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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Mustafaa (talk | contribs) at 06:42, 18 May 2004 (=Alleged=). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Mustafaa's bias as a mohammedan palestinian shows in this article.-sayyed al afghani


This article's bias is showing. It ignores that the rest of the world has a right to hear what the Arab nations are saying to themselves on subjects of international importance. Obviously it matters to Israel what countries still at war with it are really saying. But it also matters to the rest of the world when PR differs from what journalists are pressured not to report.

agreed. there are those what desire a situation where certain countries can make statements in English for international listeners and distinct statements in the native language for local listeners. 209.135.35.83 15:30, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I have updated this article to provide more accurate facts and much less bias. The opinions on how "good" or "evil" MEMRI might be belong here in the comments and not in the article. msosnow

In fact your changes filled the article with opinions and comments. You turned an informative article into a promotional article. --Zero 10:27, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Dear Zero, In fact the changes I have made are entirely factual, and if you wish to do the research you will find them to be true. I do wonder how you can say things like, "MEMRI portray Arabs and Muslims in a bad light, or in some way further the interests of Israel" and claim you are presenting facts and not opinion. MEMRI does not portray anything - it is merely a messenger, and even its detractors cannot fault the overall accuracy of its translations. An "informative article" does not unnecessarily need to smear an organization.
Those are not my words, and now I have editted them. I also removed your statement "It is fair to say that the articles translated are common and not rare examples of hate speech." which is not fair to say at all but just your opinion. Also, it is a simple fact that MEMRI is mostly run by Israelis with military or intelligence backgrounds. --Zero 02:54, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Example of NYT using MEMRI as a source of translation from Arabic sources. [1]. 209.135.35.83 15:30, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Really, this should say "Critics of MEMRI _note_ that its choice of articles is intended to portray Arabs and Muslims in a bad light". It might take some time to gather the statistics to prove this, but it's obvious to any regular visitor of the website that they actively seek out ravings from even the most obscure Arab sources - as long as these are either massively pro-Israeli or massively anti-Semitic - and make no effort at all to look for articles that make the Arab world look good (if indeed they publish any of those at all - I have yet to see one coming from them.) I can read Arabic, and can assure you that their selection is certainly not unbiased. - Mustafaa 21:47, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The case for MEMRI acting in the service of Israel's interests had been severely understated. My recent edits should suffice to explain why... Mustafaa 01:32, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Just incidentally, note the misleadingness of MEMRI's rebuttal:

We could also have told Whitaker that we have over 30 employees of different nationalities, rather than six. But then, facts might have got in the way of a "good story".

deliberately phrased so as to make the reader assume they've always had all these employees, rather than having expanded from the original 6 to 17 to over 30. That on its own should give MEMRI apologists caution - factually accurate statements presented in a deliberately misleading fashion? Sound familiar? Mustafaa 02:51, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I don't know about the PNA - though I doubt it - but al-Jazeera have not quoted MEMRI, according to Google MEMRI site:aljazeera.net, so I think we need evidence of the PNA quoting these guys. - Mustafaa 22:25, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

NPOV note

Added

note. The effort to delegitimize MEMRI shines through. Is there a single example of any wrongful translation by MEMRI? Do they draw the cartoons themselves? Did the Arab/Muslim media suddenly become less antisemitic and more tolerant towards Israel? --Humus sapiens|Talk 06:54, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

You say it's NPOV - care to explain how so? Is the mere act of listing MEMRI staff (every single one that I could find, with no exceptions) non-neutral? - Mustafaa 07:19, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, and (as the Abu Aardvark blog illustrates rather nicely) their translations may be accurate (though Brian Whitaker does question some of them), but their selection is far from representative - though it pretends to be - and is calculated to make the Arab media look far more anti-Semitic than it actually is. Can you imagine what the Arab world would think of British public opinion if they were being fed a steady diet of translations from The Sun? - Mustafaa 07:24, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
"Everyone can agree that marking an article as having an NPOV dispute is a temporary measure, and should be followed up by actual contributions to the article in order to put it in such a state that people agree that it has a NPOV." Still waiting... - Mustafaa 20:54, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

