Talk:Middle East Media Research Institute/Archive 1

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NPOV note

Added {{NPOV}} note. The effort to delegitimize MEMRI shines through. Is there a single example of any wrongful translation by MEMRI? Do they draw the cartoons themselves? Did the Arab/Muslim media suddenly become less antisemitic and more tolerant towards Israel? --Humus sapiens|Talk 06:54, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

You say it's NPOV - care to explain how so? Is the mere act of listing MEMRI staff (every single one that I could find, with no exceptions) non-neutral? - Mustafaa 07:19, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

Oh, and (as the Abu Aardvark blog illustrates rather nicely) their translations may be accurate (though Brian Whitaker does question some of them), but their selection is far from representative - though it pretends to be - and is calculated to make the Arab media look far more anti-Semitic than it actually is. Can you imagine what the Arab world would think of British public opinion if they were being fed a steady diet of translations from The Sun? - Mustafaa 07:24, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

"Everyone can agree that marking an article as having an NPOV dispute is a temporary measure, and should be followed up by actual contributions to the article in order to put it in such a state that people agree that it has a NPOV." Still waiting... - Mustafaa 20:54, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

IMHO, a few things need radical change here:

1. I find the "selectivity" argument to be very weak, since most of Arab media is state-controlled. Totalitarian regimes are afraid of freedom of information, so the efforts to expose them only deserve praise. Unfortunately the article attempts to delegitimize and condemn these efforts.
2. Is Arab media as concerned with illegal occupation of Tibet, the plight of ancient but stateless Kurds or Basques, or persecutions of Christians in Muslim lands, or refugees of Morocco, Sudan, Rwanda, as with the tiny piece of Jewish land where Jews are not dhimmi anymore? Talk about selectivity! I don't see why mere translating somehow contraversial.
3. The exposing of pseudonyms reminds me the Stalin's campaign against rootless cosmopolitans. Why do the ethnicity or citizenship even matter? Finkelstein, Chomsky, Stanley Cohen and Adam Shapiro are Jewish, so what?
4. Brian Whitaker, The Guardian, April 12, 2004]: So it is all the Palestinians' fault, then. Never mind that Yasser Arafat is their elected leader (chosen in one of the region's more credible elections).... Does he seem an objective source to you?
5. How come the alleged "ties with Israel" or "commitment to Israel" are somehow wrong? As I said elsewhere, I am against the notion that anything good for Israel or Jews is automatically bad for Arabs, or vice versa. --Humus sapiens|Talk 08:23, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

1a. Quite a lot of it is state-controlled, yes, to varying degrees; hence the value of non-state-controlled ones like al Jazeera. That has no relevance to the question of MEMRI's value; far from providing an alternative to the state-controlled media, MEMRI simply provides the worst of the Arab media a platform to shout at the rest of the world.

Says who? It's the best I can find. Is there an alternative? --Humus sapiens|Talk 09:37, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

"Best you can find" at what? - Mustafaa 19:00, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

1b."Unfortunately the article attempts to delegitimize and condemn these efforts." - how so exactly? By reporting accurately on some common complaints about it, or by listing its staff when MEMRI tries so hard not to get them listed?

2. Irrelevant. You want to complain about Arab media selectivity, go ahead and I'll be the first to join you - but on a page about the Arab media, not one about MEMRI. If you don't see why "mere translating somehow contraversial", I recommend the Abu Aardvark piece.

One can't make an argument about the selectivity of translation when the source itself is out of balance. Sorry, I'm not wasting my time on some Boso the clown blog and don't think it belongs to serious encyclopedia. Only shows non-NPOV grasping for straws. Sorry I misspelled "controversial". --Humus sapiens|Talk 09:37, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

"Boso the clown blog" (sic)? It's by a professor of political science, and is far more informative and better analyzed than The Guardian (or The New York Times) usually is. Frankly, if more blogs were this good, I'd be for removing the newspaper links. - Mustafaa 19:00, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

3. Read the Brian Whitaker/MEMRI debates listed below, and you'll see why. Yigal Carmon made an issue of the supposed diversity of their staff, and I have seen several people on the Internet with the mistaken impression that the enterprise consists mainly of Arabs. Moreover, their nationality is extremely relevant to judging their angle and their goals. If they were willing to be less secretive, and actually make their staff lists public, it wouldn't be an issue; but they make an effort to keep this info hard to find, which in itself makes this valuable information.

