Comment on Lemmy.World's !News sides with Mark Zuckerberg in Censoring Palestinians
Five@slrpnk.net 4 weeks agoI agree, Pepe Escobar’s take in that opinion piece is complete garbage. It should be noted that it is and opinion piece with the sub text “The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.”
Shutting down the entire journal because one columnist is a Putin apologist isn’t what the concept of a free press is about. I’d be less alarmed by mods shutting down a post of that columnist for genocide apology. It looks like it’s only one featured columnist out of five occasionally posting garbage like that, and the bulk of their focus is on the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Alan Dershowitz, famous for his shit takes, has apologized for torture and genocide and continues to be frequently featured in The Boston Globe, Haaretz, and The Wall Street Journal. Since those sources are posted freely, it would be inconsistent to ban The Cradle over Pepe Escobar.
PugJesus@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
How many articles by how many authors since the beginning of the war need to be posted before you would regard the site as knowingly pushing Russian propaganda?
Five@slrpnk.net 4 weeks ago
How do you distinguish between opinion and propaganda? Its entirely credible that Pepe Escobar sincerely believes the positions he holds.
Should the corpus of every news source that includes opinion pieces that serve the interests of a war criminal state be banned?
PugJesus@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Oh, so if he sincerely believes in genocide, it’s fine.
If they continuously make apologia for that war criminal state’s war crimes, especially ongoing ones, yes, absolutely.
Five@slrpnk.net 4 weeks ago
Regardless of our conflict, we can agree that Pepe Escobar is a shithead.
There’s an old joke that goes:
My concern is that the criteria you are using to justify banning The Cradle would also ban most United States media as well. I value the principle of a free press, and what you’re proposing is inconsistent with those values. It’s easy to call for the ban of information that disagrees with us, but unless we develop a more nuanced approach to combating propaganda, we risk replicating the values of the authoritarian systems we oppose.
Shyfer@ttrpg.network 4 weeks ago
By that logic, the NY Times should be banned as a source. They’re opinion section is chocked full of basically the pro US point of view and defending Israel (including a memo advocating genocide denial). One-sided coverage, poorly sourced, it all applies to them, too.