Mondo Times Media Poll Archive

This poll ran from June 26 to July 2, 2006.

Mondo Times Poll Results

"Journalists should be on the side of the victims." True 387/39% False 598/61%

Votes: 985

Robert Fisk, Middle East correspondent for the British newspaper The Independent, speaking at Columbia University about the state of the media on April 14, 2006. Fisk challenged the standard reporting conventions taught to journalism students around the world. "There's one that comes up from the journalism school system which is you've got to give equal time to both sides," he said. "To which I say well, if you were reporting the slave trade in the 18th century, would you give equal time to the slave ship captain? No. If you’re covering the liberation of a Nazi camp, do you give equal time to the SS spokesman? No. When I covered a Palestinian suicide bombing of a restaurant in Israeli west Jerusalem in August 2001, did I give equal time to the Islamic jihad spokesman? No. When 1,700 Palestinians were slaughtered in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in 1982, did I give equal time to the Israeli spokesman, who of course was representing an army who watched the massacre as its Lebanese Phalangist allies carried it out? No. Journalists should be on the side of the victims."

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