Bringing up their nationality suggests that all Jews have some kind of "conspiracy" or "goals". Heard enough of that, thank you. --Humus sapiens|Talk 09:37, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

Uh, no. There's a difference between nationality and ethnicity. Nowhere does this article even mention the latter. - Mustafaa 19:00, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

4. There are no objective sources in Middle Eastern politics. However, he's not trying to conceal his angle; they are.

Oh, I see. There is no objectivity anyway, so here's a bigot. --Humus sapiens|Talk 09:37, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

So now you're going to tell me they're the bunch of disinterested observers they try to give the impression of being? - Mustafaa 19:00, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

5. Who says it's wrong? That's your words, not mine or the article's. It is, however, extremely relevant to judging their bias - which is the most essential thing to know about any news organization. Again, it would be a lot less relevant if they weren't so secretive about it. - Mustafaa 21:03, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

My apologies if I was not clear earlier. See the Jewish names I provided above. What do they tell you? Nothing, because there is full spectrum of opinions within Jewish community. --Humus sapiens|Talk 09:37, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

Hence the mention of their previous attested opinions. - Mustafaa 19:00, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

If, as you seem to think, MEMRI is a heroic group trying to open a window on the Arab media, then you should be glad to see all their names listed like this, so that due credit can accrue to them. If having been a member of Israeli intelligence is nothing to be ashamed of, then you should be proud that this page is advertising the fact that three of them have been members of it. Instead, you seem to regard the mention of these facts as an attempt to besmirch their name. Or maybe I'm misinterpreting your objection; if so, what exactly are you objecting to in the article? Can you cite some quotes? - Mustafaa 22:00, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

You must feel exposing some kind of spy-ring or investigating a conspiracy against innocent Arab media. I think that the irrelevant info only harms the article. I see them as opening the world's eyes to new Der Sturmer in the making. Heroes? Of course they are, and to me it doesn't matter whoever they are, as long as they do their job well. Cheers. --Humus sapiens|Talk 09:37, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

Let me put it this way: many spheres of today's world have serious problems. Does focusing on the nationality (rather than substance) seem right? Or only as long as those who's in charge are Jewish? More specifically, its critics often suggest that its selection is intended to further Israeli goals, in light of its ties with Israel. The "Israeli goals" of world domination, I take it? This article belongs to el-intifada, not WP. --Humus sapiens|Talk 17:00, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

World domination? Don't be ridiculous. The Israeli goal in question is quite obvious: to tilt world public opinion in favor of Israel and against the Arabs. I don't even blame them for trying; it's their patriotic duty, no doubt. I do blame them for trying to keep the fact a secret. If Reuters, for instance, had a almost entirely Arab staff, wouldn't you expect any decent article on it to note the fact? I certainly would. So again, I ask: concrete objections? Quotes? - Mustafaa 19:00, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

OK - now instead of having a "Ties with Israel" section, it quotes the full backgrounds that they themselves posted. So, are their words biased against themselves? - Mustafaa 21:20, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

Pseudonym exposure

Oh yeah - you mentioned pseudonyms. Does it matter that "Adam Pashut" is using a pseudonym? No. But we can't list a name that's so obviously fake (it comes from a song, I think) as if it were real. The pseudonym was intended to be obvious - it's as if an English speaker wrote under the byline "Eleanor Rigby" - and should be taken in the same spirit. - Mustafaa 22:22, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

NPOVification

The following has been removed from the article:

1. The outdated stuff.
2. may be the author and Maariv journalist -- not a fact.
3. List of MEMRI staff (incomplete; readers are urged to add to the list if new information becomes available): I understand a lot of effort went to compile this list. But I object to including it for a few reasons:

• If people don't want to be listed out of security concerns, I don't believe we should do it.
• Admittedly, the list is incomplete. But if there are some Arabs (or whoever else) there, then the "ties with Israel" conspiracy theory goes up in smoke. Seems like a case of misleading selectivity to me.