IMHO, a few things need radical change here:

  1. I find the "selectivity" argument to be very weak, since most of Arab media is state-controlled. Totalitarian regimes are afraid of freedom of information, so the efforts to expose them only deserve praise. Unfortunately the article attempts to delegitimize and condemn these efforts.
  2. Is Arab media as concerned with illegal occupation of Tibet, the plight of ancient but stateless Kurds or Basques, or persecutions of Christians in Muslim lands, or refugees of Morocco, Sudan, Rwanda, as with the tiny piece of Jewish land where Jews are not dhimmi anymore? Talk about selectivity! I don't see why mere translating somehow contraversial.
  3. The exposing of pseudonyms reminds me the Stalin's campaign against rootless cosmopolitans. Why do the ethnicity or citizenship even matter? Finkelstein, Chomsky, Stanley Cohen and Adam Shapiro are Jewish, so what?
  4. Brian Whitaker, The Guardian, April 12, 2004]: So it is all the Palestinians' fault, then. Never mind that Yasser Arafat is their elected leader (chosen in one of the region's more credible elections).... Does he seem an objective source to you?
  5. How come the alleged "ties with Israel" or "commitment to Israel" are somehow wrong? As I said elsewhere, I am against the notion that anything good for Israel or Jews is automatically bad for Arabs, or vice versa. --Humus sapiens|Talk 08:23, 11 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

1a. Quite a lot of it is state-controlled, yes, to varying degrees; hence the value of non-state-controlled ones like al-Jazeera. That has no relevance to the question of MEMRI's value; far from providing an alternative to the state-controlled media, MEMRI simply provides the worst of the Arab media a platform to shout at the rest of the world.

Says who? It's the best I can find. Is there an alternative? --Humus sapiens|Talk 09:37, 12 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
"Best you can find" at what? - Mustafaa 19:00, 12 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

1b."Unfortunately the article attempts to delegitimize and condemn these efforts." - how so exactly? By reporting accurately on some common complaints about it, or by listing its staff when MEMRI tries so hard not to get them listed?

2. Irrelevant. You want to complain about Arab media selectivity, go ahead and I'll be the first to join you - but on a page about the Arab media, not one about MEMRI. If you don't see why "mere translating somehow contraversial", I recommend the Abu Aardvark piece.

One can't make an argument about the selectivity of translation when the source itself is out of balance. Sorry, I'm not wasting my time on some Boso the clown blog and don't think it belongs to serious encyclopedia. Only shows non-NPOV grasping for straws. Sorry I misspelled "controversial". --Humus sapiens|Talk 09:37, 12 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
"Boso the clown blog" (sic)? It's by a professor of political science, and is far more informative and better analyzed than The Guardian (or The New York Times) usually is. Frankly, if more blogs were this good, I'd be for removing the newspaper links. - Mustafaa 19:00, 12 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

3. Read the Brian Whitaker/MEMRI debates listed below, and you'll see why. Yigal Carmon made an issue of the supposed diversity of their staff, and I have seen several people on the Internet with the mistaken impression that the enterprise consists mainly of Arabs. Moreover, their nationality is extremely relevant to judging their angle and their goals. If they were willing to be less secretive, and actually make their staff lists public, it wouldn't be an issue; but they make an effort to keep this info hard to find, which in itself makes this valuable information.

Bringing up their nationality suggests that all Jews have some kind of "conspiracy" or "goals". Heard enough of that, thank you. --Humus sapiens|Talk 09:37, 12 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Uh, no. There's a difference between nationality and ethnicity. Nowhere does this article even mention the latter. - Mustafaa 19:00, 12 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

4. There are no objective sources in Middle Eastern politics. However, he's not trying to conceal his angle; they are.

Oh, I see. There is no objectivity anyway, so here's a bigot. --Humus sapiens|Talk 09:37, 12 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
So now you're going to tell me they're the bunch of disinterested observers they try to give the impression of being? - Mustafaa 19:00, 12 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

