greg@bosco.berkeley.edu (10/04/89)
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Greg> Subject: UNITEX bias?
Greg>
Greg> >From: greg@bosco.Berkeley.EDU
Greg> Subject: UNITEX bias (was: To Dr. James Waldron and Patt Haring)
Greg>
Greg> In reply to your recent comments on the issue of possible biases in
Greg> UNITEX, I have compiled a summary of a recent two-week span of
Greg> misc.headlines.unitex. Following this letter is a list of the number
Greg> of articles classified by which country or group of countries the
Greg> article is about. I may have made a few mistakes and you could quibble
Greg> about some of the classifications. Nevertheless, the list is
Greg> representative of the news presented in misc.headlines.unitex in
Greg> general, with the exception that there is often substantional coverage
Greg> of the Palestinian uprising.
Greg>
Greg> For various reasons, it is understandable that m.h.unitex has so many
Greg> articles about the United States. However, I don't understand why
Greg> there are so many articles on South Africa and Central America. I am
Greg> pleased to see so much coverage of these countries. At the same
Greg> time, I would like to see more news about certain major international
Greg> stories, such as the Vietnamese pullout of Cambodia and the continuing
Greg> war in Lebanon, not to mention lesser stories about routine oppression
Greg> and violence in many countries, for example North Korea and Peru.
Greg,
UNITEX does not have a staff of reporters that 'cover' international
news. In fact, all the data that we distribute is gathered
from many (sometimes quite remote) United Nations databases
as well as contributing articles and journals that are sent to us
for distribution from various news agencies and groups, such as,
environmental news from Wetlands or the Audobon Society, news
from Nicaragua Bulletin,Central America Update, etc.
If we had people, perhaps yourself, contributing bonafide news articles
in a machine readable format to walron@newport.rutgers.edu, we
would certainly add this information to our database of international
news. We started outlining the UNITEX Project, 3 years ago, in the areas
of United Nations Information Dissemination. Much of the material we
now distribute, was rather difficult to locate and ceratinly
difficult to access and distribute. In the course of the last few
years, we have been adding other 'outside' sources of information
(government press releases, political journals, etc).
We certainly welcome additional information that would 'round out'
the global picture..so-to-speak. The problem is: we are understaffed,
and without financing at the present time (need people and commitments
from 'qualified' candidates to help UNITEX obtain funding, grants,
sponserships, etc).
Greg>
Greg> In addition, I have not seen balanced treatment of opposing points of
Greg> view on the news items which were covered. Almost all of the news
Greg> items about South Africa portrayed the South African government
Greg> negatively. Almost all of the news about Central America, including
Greg> the two articles on Panama, concerned negative consequences of United
Greg> States policy. It is not my place to say that this implied and direct
Greg> criticism is undeserved. However, most of the news about other
Greg> countries, for example the article on Kenya, concerned "problems
Greg> facing" a government, rather than crimes or mismanagement on the part
Greg> of the government. One gets the distinct impression from these
Greg> articles that most Third World countries are "we", while the United
Greg> States, South Africa, Israel, and China are "they". I would think that
Greg> even Kenya would benefit from healthy criticism sometimes, and that the
Greg> readers of m.h.unitex would benefit from seeing it.
I agree with some of what you stated. Again we need the
help and cooperation from other individuals to both supply us
with this information AND to help UNITEX acquire funding. We simply
do NOT have the time to even apply for grants since basically, Patt Haring
and myself (2 people) do ALL the work for UNITEX (400,000+ bytes
of information per week that is obtained from many diverse sources, from
many different operating systems. This information must be edited for
distribution (edited, not censored...meaning that it is reformatted,
and sent through various proprietary software packages for
distribution to many different networks and end-users to ensure
compatibility with all the systems we are connected with...UseNet
being only one example!
Even from the list you have included below..looking
over it at a glance (and as objectively as I can ;-) )
it appears that, under the circumstances that I
highlighted above, UNITEX is doing a very very good job!
Sincerely,
Dr. James Waldron
Senior Director, UNITEX
Greg>
Greg> Sincerely,
Greg> Greg
Greg> greg@math.berkeley.edu
Greg> --------------------------------------
Greg> 26 USA
Greg> 16 South Africa
Greg> 15 United Nations
Greg> 12 Miscellaneous/Environment
Greg> 9 Nicaragua
Greg> 5 Central America
Greg> 4 Tibet
Greg> 4 Malawi
Greg> 3 Honduras
Greg> 2 USSR
Greg> 2 Panama
Greg> 2 Mozambique
Greg> 2 El Salvador
Greg> 2 Canada
Greg> 2 Angola
Greg> 2 American Indians
Greg> 2 Africa
Greg> 1 Yugoslavia
Greg> 1 Venezuela
Greg> 1 Sudan
Greg> 1 Singapore
Greg> 1 Poland
Greg> 1 Norway
Greg> 1 Netherlands
Greg> 1 NATO
Greg> 1 Lebanon
Greg> 1 Kenya
Greg> 1 East Germany
Greg> 1 Ethiopia
Greg> 1 Costa Rica
Greg> 1 Brazil
Greg> 1 Eastern Bloc
Greg> 1 Belgium
Greg> 1 Argentina
---
Patt Haring | United Nations | FAX: 212-787-1726
patth@sci.ccny.cuny.edu | Information | BBS: 201-795-0733
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