I also removed the NPOV note that I added earlier. Please see if this works. --Humus sapiens|Talk 05:11, 16 May 2004 (UTC)

1. "The outdated stuff" is extremely relevant; in fact this article should have a lot more of it. The history of the organization is of great interest.
2. Fair enough.
3. I object to your objections:
   1. They were willing to release their names online. Every one of these is gleaned from publicly available sources. Security concerns thus do not apply (and I rather believe they were a smokescreen to begin with.)
   2. The staff list merely gives an idea of their general slant. The specific fact that they have strong ties with the Israeli intelligence services is detailed in the "Staff background" section, as quoted from their own site.

I'm afraid I simply can't accept the deletion of vast amounts of highly relevant information from this article. I'm restoring the deleted material. If you think it needs NPOVing, it should be possible to do so by adding information, not by deleting relevant sourced facts. - Mustafaa 21:12, 17 May 2004 (UTC)

Here's a suggestion: you don't dispute any of the facts I have listed here, you just claim that they give the wrong impression, insofar as they don't incline the reader to admire the organization, right? And the reason you consider them admirable (despite their Israeli intelligence ties, etc.) is their exposures of instances of Arab anti-Semitism and the like, right? So the appropriate way to argue factually for your POV, rather than by deleting facts, would be to make sure a few of the reasons for it are listed - put a section in mentioning some selected "highlights of their career" which made it into major newspapers. If you do so, I will of course fact-check the reports as far as the Internet allows. - Mustafaa 00:22, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

Since there is no technical argument to the quality of MEMRI translations, it is disingenuous to discard them by "exposing the conspiracy" or alleged ties to Israeli intelligence - with no circumstantial evidence and incomplete lists. In general, blaming (or denying) correct translation may be compared to doing the same against the mirror. In its current version, the article attempts to propagate the myth of Zionists rule the world, or the Congress, or the media. Their careers, nationalities, ethnicities (obvious from the names listed) are relevant only to bigots, sorry. --Humus sapiens|Talk 00:50, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

"Alleged"? So you claim MEMRI was lying when it said "Col. (Res.) Yigal Carmon is MEMRI’s President. He served in the IDF/Intelligence Branch from 1968 to 1988"? - Mustafaa 01:38, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

Exactly. Alleged, unless there is a proof that MEMRI is an arm of Mossad or whatever else. A serious encyclopedia whould focus on what they do, rather than speculate on who they are (or were 16 years ago). --Humus sapiens|Talk 02:25, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

Again, I ask you: if Reuters were staffed almost entirely by Palestinians, many of whom had been high-ranking PLO members in the recent past, would you consider this information relevant to an article on it or not? If al-Manar claimed to be independent, when in fact all its editors happened to be in Hezbollah, would that be relevant or not? The same principle applies here. No one's suggesting "discarding" MEMRI translations, but it is extremely important to understand why they choose to translate what they choose to translate - otherwise, you might naively imagine that they're just picking a representative selection of the Arab press. And the myth of Zionists rule the world is being propagated only if you believ MEMRI rules the world - do you? - Mustafaa 01:44, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

It only tilts the US Congress then? --Humus sapiens|Talk 02:40, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, you're basically saying that people shouldn't be told who works at MEMRI because they might think that this meant MEMRI was biased towards the viewpoint of its staff's countries of origin. By that argument, I could claim that we shouldn't mention that al Jazeera is partly funded by the Qatari Emir because this might make people think that al-Jazeera was biased towards his political positions (which, as a matter of fact, it appears not to be.) In both cases, the facts are the facts, and the inferences are the reader's business. - Mustafaa 02:11, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

