry-pick the vast Arabic press, which serves 300 million people, for the most extreme and objectionable articles and editorials... On more than one occasion I have seen, say, a bigoted Arabic article translated by MEMRI and when I went to the source on the web, found that it was on the same op-ed page with other, moderate articles arguing for tolerance. These latter were not translated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_East_Media_Research_Institute
Just an FYI...
