I watched The Listening Post from Aljazeera, a report called Misinformation, lies and media spin: Inside the UK election (https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/listeningpost/2019/12/misinformation-lies-media-spin-uk-election-191206215135507.html) Who created this report? Aljazeera, a global news organisation Is this report of an unbiased nature? Not necessarily. The report presents one part of the story, but not the other. Which part of the conflict do we witness? The report highlights that approximately 65% of newspapers and key broadcasters have a political bias favouring the conservative party. However, it does not present whether the remaining 35% of news agents produce unbiased reporting, or whether they have a political bias towards Labour and other smaller political parties. Where might the core conflict have its origin? The report insinuates that, because most news media is biased towards the conservative party, citizens in the UK tend to vote conservative. There is no assessment on whether the remaining 35% is biased towards the other parties. Neither does it examine whether it is the news media affecting voters, or whether it is the political distribution of voters that affects the uneven split of news media supporting one side or the other. Furthermore, Aljazeera is a global news organisation established by the Emir of Qatar, who is in turn the head of state of the country. At the moment Qatar is suffering from a total blockade orchestrated by Saudi Arabia, a country that is in turn a strategic ally of the UK. The conservative party in the UK relies in its strategic partnership with Saudi Arabia to avoid an economic downturn post Brexit. This was demonstrated by the fact that Theresa May, the conservative Brexit Prime Minister as she was known, on her first international trip as Prime Minister, chose to visit the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This alliance between UK’s conservative government and Saudi Arabia may affect the way Aljazeera portrays news on the UK.
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Dear Matias,
thank you very much for making use of your analytical thinking skills in this way. Using such questions is truly just a starting point, but it might help already to have an idea on how complex conflicts or international relations are, how difficult they are to understand, and how easy it becomes to influence the general public.
Thank you very much. Daniel