I am against prejudicing the quality of their translation depending on their nationality or the background. It is completely natural for people's political views to change, they leave the army and become pacifists, etc. For example, Gorbachev was a CPSU apparatchik until he got the power to overturn the system. Same with Khrushchev. BTW, I didn't touch the funding section. By this static logic, Arafat's (and PLO's) goal is still the destruction of Israel, as he was saying repeatedly in the past. Or is it what he says today? --Humus sapiens|Talk 02:49, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

Alleged

By removing this crucial word, we're suggesting that their current (at the time) "ties with Israel" is a fact. Is it? Are we going to recognize the difference between a state-run and a privately funded & held enterprise. The word "founders" doesn't help. Pls. see my comment above. People & orgs change... well, unless of course, they're "tied to Israel" or to the sicilian mafia. --Humus sapiens|Talk 06:22, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

To address this, I have changed it to "previous history of". People and organizations do indeed change - sometimes. That doesn't mean their previous history suddenly becomes irrelevant to understanding who they are now. I would consider an article on Lyndon LaRouche very much the poorer if it didn't mention his previous, long-repudiated membership of the Socialist Workers' Party, for instance. And when did Yigal Carmon ever repudiate the objectives he espoused as a member of the Israeli intelligence services, as Arafat or LaRouche have their previous objectives? - Mustafaa 06:48, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

An outside view

Mustafaa asked me to comment on the article. It actually seems pretty good, compared to others on similar topics. If it has any flaws, these might be:

• the insinuation that MEMRI is not to be trusted at all, since it's apparently run by an Israeli government agency and thus has an interest in spreading propaganda; or,
• using one example of an out-of-context quotation to imply that they regularly quote out of context

But these are not fatal flaws, and I'm actually rather satisfied with the article. If someone is looking for more translations of what's being said in Arabic media, they'd probably check out MEMRI. (If someone already thinks Israel is evil incarnate, this article won't do much to change their mind ;-) --Uncle Ed 12:11, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

Oh, I just read the talk page, too. A lot of it isn't really about MEMRI, but about larger issues such as the Arab-Israeli conflict or (as I'd like to think) world peace itself. There's little love or cooperation between Arabs and Israelis, or Muslims and Jews. And hardly anyone anywhere expresses much concern or does anything useful about the plight of most of the world's people who suffer oppression or poverty. I see little use in blaming Israel or the Islamic sphere for the world's problems: blame doesn't cure disease or alleviate poverty. As for oppression, is there any agreement on the sort of human rights everyone in the world is entitled to, and how the "good people" of the world ought to provide these rights? --Uncle Ed 12:17, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

Only source?

The article says "MEMRI is one of the few sources of English language translations of material published in Arabic and Persian; it thus provides a view into Arab and Iranian media that is often otherwise unavailable to English speakers who are not literate in those languages." This is true only because of the weasel word like "one of the few" and "often". There are a number of other sources of translations that are larger operations than MEMRI and also much longer established. One of them is the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, which is a US government agency since 1941, and another is the BBC Monitoring Service, run by the BBC since approx 1939. I think that both of them are currently subscription-only but libraries often have them. There are also a few expensive commercial services that publish translations from foreign press including Arab countries. --Zero 10:37, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

If these other services exist, I suggest you add the relevant information to the article; please provide evidence where you can find it. -- Cabalamat 00:12, 16 July 2004 (UTC)

Palestinian Media Watch

There is another body called Palestinian Media Watch and its address is http://www.pmw.org.il/ run by Itamar Marcus. The "Palestinian Media Watch" that cited in the article, http://www.pmwatch.com is a Palestinian site which monitor the western media and not the Arab media. The reference in this article may be misleading. MathKnight 22:53, 1 August 2004 (UTC)

Staff section

I think it's a great article, but that the staff section is extremely unnecessary. If it is included as an argument against MEMRI (=that most of it's staff are Israeli or American) it can be replaced with a short paragraph. If there are other reasons for these long sections, I'll be happy if someone would be willing to present them here. --Lidless Eye 16:52, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

My position on the list of members is to leave it in. We're an encyclopedia, and we should try to be, well, encyclopedic. So I would say, as a general policy, to leave information in rather than removing it. Looking ahead to where Wikipedia might be in 5 years time, I'd hope that it would have extensive coverage of many (all?) organisations with a high public profile, and this would in many cases include membership. -- Cabalamat 20:54, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I agree, but thinks that the list of members is pointless. I never saw a similar list in other articles. The MEMRI article, IMO, should explain what is the organisation, it's goals and policies, criticsms, etc... Such intricate details are out of place. People who want to see such information should look in MEMRI's website, and not in an encyclopedia.

