Hours after being rescued from eight months captivity in Gaza, freed hostage Noa Argamani arrived at a hospital in Tel Aviv to see her terminally ill mother.
Argamani, 26, was one of the most recognized faces among the hostages abducted by Hamas on Oct. 7. Harrowing footage of her being taken into Gaza on the back of a motorcycle, pleading for her life and reaching desperately towards her boyfriend being marched alongside her on foot circulated across the globe.
Hey, what a great occasion to talk about the uselessness of these rankings.
Calling out media for outright lying is great, but the way their “bias” is judged is almost always tied to where they are perceived to be in a left-right spectrum, where being “centrist” is considered to be “not biased”, even though the political center is defined by a given society’s current political and ideological paradigm - not because it is “objective” or “unbiased”. This way, “lack of bias” becomes a slur to throw against anyone who doesn’t conform to the stablishment.
Furthermore: lack of bias is impossible. Adding to what the other comments are saying: if you wanted to comment and report on this hostage’s situation and experience without bias, you should dedicate similar amounts of time and effort to inform about every victim of this conflict, whether they’re died to a missile, they were taken hostage, they were taken to prison in the West Bank without legal guarantees, they died to direct fire, or they’re suffering hunger.
To illustrate this issue even more clearly: every few weeks if not more often, we get a report on an Israeli who is given a name, a face, a family, and a context of what’s their family context, and they’re usually young women. Media does report on the number of reported Palestinian victims (along with Israeli officials and their allies saying that the sources shouldn’t be trusted, no matter what the sources are), but how often are those victims given a name, a face and a story on their life?