Suddenly the news is more real because a western source reports on it? Ironically people will think they’re immune to propaganda because they’ve been trained to automatically distrust non-western sources.
Yes it is, it’s attacking the source for being Chinese.
No, it’s attacking the source for being integral to propaganda arm of the CCP. I’d hope to see the same response to state-run media of any non-democratic country. It’s also not intending to discredit the news whatsoever, so it isn’t an ad hominem attack. They’re encouraging you to use more trustworthy sources.
Suddenly the news is more real because a western source reports on it?
No, this news is real regardless. There’s probably a post about it on 4chan; that doesn’t make 4chan a news source, either.
Ironically people will think they’re immune to propaganda because they’ve been trained to automatically distrust non-western sources.
There are countless well-trusted sources outside of the western world. They just don’t require a stamp of approval from their authoritarian government before they can publish.
No, it’s attacking the source for being integral to propaganda arm of the CCP.
Which is still ad hominem: Argument by the reputation of the bearer of the news instead of the integrity of the news.
Sure Xinhua is biased AF when it comes to many things of immediate interest to the CCP… but a mosque in Gaza isn’t really among those things. You could draw some link between China and the US being rivals and China wanting to publicise how the tail that wags the US is being a dipshit but that kind of thing is par for the course for pretty much any media outlet, there’s always bias in what to report on and what not. But that’s more an issue of consumers of whole frontpages, not individual articles.
My two cents is that what OP should’ve done is use a more neutral source of news, and what the critics should’ve done is slam Xinhua but also acknowledge that the article itself actually happens to be fine. There’s plenty of shit to criticise China for you don’t need to make stuff up, only hurts the case.
I could see if it was a deflection and criticized something irrelevant about China or the news agency. But saying you aren’t sure about a story because the source is known to be unreliable is perfectly reasonable. And yes, I trust NPR more than the official state media of any government. I’d say, the Trump administration released a statement saying basically anything and it was repeated by Fox, I’d be wary, so no, I don’t agree with the “western” thing.
That’s not really what ad hominem means.
Yes it is, it’s attacking the source for being Chinese. The news itself is true: https://www.npr.org/2023/12/09/1218384968/mosque-gaza-omari-israel-hamas-war
Suddenly the news is more real because a western source reports on it? Ironically people will think they’re immune to propaganda because they’ve been trained to automatically distrust non-western sources.
No, it’s attacking the source for being integral to propaganda arm of the CCP. I’d hope to see the same response to state-run media of any non-democratic country. It’s also not intending to discredit the news whatsoever, so it isn’t an ad hominem attack. They’re encouraging you to use more trustworthy sources.
No, this news is real regardless. There’s probably a post about it on 4chan; that doesn’t make 4chan a news source, either.
There are countless well-trusted sources outside of the western world. They just don’t require a stamp of approval from their authoritarian government before they can publish.
Which is still ad hominem: Argument by the reputation of the bearer of the news instead of the integrity of the news.
Sure Xinhua is biased AF when it comes to many things of immediate interest to the CCP… but a mosque in Gaza isn’t really among those things. You could draw some link between China and the US being rivals and China wanting to publicise how the tail that wags the US is being a dipshit but that kind of thing is par for the course for pretty much any media outlet, there’s always bias in what to report on and what not. But that’s more an issue of consumers of whole frontpages, not individual articles.
My two cents is that what OP should’ve done is use a more neutral source of news, and what the critics should’ve done is slam Xinhua but also acknowledge that the article itself actually happens to be fine. There’s plenty of shit to criticise China for you don’t need to make stuff up, only hurts the case.
I could see if it was a deflection and criticized something irrelevant about China or the news agency. But saying you aren’t sure about a story because the source is known to be unreliable is perfectly reasonable. And yes, I trust NPR more than the official state media of any government. I’d say, the Trump administration released a statement saying basically anything and it was repeated by Fox, I’d be wary, so no, I don’t agree with the “western” thing.