5. Who says it's wrong? That's your words, not mine or the article's. It is, however, extremely relevant to judging their bias - which is the most essential thing to know about any news organization. Again, it would be a lot less relevant if they weren't so secretive about it. - Mustafaa 21:03, 11 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

My apologies if I was not clear earlier. See the Jewish names I provided above. What do they tell you? Nothing, because there is full spectrum of opinions within Jewish community. --Humus sapiens|Talk 09:37, 12 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Hence the mention of their previous attested opinions. - Mustafaa 19:00, 12 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

If, as you seem to think, MEMRI is a heroic group trying to open a window on the Arab media, then you should be glad to see all their names listed like this, so that due credit can accrue to them. If having been a member of Israeli intelligence is nothing to be ashamed of, then you should be proud that this page is advertising the fact that three of them have been members of it. Instead, you seem to regard the mention of these facts as an attempt to besmirch their name. Or maybe I'm misinterpreting your objection; if so, what exactly are you objecting to in the article? Can you cite some quotes? - Mustafaa 22:00, 11 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

You must feel exposing some kind of spy-ring or investigating a conspiracy against innocent Arab media. I think that the irrelevant info only harms the article. I see them as opening the world's eyes to new Der Sturmer in the making. Heroes? Of course they are, and to me it doesn't matter whoever they are, as long as they do their job well. Cheers. --Humus sapiens|Talk 09:37, 12 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Let me put it this way: many spheres of today's world have serious problems. Does focusing on the nationality (rather than substance) seem right? Or only as long as those who's in charge are Jewish? More specifically, its critics often suggest that its selection is intended to further Israeli goals, in light of its ties with Israel. The "Israeli goals" of world domination, I take it? This article belongs to el-intifada, not WP. --Humus sapiens|Talk 17:00, 12 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
World domination? Don't be ridiculous. The Israeli goal in question is quite obvious: to tilt world public opinion in favor of Israel and against the Arabs. I don't even blame them for trying; it's their patriotic duty, no doubt. I do blame them for trying to keep the fact a secret. If Reuters, for instance, had a almost entirely Arab staff, wouldn't you expect any decent article on it to note the fact? I certainly would. So again, I ask: concrete objections? Quotes? - Mustafaa 19:00, 12 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

OK - now instead of having a "Ties with Israel" section, it quotes the full backgrounds that they themselves posted. So, are their words biased against themselves? - Mustafaa 21:20, 12 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Pseudonym exposure

Oh yeah - you mentioned pseudonyms. Does it matter that "Adam Pashut" is using a pseudonym? No. But we can't list a name that's so obviously fake (it comes from a song, I think) as if it were real. The pseudonym was intended to be obvious - it's as if an English speaker wrote under the byline "Eleanor Rigby" - and should be taken in the same spirit. - Mustafaa 22:22, 11 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

NPOVification

The following has been removed from the article:

  1. The outdated stuff.
  2. may be the author and Maariv journalist -- not a fact.
  3. List of MEMRI staff (incomplete; readers are urged to add to the list if new information becomes available): I understand a lot of effort went to compile this list. But I object to including it for a few reasons:
  • If people don't want to be listed out of security concerns, I don't believe we should do it.
  • Admittedly, the list is incomplete. But if there are some Arabs (or whoever else) there, then the "ties with Israel" conspiracy theory goes up in smoke. Seems like a case of misleading selectivity to me.

I also removed the NPOV note that I added earlier. Please see if this works. --Humus sapiens|Talk 05:11, 16 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

  1. "The outdated stuff" is extremely relevant; in fact this article should have a lot more of it. The history of the organization is of great interest.
  2. Fair enough.
  3. I object to your objections:
    1. They were willing to release their names online. Every one of these is gleaned from publicly available sources. Security concerns thus do not apply (and I rather believe they were a smokescreen to begin with.)
    2. The staff list merely gives an idea of their general slant. The specific fact that they have strong ties with the Israeli intelligence services is detailed in the "Staff background" section, as quoted from their own site.