Anyway, if others agree with your viewpoint I'll drop it... --Lidless Eye 01:43, Sep 15, 2004 (UTC)

I also think the list should not be here. Its sole purpose here is to present MEMRI as a propaganda arm of the "Zionist occupiers" or to subject their staff to possible attack. ←Humus sapiens←Talk 06:40, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

An impartial summary of MEMRI's staff background and history would be continually denied and attacked, which is exactly why someone had to go to the trouble of compiling the details in the first place. That's why we need to keep it. If it makes MEMRI look like a propaganda organization that's just tough. --Zero

Are you aware of other such lists in WP articles?

Look, I don't have a problem with it's goal (although it borders on POV)... I just think an encyclopedia shouldn't present such data. A sentence like "MEMRI's staff is comprised of Israelis who worked in their past in different Israeli intelligence agencies" will do the same and will make the whole article a lot better. --Lidless Eye 12:46, Sep 15, 2004 (UTC)

That's how it used to be and it caused continuous trouble from people who claimed that it was a false allegation. I agree that it looks excessive, but what you are suggesting will just restart the hassle and finally it will all be put back in again. It isn't worth the effort. --Zero 14:24, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Maybe I'm just being stubburn, but I don't accept your argument. We should strive for making each article as close to perfect as possible, and shouldn't bow down to ridiculous demands. The list can be moved to the talk page. --Lidless Eye 15:26, Sep 15, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, we should strive to make each article as good as possible -- and removing factual information from an article reduces the number of facts in that article, and in Wikipedia. So I thinnk the information should stay. If people really think it doesn't belong in the article, then as a compromise I would support listing it in a separate article. -- Cabalamat 20:49, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Peres, Rabin, Barak, Mitzna and whole bunch of other Israeli leftists have had the same background, so what? Switching the focus from the methods/results of MEMRI's today's work is a toothless attempt to discredit it, because they don't even write their own material, all they do is mere translation. Even if discrediting MEMRI makes someone feel better, it certainly won't make the big problem disppear. What big problem? Read [1] ←Humus sapiens←Talk 10:04, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Does Wikipedia hide the background of any of those "leftists" you listed? I would be easy to formulate a theory about why you don't like this information about MEMRI to be displayed in the article. --Zero 10:38, 16 September 2004 (UTC)

Arab equivalent?

I vaguely recall reading of an equivalent to MEMRI but the other way round, i.e. an Arab organisation devoted to selectively translating articles from the Israeli media for propaganda purposes. Does anyone know what I'm talking about, or was I just imagining it? -- Cabalamat 20:50, 26 May 2004 (UTC)

If you have evidence that MEMRI has "selectively quoted" from the Arab media, please present this evidence in the article. My impression is just the opposite: that they are highlighting representative and overlooked instances of anti-Semitic propaganda, much of which is funded by Islamic goverments. --Uncle Ed 14:30, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Ed, I'm perplexed at how to reply to your paragraph. You talk as if we are disagreeing, yet I think we are actually agreeing. My contention was (and is) that MEMRI selects which articles to translate, those which put Arabs in a bad light, e.g. anti-Semitic ones. You seem to be agreeing, saying that MEMRI highlights those sort of articles.

To make my position as clear as possible, I'm saying that if an article in the Arab press talks about Jews, particularly if it talks about them in a way that is likely to be negatively regarded in the West, particularly in the USA, then that article is more likely to be translated by MEMRI than other articles that do not have those characteristics, e.g. that don't mention Jews at all. I'm further saying that the people who run MEMRI adhere to the Israeli side in the Arab-Israeli conflict and, naturally, being partisans of that cause, are being selective deliberately in order to change minds in favour their side in that conflict. This is what I mean when I say "propaganda".

