greg@bosco.Berkeley.EDU (10/02/89)
In reply to your recent comments on the issue of possible biases in
UNITEX, I have compiled a summary of a recent two-week span of
misc.headlines.unitex. Following this letter is a list of the number
of articles classified by which country or group of countries the
article is about. I may have made a few mistakes and you could quibble
about some of the classifications. Nevertheless, the list is
representative of the news presented in misc.headlines.unitex in
general, with the exception that there is often substantional coverage
of the Palestinian uprising.
For various reasons, it is understandable that m.h.unitex has so many
articles about the United States. However, I don't understand why
there are so many articles on South Africa and Central America. I am
pleased to see so much coverage of these countries. At the same
time, I would like to see more news about certain major international
stories, such as the Vietnamese pullout of Cambodia and the continuing
war in Lebanon, not to mention lesser stories about routine oppression
and violence in many countries, for example North Korea and Peru.
In addition, I have not seen balanced treatment of opposing points of
view on the news items which were covered. Almost all of the news
items about South Africa portrayed the South African government
negatively. Almost all of the news about Central America, including
the two articles on Panama, concerned negative consequences of United
States policy. It is not my place to say that this implied and direct
criticism is undeserved. However, most of the news about other
countries, for example the article on Kenya, concerned "problems
facing" a government, rather than crimes or mismanagement on the part
of the government. One gets the distinct impression from these
articles that most Third World countries are "we", while the United
States, South Africa, Israel, and China are "they". I would think that
even Kenya would benefit from healthy criticism sometimes, and that the
readers of m.h.unitex would benefit from seeing it.
Sincerely,
Greg
greg@math.berkeley.edu
--------------------------------------
26 USA
16 South Africa
15 United Nations
12 Miscellaneous/Environment
9 Nicaragua
5 Central America
4 Tibet
4 Malawi
3 Honduras
2 USSR
2 Panama
2 Mozambique
2 El Salvador
2 Canada
2 Angola
2 American Indians
2 Africa
1 Yugoslavia
1 Venezuela
1 Sudan
1 Singapore
1 Poland
1 Norway
1 Netherlands
1 NATO
1 Lebanon
1 Kenya
1 East Germany
1 Ethiopia
1 Costa Rica
1 Brazil
1 Eastern Bloc
1 Belgium
1 Argentina
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