Conclusions (response to Rebekah)....links.....etc

I don't know exactly where to start.....

First, the rest of the multimedia:

- This BBC documentary is incredible. I've never seen anything like it. This journalist spends time with American soldiers who are later killed by a car bomb, with insurgents in a dark room who are vowing to kill Americans, in street protests where he almost gets killed. He goes to Abu Graheb before anyone knew about it.

Pay attention also to how the Iraqis talk about the Americans in regards to how they "disrespect our women." Isn't that what we hear about them all the time? I saw that in a LOT of the videos I watched. I thinks it's interesting:

http://images.indymedia.org/imc/washingtondc/media/application/3/mission_accomplished.rm?pageid=summary-results-in-boxster-wrapper

- 3 minustes: McDonald’s talk- 6 minuteso "the fooja fooja, what you call them?"o "What are you trying to do?"- 12:12o "talk about Americans"- 32:30o "talk about links between Bin Laden and Saddam"- all of the talk about how Americans disrespecting women

It's fourty minutes long, but it's really incredible. If the link doesn't work. Open realplayer and hit "search" then type "mission accomplished BBC."

- There were more photos I meant to show, but I forgot and I don’t know how to post them on here.

- Next, more funny (daily show and Bill Maher that I didn't show). These all came from onegoodmove.org:

http://homepage.mac.com/onegoodmove/movies/ds030905lebanon.html
http://homepage.mac.com/onegoodmove/movies/billmaher022505religion.html
http://homepage.mac.com/njenson/movies/dailyshow092904.html (Jon Stewart talks about the report about Daily Show viewers being better informed…. And looky here --- http://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/naes/2004_03_late-night-knowledge-2_9-21_pr.pdf )

- French news, just to get an idea of the reports. I had initially started looking up French news videos because a French teacher I had at Clemson Spring 2003, showed us the french news report the same day that all of our channels were showing (over and over and over.....) the video of the Sadam statue falling. The French news showed people fighting in the streets, soldiers getting shot at, people (Iraqis) carrying other people in wheelbarrows, and Iraqis screaming "Fuck Bush!" Nevertheless, I couldn't find it.

I will say, that these are not from a 24hours news network. I honestly don't know if they have one in France. So many countries just have CNN or BBC in their language:

Night Patrols - http://jri.france2.fr/morceauxmai03.htm
Guantanamo - “They’re not the like I thought they were…” http://jri.france2.fr/morceauxsept03.htm

- Media report by the Political Science Quarterly (I tried to give this to my dad when he (half) joked that everyone should only watch Fox, I found it in the trash the next day....oh well). Moral of the story, listen to npr. I promise you it's really interesting (you can listen to all of their stories on npr.org). NPR is not just news, they have live Wilco, Interpol, etc concerts, as well as long discussions on just about any issue.

http://www.psqonline.org/cgi-bin/99_article.cgi?byear=2003&bmonth=winter&a=02free&format=view

- Our international knowledge deficit:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1518513
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/foundation/pdf/NGS-Roper-GeoLitReport2002.pdf

- Just figured I'd through Jerry Falwell in there. This is the kind fellow that said something along the lines of September 11th was God's vengeance for all of the gays, etc. I saw somewhere that Fundamentalist Christians are America's largest religious group. I don't know how they quantify that, so take it for a grain of salt. Yet, if that's even remotely true, think about from the other side how others can see this as a religious war. Then, who are the fundamentalists?

http://homepage.mac.com/njenson/movies/falwellcrossfire.html

also

http://www.samharris.org/index.php/samharris/appearances/ (Are we free also to NOT have religion?)

- Watch TV from all over the world. This thing is pretty interesting, I thought. I watched part of an Iranian Soap Opera and a Chinese sitcom, among other really random things.

http://mediahopper.com/portal.htm?http://mediahopper.com/television/181.htm (click broadband TV)




Okay, now, some solutions. First of all, there are a lot of non-partisan organizations that monitor the media and government information. They publish reports and articles on what is not factually solid. It's basically news with facts. I can only remember one right now (the links are on my computer at home). I'll post them later. The one I remember is factcheck.org (there's a funny story on NPR about Dick Cheney saying "factcheck.com" which is, from what I remember a liberal website)

- There are also a lot of think tanks that are much less biased (than the news channels). Some are considered conservative/liberal, but I don't know which. They provide information on news issues....I'll post those later too.....They're places like Rand Corp., Brookings Institute, Pew Research, etc.

- Basically, i believe that people should get their news from a lot of different places. I think that's the most effective way to combat a bias. Even if you only speak english (it sounds demeaning that way, but you know what I mean), you can watch/read the news in India, Malasia, England Scotland, Ireland. Not to mention, there is an english version of almost every website. If you read news about a certain country, try to see if they have a news organization website, and see if it says something different from what our news says.

That's all.