Off-topic › Media

On texts

I sometimes get comments both to this blog and the Lithuanian one, saying that the statements in one or another blog entry are "not objective", "biased", etc. Hence today I wanted to share some basic knowledge about categories in opinion journalism. I hope that you'll excuse me for only refering to Wikipedia, but these things are encyclopaedially basic :)

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How the world spreads

I can't help but come back to the topic of misrepresentations of the debate about the Nazi and Soviet crimes. The Minister of Justice Remigijus Šimašius, previously part of the neo-liberal mouthpiece, the Lithuanian Free Market Institute, wrote an entry in his blog about the accusations against Lithuanians for massively collaborating with the Nazis during WWII. The world reaction was translated back to Lithuanians in the same manner as always...

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Delfi's 'McCarthyism' continues

Sad to see it, but today Delfi quotes the president of Israel, saying that the crimes of the Nazis and the Soviets are incomparable, and adds this illustration.

The message is obvious, right? The information, taken from the BNS news agency (there is a statement underneath that the information from the news agency cannot be quoted or reproduced without a written permission, so I don't know if it's legal for me to translate it here), contains a quote from Shimon Peres. Does anyone have an English version of his speech? Google search provided no results. According to the author of this news item, Peres claims that Soviets and Nazis are incomparable because the latter killed more people. Is it really what he said? If so, it's a rather lame argument, but I suspect that this is a skewed translation. The quote of Peres starts with 'However', and it's not mentioned, what was before 'however'. This word usually connects opposing ideas, so logically he must have acknowledged the crimes of the Soviets, and then added 'However, they are incomparable to those of the Nazis..." But the preceding statement is, of course, beyond the news item.

Related post here. Illustrations are tools to arouse emotions and create the image of communist threat/conspiracy.

Portal manipulates information about Holocaust survivor

I'm really worried how the way certain news are presented in the most popular news portal Delfi fuels tensions in the society and perpetuates harmful stereotypes. Unfortunately, it seems that some journalists of the portal consciously exploit the emotional undertones of the messages they spread, in search for scandals and subsequent profit.

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What's modern about sex tourism in Denmark?

This scandalous video is already popular enough, perhaps too popular, so there's no need to advertise it further. Yet what interests me is the way this advertising agency was refuting the blames it received. I don't care that much whether the video was successful (bad publicity = good publicity and all that jazz). What I'm interested in is what kind of Denmark it tries to represent.

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Media over all reasonable limits in Lithuania

It's unbelievable! I still can't recover from the shock!

The notorious nationalist daily "Respublika" had some smear campaign about the EU gender education policy. A reaction of the editor of the Catholic internet portal provoked the editor of "Respublica" to spill a bucket of virtual mud on him - I have already written about it in the blog. However, the toothless Journalist ethic inspection did nothing against Tomkus, the editor of Respublika, and he feels like he can do as he pleases. Recently a group of intellectuals announced a public petition calling for a full boycott of "Respublika" because of its disgusting defamation (a few years earlier "Respublika" received international attention for anti-semitic cartoons). I was among those who signed the petition. What Tomkus did to the petition was simply copying the list of names, adding himself and publishing it on the more tabloid sister-newspaper of "Respublika" under his own text, i.e. claiming that these are the people who have signed against "homosexual propaganda". So, my name is under it, along with the names of many leading intellectuals (it made me reflect on who owns the right to their own name in the virtual space, as it's very easy to copy a name and claim that the person actually signed).

I'm pretty sure that journalist and law enforcement institutions will be blind to this again! They would arrest teenage website commenters, but allow large-scale fascists to thrive, unfortunately.

I'm thinking of asking for political asylum in Japan :)

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