“Half of the Israeli public is no longer in favor of the war,” one friend told me Saturday night as we witnessed thousands of Israelis take to the streets to protest the Israeli government under the slogan, “Elections Now.” “Yes, but the other half is all-in, and REALLY in favor,” responded his wife. “And they are the more powerful group.”
She, of course, is right. For months, reports of torture and rape have emerged from Israel’s military base turned torture camp, Sde Teiman, where Israel has imprisoned thousands of Palestinians without charge. I wrote about it in a previous diary earlier this month. Palestinians who have emerged from this torture camp refer to it as the “slaughterhouse” with horrendous tales of torture, rape, abuse, and sleep deprivation being meted out by Israeli prison guards. Nearly 30 Palestinians have died while in Sde Teiman and other prisons, according to the information provided to date.
And while the precise chain of events is unclear, what we do know is that the Israeli military advocate general decided to dispatch the military police to question nine Israeli soldiers on suspicion of gang-raping and sodomizing a Palestinian man from Gaza at Sde Teiman. The man was rushed to the hospital where he exhibited signs of rape, including a ruptured bowel and broken ribs. It would be a mistake to simply think that Israel’s actions in prisons like Sde Teiman came only after October. Since becoming Israel’s national security minister in 2022, ultranationalist Itamar Ben Gvir has made prisons his target, with him authorizing abuse against Palestinians. He has also called for the death penalty to solve problems of overcrowding.
Perhaps you would prefer CBS News?
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-hamas-war-idf-palestinian-prisoner-alleged-rape-sde-teinman-abuse-protest/
yes, that's a lot less loaded headline.
did you think you were delivering some sick burn, but shot yourself in your own leg instead? 😆
Summary
The Zeteo article uses highly emotional and critical language, aiming to evoke a strong emotional response from the reader, particularly outrage and condemnation towards Israeli actions and the societal response.
The CBS News article maintains a more neutral and factual tone, focusing on presenting a balanced view of the events and reactions, thus aiming to inform rather than to emotionally charge the reader.
Both articles discuss deeply disturbing events, but they differ significantly in their approach to tone and emotional engagement.
Maybe being biased against rape and torture is a good thing ¯\(ツ)/¯. Many newspapers used neutral and "objective" language in the 1800s when covering the lynching of black people, and it's hypothesized that this helped normalize the practice. There are many valid criticisms against "journalistic objectivity."
Also, be mindful that ChatGPT is intentionally biased through training data selection, RLHF, and many guardrails.
being biased in the news is never good thing. if you are biased, you are doing propaganda, not the news.
no, there are not. not unless you want to come up with some stupid joke like "objectivity means 5 minutes for hitler and 5 minutes for jew", which, obviously, no sane person thinks.
objectivity means you bring, to the best of your ability, all relevant facts and let the reader draw their own conclusion instead of trying to manipulate them.
it is the difference between news and said propaganda.
Zios literally think rape is a neutral issue.
womp womp
"Your headline about the violent pro-prisoner-rape protests are biased."
not just the headline, the whole article. and your hysterical one liner is not going to change that 😂
No sick burn was intended.
Regardless of whether you think an emotive or a dispassionate tone is more appropriate for this particular story, the facts contained in both articles remain the same, do they not?
~~yes, i am not disputing the facts.~~
edit:
so it turned out that the facts are not, in fact, the same 😂
this is propaganda - notice how “the stick” became “the explosive”, which is pretty ludicrous manipulation.
and that is why i would never read the zeteo article behind the headline, haven’t i got into this discussion.
zeteo:
“Is inserting an explosive into the rectum of a person legitimate?” Likud Knesset member Hanoch Milvetsky responded with what has been the position of the right (more than 50% of the Knesset, remember): “If he is a Nukhba [Hamas commando], everything is legitimate.”
cbs:
Lawmaker Hanoch Milwidsky was asked as he defended the alleged abuse whether it was legitimate, “to insert a stick into a person’s rectum?”
“Yes!” he shouted in reply to his fellow parliamentarian. “If he is a Nukhba [Hamas militant], everything is legitimate to do! Everything!”
original:
the problem is you can make the same loaded headline about october 7 attack, and it doesn't serve its purpose of sharing the facts, because most of potential readers will dismiss it right when finishing the headline.
i do want to believe that majority of the israeli society does not riot for a right to rape prisoners and as a person living 3000 km from the conflict, being fed emotional propaganda from both sides doesn't make the job of making the opinion easier.
I disagree -- I think there is definitely room for this more impassioned/personal style of reporting as long as the facts being reported are accurate, especially with this conflict in particular. After all, the headline is not misleading -- people literally attacked military bases in defense of the right of IDF soldiers to rape and torture Palestinian detainees with impunity. That happened.
If you prefer the more dispassionate, passive-voice-using, equivocating language about what is going on in Israel/Palestine right now, you have almost the entire rest of the Western news media to choose from.
you are thinking of propaganda.
thre isn't room for passion in news, because passion clouds judgement and that stands in a way of accuracy.
you can be passionate about a subject, but it can't affect your choice of facts or adjectives you use to emotionally manipulate the reader - because then you are simply not trustworthy and its even counterproductive to your goal, which is to share information about the subject of your passion.
The idea that propaganda cannot be propaganda if it is delivered in a dry, objective tone is nonsensical.
The Israel/Palestine conflict is a great example of this - especially in the US. Anyone who has closely watched the mainstream news media cover the situation in Gaza, or the college protests that sprung up as a result, has witnessed consent for Israel's war being manufactured in front of their very eyes, along with the vilification of anyone who stands opposed to it. The fact that it is delivered by seemingly professional journalists in a somber, even tone has no bearing whatsoever on how accurately it describes reality.
i am talking about exact opposite problem.
i am talking about when you deliver mix of information in highly emotional and manipulative tone, but claim it to be news.
dry, objective tone is indeed not the assurance of being good news, but it is one of the qualifying conditions.
this is propaganda - notice how "the stick" became "the explosive", which is pretty ludicrous manipulation.
and that is why i would never read the zeteo article behind the headline, haven't i got into this discussion.
zeteo:
“Is inserting an explosive into the rectum of a person legitimate?” Likud Knesset member Hanoch Milvetsky responded with what has been the position of the right (more than 50% of the Knesset, remember): “If he is a Nukhba [Hamas commando], everything is legitimate.”
cbs:
Lawmaker Hanoch Milwidsky was asked as he defended the alleged abuse whether it was legitimate, "to insert a stick into a person's rectum?"
"Yes!" he shouted in reply to his fellow parliamentarian. "If he is a Nukhba [Hamas militant], everything is legitimate to do! Everything!"
lmao. Dude is so offended by people denouncing rape.
You have a completely imaginary concept of how news works. It's always biased. It's always propaganda. Your "neutral tone" is just a propaganda tool of hegemony.
The best we can hope for is that the news is biased against rape, genocide, etc. Even though most often it is not.
Oh so we need to let you remain delusional so you can live in comfort while people are raped and genocided nearby?
Because that's the quote from the lawmaker asking the question. If they didn't quote him exactly they'd be lying.
https://www.vox.com/politics/364343/israel-riot-military-base-sde-touman-torture-member-knesset
https://x.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1817904053462196523
not how it works. you don't just quote any nonsense just because someone said it without adding context, especially if it could help misinterpret the merit of your article. unless, of course, that is exactly your goal.