I really don't see why my position is in any way contentious. When you have a long-running and rextremely rancorous dispute, which has created a lot of bad feeling on both sides, it's quite obvious that anything one side has to say about the other will be coloured by that bad feeling. Call me a cynic if you like, but it seems to me that if all we knew about an organisation is that it is written by one side in ac conflict, then it being biased against the other side in that conflict is a default value, to be held unless disproved. Similar comments apply about Arab media discussing Israel -- it is bound to have a biased perspective. On the subject of Arab media, I found thev Arab equivalent of MEMRI I was refering to: Arabs Against Discrimination. -- Cabalamat 21:49, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I found AAD English to be pure propaganda website, nothing even close. Directed solely against Israel and full of hatred. Sorry I haven't done it earlier. It's funny that MEMRI was accused of being one-sided. ←Humus sapiens←Talk 06:16, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

That would make it an exact equivalent of MEMRI, then. - Mustafaa 23:27, 7 February 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia obsessed by MEMRI?

Obviously, someone is obsessed by MEMRI. Not only are the readers told what MEMRI is, they also see all the names of people who might be employed, who might have been employed etc. Too much!

Just an outside observers persceptive: it seems to me that the staff section is peculiar to this site and therefore innappropriate of an encyclopedia (which I believe tends to seek consistency). Other sites mention founders and head, if even that. I looked at a number of sites listed in the discussion page (ADL, ADC) and hugely influential organizations outside it (NAACP, NRA, AARP) and saw nothing like this. Even if this list is not intended to be prejudicial it strikes me as in practice non-neutral by its oddity.

(above comments added by user User:171.66.158.181 on 00:00, 17 February 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia obsessed by MEMRI?

Obviously, someone is obsessed by MEMRI. Not only are the readers told what MEMRI is, they also see all the names of people who might be employed, who might have been employed etc. Too much!

Someday all articles will be this long, I hope... but unfortunately, most articles are still waiting for someone to be obsessed with them. - Mustafaa 17:42, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Um... can you clarify why having a long article is supposed to be a bad thing? And posisbly sign your comments? - Mustafaa 20:21, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Well, I'm baffled. How many non-profit institutions have their entire staff wikified? Is every one of these persons likely to meet the notability standard? As is the article violates the "don't overlink" suggestion/rule, simply by having so many red links. It smells of axe-grinding, rather than encyclopedic completeness. --Dhartung | Talk 08:39, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I agree - it was overlinked. Not any more, though. - Mustafaa 04:37, 27 February 2005 (UTC)

Article under dispute

This article is clearly under Mustafaa's control. His view represents one side of the story. It is clearly disupted, as can be seen on this discussion page.

Everything on the dispute page, as far as I can see, has already been resolved. Do you have anything to add, or shall I just remove the tag now? - Mustafaa 04:40, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

OK. I have made a rather drastic editing of the text to illustrate the points of dispute on this text. The tag remains, since the dispute will remain until agreement is reached.

To start with - the previous version of the MEMRI article can be criticized in the same way that it criticized MEMRI. The selection of material that was not neutral.

The main issues: 1. The story about MEMRI is not very complicated. It is a pro-Israel media organisation, translating articles from persian and arabic into English. They are fighting for Israel in the ongoing psychological Mideast warfare. I don't think anyone will disagree with this. There are lots of pro-Israel and pro-Palestine organisations out there.

2. I have crossed out a lot of info about the MEMRI staff. Apart from that it's not possible to see if it is up-to-date, and even so would be quite cumbersome to keep up-to-date, I can frankly not see the point of listing everybody who is working for MEMRI. What is it good for? Does the reader have any use of knowing that various people they never heard of before and never will hear of again are working for MEMRÌ? Wikipedia is not an employment directory. Furthermore, the list brings my mind to various lists of "members of this-or-that conspiracy" that is posted on hate sites. Have the people on the list been informed that they are on it?

