Originally posted by johneffay
Note: This might deserve it's own thread, so John should feel free to split this post off as need be, so we don't muddy the waters of the present thread topic.
[EDIT by johneffay - I think you're right David, so I have split it.]
For myself, I know I have a national bias towards accepting most of what the BBC reports are being - in good faith - accurate (as opposed to necessarily True), whereas I tend to view (what little I see of) Fox News as propagandist pap. I have an inclination to treat UN reports are basically trustworthy because (perhaps naively) I tend to be 'pro' the UN.
I generally think there a source like, say, the Iraq Body Count project (IBC) that is criticized by pro-Western ideologues for overcounting the civilian body count and by anti-war ideologues for undercounting the same is probably getting it about right. (I have the same rationale for the BBC, which has been attacked variously by the Tories for being pro-Labour and by Labour for being pro-Conservative.) I can see why it's not unreasonable to suppose that the Iraqi Government has a vested interest in minimising the number of casualties, without immediately dismissing their count out of hand. Likewise, the criteria for The Lancet's estimate of 100,000 deaths seems a little 'woolly' to me (not being a statistician) without necessarily causing me to dismiss their findings out of hand (because as I say I'm not a statistician).
I know I would sooner trust a news report in The Independent newspaper more than I would the same in The Sun but I wouldn't dismiss a report it's Murdoch Empire stablemate The Times either, even though it is diametric politically to The Indy. I have no reason to suppose that the LA Times is in anyway an untrustworthy source, but perhaps someone from LA can elucidate?
To take this discussion slightly further afield, I would argue that I'm anti-Bush but not anti-American in precisely the same way as I can be anti-Blair without being anti-British. It is interesting to me that criticism of the White House can be considered as being unpatriotic (or 'anti-American') as though no dissent from the status quo can be tolerated. I find that attitude more than somewhat fascist, which considering that more than one person has highlighted the fascist tendencies inherent in Islamism (as opposed to Islam) is certainly ironic imo.
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