I call it "sidesofacircle" News coverage of Confrontations:
The word "objective" is an impossible achievement for media agencies. Each person and company can not remove themselves fully from a story, no matter how hard they try. They always have a preconceived notion or stance. ex : One media's idea of terroism is anothers idea of liberation.
To really tell a story, or rather to really understand a situation, one must look beyond right and wrong, but to understand all sides of a situation. For instance: to understand a bombing incident in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict one must not look for the truth, but to understand both sides. The Palestinian news will report one skewed viewpoint while the Israeli's will report another equally as skewed. You can not just choose to read only one side or the other to understand this conflict, you must read both to understand the what is happenning. The world is large and as cultural differences clash in this ever shrinking world, understanding a situation is not understanding your cultural interpretation of a situation, but rather the opposite. The truth is actually a multitude of viewpoints "sides of a circle".
With the internet and the publishing of news online, one can collect versions of a story. All different, but all telling the same story, all from different countries and cultural takes.The articles are arranged by topic and are put side by side. A small paragraph explaining, the difference in stories are displayed. It is important to use news sources (whether is appears to take aide or not) that are read by a significant number of subscribers. ex: Al Jazeerah, BBC, Israeli News , chinese NEws, North Korean news, you get the idea
Not all news works for this, and it is overkill for most non confrontational news. But... I actually did this personally for a while and it is amazing what you can find. even in the National realms :Liberal vs Conservative.
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I get the implication that there is a site which displays the various points of view you recommend. If so, what is the url?
No, there is no URL. I have just tried tracking various media outlets myself, but never actually created a site. I made one web page a while back for myself, but never followed through. Reading up on issues and compiling the information takes a lot of man power. There maybe something already out there like this, but I do not know of it.
The current conflagration in Lebanon illustrates one of the inherent problems in this. People usually read sources confirming their prejudices. The Israelis justify their widespread killing of civilians by pointing out that the guerilla tacticts of Hezbollah implanting their forces amongst civilians justifies mass killing of civilians even though many of the targets of the "surgical" air strikes take place where there is no Hezbollah presence. The Arabs loose their missiles in a manner in which they cannot determine whether the missile destroy civil or military targets. Hezbollah is characterized by Israel and much of the west as a terrorist organization while Israel acting as a state with uniformed military forces claims it has a right to what can only be viewed as tactics pretty much the same as Hezbollah's with far more devastating effects. The claim that Hesbollah started it is obvious nonsense as both sides have been freely kidnaping and executing each other's members for years in strict terrorist procedures. But it would be almost impossible to convince a believer in either cause that the killing is not justified.
But I don't think its about finding some people guilty or not. Its about unveiling a group's psychology and wavelength on events and happenings. Hopefully, to make better decisions in the future.