[Dean's World] Dave Price: Gatekeepers, Near and Far

[notify at powerblogs.com]

Posted by Dave Price:
Gatekeepers, Near and Far
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1158679812.shtml


   [1]This is interesting.
   Obviously, these present very different views of the same information:
   in the one case, we have Bush looking upward confidently and the GOP
   doing better, in the other we have Bush looking down, possibly
   confused, and the GOP "not making the case."
   What's really fascinating to me is to take this paradigm and apply it
   to how people in some Islamic communites have their information
   filtered and distorted. In the West, we have a governmental/societal
   system built on freedom of information, and our information
   gatekeepers generally make some pretense of objectivity, and we still
   get divergence like this even when the facts remain the same. In
   countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, access to information
   is often rigidly controlled and gatekeepers can be virulently,
   unapologetically xenophobic -- and they often don't spend a lot of
   time worrying about accuracy (remember the "Mohammed As A Pig" picture
   that [2]turned out to be a French guy in a pig-calling contest?)
   That deliberate contextual control, and not poverty, comments by the
   Pope, pictures of Mohammed, Israel, the Crusades, or any of the
   plethora of recited historical insults to Islam, is the root cause of
   Islamic terrorism.

References

   1. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/blog/2006/09/the_aps_switcheroo.html
   2. http://www.americandaughter.com/index.html?http://frontpage.americandaughter.com/?p=430