3. Concerning conflicts with bloggers etc., MEMRI has been in verbal conflict with a number of people, threatening them with law suits, but this is not news in itself. People threaten each other with law suits every day and I can't see the historical significance of the cases in the text. If Wikipedia was to list all conflicts that did not lead to legal action, then it would not have space for much else. On the other hand, if MEMRI had been involved in court cases, then this could have been interesting, depending on the outcome of these court cases (I don't think that Wikipedia should list all the court cases that Microsoft or Apple has been involved in, either).

So - there are my comments about what is disputed.

In short - boil this down to something that everybody can swallow.

(post script) I note that my changes lasted exactly nine minutes before Mustafaa switched it back to the earlier version. That's less time than I spent on editing the page and writing the comments to the editing. The dispute remains.

I must say that the level of detail in the longer version of the article is inappropriate, almost creepy. I think that it is possible to create a comprehensive article on an organization without providing obsessive detail. Disinfopedia (which just changed names) may be a better place for the more detailed version. -Willmcw 02:51, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)

I certainly agree that there are better places for this sort of thing. The shorter article text is encyclopedic and appropriate for the importance of the organization. I agree fully with the maintainability and accuracy criticisms of the long staff list, although I'm fair -- I can see a few people listed if it's pertinent, e.g. making the IDF connections clear. Otherwise, these people are non-notable and including them is really not something that Wikipedia should strive for. Someone insisting on including them is revealing more about himself than MEMRI, which after all, hires people to do a job. Knowing the organization's purpose and activities is sufficient to divine what it is these individual people do. --Dhartung | Talk 09:33, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I can see an argument for shortening the staff list - there are too many "Research Fellows" for holders of that position to be notable - but I think the changes proposed went way too far. No information on funders? Or on the backgrounds of its founders and heads? In a non-editable encyclopedia, some of the removed information could be summarized as "MEMRI are pro-Israel", and I wish (anon) were right about "I don't think anyone will disagree with this", but unfortunately it's simply not so, as the article history shows. To quote Zero above, from the last time this came up: "An impartial summary of MEMRI's staff background and history would be continually denied and attacked, which is exactly why someone had to go to the trouble of compiling the details in the first place. That's why we need to keep it. If it makes MEMRI look like a propaganda organization that's just tough." - Mustafaa 10:30, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I expect Mustafaa is right that if the list was shortened of removed, some people would use that to deny that MEMRI has pro-Israel attributes. So I think the staff list should stay. It should stay for another reason as possible: Wikipedia should be as comprehensive as we can make it. Perhaps the detail does seem excessive now, but it won't in a few years time when we have over 10 million entries! I would have no objections if the staff list was moved to a separate page. -- Cabalamat 11:04, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Compare this overabundance with dubious details with If Americans Knew, where even a single paragraph of legitimate criticism is not allowed. Right now, both articles are unencyclopedic POV mumble. ←Humus sapiens←Talk 09:31, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Actually, not one of the details which some propose to remove is in the slightest "dubious". This article is sourced and referenced at an almost unparalleled level. - Mustafaa 20:47, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I just stumbled across this article, so I don't know all of the arguments, but the full staff list seems a little silly. A "research associate" sounds like a 23 year-old kid who helps out with research - hardly notable. Listing the domain name registrars without any background on what they do is also a little strange, these are most likely IT people, possibly contractors. There are almost thirty names on your list, yet the article says that MEMRI has only about 30 employees. It is perfectly reasonable to list the top officials, but surely not everyone is a top official! Why not take the five most important people as listed my MEMRI in 1998 and expand their biographies. The rest is unnecessary and its inclusion is quite frankly, unfathomable. GabrielF 03:56, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Precisely. If there's a "MEMRI watch" out there, I can certainly see this information being there. Wikipedia is not, and should not resemble, a "MEMRI watch". --Dhartung | Talk 09:40, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I have decided to separate the tables into current and former staff. Also I have removed Angi Jacobs from the list. According to the citation provided she "participated in the manuscript's preparation." This is a job done by a copyeditor or an intern, not someone notable. I think that the rest are researchers or administrators and I won't argue over their inclusion. Still, I think that the staff section of this article is a mess. Giving the reader both extensive text on employees as well as a table makes the article less readable and I don't think that listing every employee of MEMRI in a table is particularly useful in an encyclopedia. I'm still trying to figure out why this level of detail is necessary, I sincerely hope that the purpose isn't to prove as Cabalmat seemed to indicate above that this is a Jewish or Israeli organization by giving a list of predominantly Jewish names. For one thing MEMRI's pro-Israel background is well indicated in the text of the article. Personally I do read some of MEMRI's material. I believe that much of what they put out is propaganda and I wish they were less politically motivated but I believe they provide a valuable (and relatively unique) service to those of us in the west that want to understand the Arab world. GabrielF 04:30, 20 March 2005 (UTC)