I'm afraid I simply can't accept the deletion of vast amounts of highly relevant information from this article. I'm restoring the deleted material. If you think it needs NPOVing, it should be possible to do so by adding information, not by deleting relevant sourced facts. - Mustafaa 21:12, 17 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Here's a suggestion: you don't dispute any of the facts I have listed here, you just claim that they give the wrong impression, insofar as they don't incline the reader to admire the organization, right? And the reason you consider them admirable (despite their Israeli intelligence ties, etc.) is their exposures of instances of Arab anti-Semitism and the like, right? So the appropriate way to argue factually for your POV, rather than by deleting facts, would be to make sure a few of the reasons for it are listed - put a section in mentioning some selected "highlights of their career" which made it into major newspapers. If you do so, I will of course fact-check the reports as far as the Internet allows. - Mustafaa 00:22, 18 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Since there is no technical argument to the quality of MEMRI translations, it is disingenuous to discard them by "exposing the conspiracy" or alleged ties to Israeli intelligence - with no circumstantial evidence and incomplete lists. In general, blaming (or denying) correct translation may be compared to doing the same against the mirror. In its current version, the article attempts to propagate the myth of Zionists rule the world, or the Congress, or the media. Their careers, nationalities, ethnicities (obvious from the names listed) are relevant only to bigots, sorry. --Humus sapiens|Talk 00:50, 18 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
"Alleged"? So you claim MEMRI was lying when it said "Col. (Res.) Yigal Carmon is MEMRI’s President. He served in the IDF/Intelligence Branch from 1968 to 1988"? - Mustafaa 01:38, 18 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly. Alleged, unless there is a proof that MEMRI is an arm of Mossad or whatever else. A serious encyclopedia whould focus on what they do, rather than speculate on who they are (or were 16 years ago). --Humus sapiens|Talk 02:25, 18 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Again, I ask you: if Reuters were staffed almost entirely by Palestinians, many of whom had been high-ranking PLO members in the recent past, would you consider this information relevant to an article on it or not? If al-Manar claimed to be independent, when in fact all its editors happened to be in Hezbollah, would that be relevant or not? The same principle applies here. No one's suggesting "discarding" MEMRI translations, but it is extremely important to understand why they choose to translate what they choose to translate - otherwise, you might naively imagine that they're just picking a representative selection of the Arab press. And the myth of Zionists rule the world is being propagated only if you believ MEMRI rules the world - do you? - Mustafaa 01:44, 18 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

It only tilts the US Congress then? --Humus sapiens|Talk 02:40, 18 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I can tell, you're basically saying that people shouldn't be told who works at MEMRI because they might think that this meant MEMRI was biased towards the viewpoint of its staff's countries of origin. By that argument, I could claim that we shouldn't mention that al-Jazeera is partly funded by the Qatari Emir because this might make people think that al-Jazeera was biased towards his political positions (which, as a matter of fact, it appears not to be.) In both cases, the facts are the facts, and the inferences are the reader's business. - Mustafaa 02:11, 18 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I am against prejudicing the quality of their translation depending on their nationality or the background. It is completely natural for people's political views to change, they leave the army and become pacifists, etc. For example, Gorbachev was a CPSU apparatchik until he got the power to overturn the system. Same with Khrushchev. BTW, I didn't touch the funding section. By this static logic, Arafat's (and PLO's) goal is still the destruction of Israel, as he was saying repeatedly in the past. Or is it what he says today? --Humus sapiens|Talk 02:49, 18 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Alleged

By removing this crucial word, we're suggesting that their current (at the time) "ties with Israel" is a fact. Is it? Are we going to recognize the difference between a state-run and a privately funded & held enterprise. The word "founders" doesn't help. Pls. see my comment above. People & orgs change... well, unless of course, they're "tied to Israel" or to the sicilian mafia. --Humus sapiens|Talk 06:22, 18 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

To address this, I have changed it to "previous history of". People and organizations do indeed change - sometimes. That doesn't mean their previous history suddenly becomes irrelevant to understanding who they are now. I would consider an article on Lyndon LaRouche very much the poorer if it didn't mention his previous, long-repudiated membership of the Socialist Workers' Party, for instance. - Mustafaa 06:42, 18 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
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