24 sour grapes – biaised news from behind the dykes
For those of you out there looking for news to complain about or who are appalled at media bias, this one’s for you.
The badnewsfromthenetherlands blog is the initiative of a strategic consultant from Israel Dr Manfred Gerstenfeld to show that negative media coverage really can harm a country’s image. He is currently working on a book about the Netherlands as part of his research on anti-semitism and anti-Israelism, and, during his research, he was struck by the negative portrayal of Israel by the media.
The blog gets its daily “bad news” updates from Dutch newspapers like NRC Handelsblad, Trouw and De Volkskrant. Gerstenfeld only chooses the articles about negative situations in the Netherlands. They might look like normal news to Dutch citizens, but for someone who doesn’t know anything about the country, it certainly doesn’t give the most positive view of the Netherlands!
Note the author’s misplaced enthusiasm, like they found mould in their fridge and finally know what that funny smell was. It sounds like an interesting experiment, and there is a whole series of these blogs covering the media in countries from around the world.
(Link: radionetherlands.nl)
There is no such thing as an objective point of view. Thus starts the interesting, yet clear and short primer on media bias at rethorica.net. A must read.