MEMRI is great!

OK, maybe not that great. Its purpose is to indoctrinate people into hating Arabs and supporting Zionist atrocities, but it is still very helpful to have all those translations for those of us who don't know Arabic.

I advise people to watch all their videos, whilst bearing in mind that you are seeing stuff chosen — and shown out of context — to make you believe certain things. Chamaeleon 12:31, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This is a pretty vaccuous comment. You need to consider who the service provided by MEMRI is "helping" and who it is most certainly not helping. It might be very "helpful" for overworked journalists to have translations of sensationalist comments by sometimes obscure Arabic sources fall into their inbox but it certainly isn't helping improve Western relations with Islam, address the issue of Israel/Palestine or reduce incidences of either anti-semitism or anti-Islamic aggression by publishing articles that are, by my own and many other people's reckoning, unrepresentative of the majority of the Arabic media. It would perhaps be better if this hugely suspicious act of atruism was not made in the first place. famousdog - 20 July 2005

Yes, far better that the West have no idea what is said in Middle Eastern media sources. We wouldn't want anyone to get the idea that the media treats certain issues in a--shall we say--unique way, would we? A2Kafir 17:27, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

unnoticed deletions

A great deal of relevant material was deleted from this article, without comment, on 27 July. I am going to restore it unless there is some compelling reason I should not. —Charles P. (Mirv) 02:56, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Sorry you missed it. I must say that I agree with Willmc who said above that "the level of detail in the longer version of the article is inappropriate, almost creepy." It seems that those who are desperate to discredit MEMRI are unable to do it by merit. This long list is not a quest for encyclopedic knowledge - the links stay red for years by now - there is no other reason (and no precedent in WP) to list the all the personnel, other than well poisoning. ←Humus sapiens←ну? 03:19, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Humus Sapiens about the intent of the excess information in this article. In addition, the version that you reverted to is an absolute mess stylistically, most of the material that was deleted was absolutely unnecessary, uninteresting and detrimental to the article's readability. Some things are repeated in the article. In addition the grammar is a mess in a bunch of places. The version you reverted is a much better article and whatever information is salvageable from the previous version should be merged in. For example, I merged in a paragraph or two that I wrote on the controversy over the 2004 bin Laden video. GabrielF 04:32, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Re: Accuracy

On the Accuracy paragraphs. There are 2 paragraphs there. The first refers to "cherry-picking" articles, which has nothing at all to do with accuracy.

The second, has to do with basically a dispute over ONE WORD. That word: 'wilayah' - 'Cole argued that bin Laden's word choice was "odd"' but that has nothing to do with MEMRI's accuracy. The fact that Cole found that 'MEMRI's conclusion was "impossible"'apparently has something to do with the interpretation of the word. If one word is the best Cole and the critics of MEMRI can come up with, it hardly seems worth while adding this paragraph.

And as I said, the first paragraph has nothing to do with accuracy, but perhaps bias. Any thoughts?Dajudem 01:27, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

The whole "wilayah" thing would hardly be worthy of mention in itself, except that it was blown up into a minor cause celèbre, pitting the parts of the left blogosphere against parts of the the right blogosphere -- so I'm afraid it should be included. You're right that these criticism may not seem to amount to too much of substance, but they're the main accusations which have been offered in an ongoing controversy, so they should be reported. AnonMoos 16:42, 10 October 2005 (UTC)