Issam Al Mughrabi, 56, who worked for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for three decades was killed along with his wife and children in an Israeli air strike on Friday.

“For almost 30 years, Issam has worked with UNDP through our Programme of Assistance to the Palestinian People,” UNDP administrator Achim Steiner said in a statement.

“The loss of Issam and his family has deeply affected us all. The UN and civilians in Gaza are not a target.”

Offering his condolences to Issam’s family and colleagues the World Health Organization’s chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stressed in a post on X that “humanitarians should never be victims” and called for a ceasefire.

  • ???@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    I’ve suggested to the mods a meta thread to discuss MBFC. The more I read about it, the more I’m convinced it’s not a good tool whatsoever.

    • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Quo custodiat ipsos custodiae? - Who watches the watchers?

      It seems to me that if you’re running a propaganda operation, setting up a centralized entity telling us all what newsmedia is trustworthy or not is an obvious play to manipulate people.

      Merely adding one level of delegation to “trust” doesn’t make something more or less trustworthy: some guys you know nothing about but what they (and the very people they say are trustworthy) tell us themselves, and who go around telling us who to trust and who not to trust, aren’t inherently trustworthy (in fact that’s an extra suspicious behaviour) - why should you trust them if you have no way to verify they’re both honest AND genuinelly competent at evaluating trustworthiness?

      (PS: In the business of passing judgement on Trust merelly honesty is not eough - all of us know of somebody who is a good honest person and yet on Facebook keeps sharing obvious bullshit: they genuinelly believe it hence they’re honest in what they share, only they’re gullible so their flawed judgment on what they believe in means they’ll believe any old bollocks and then spread it with total honesty).

      Trustworthiness is not an easy-peasy to solve “lets rely on these guys who just popped up on the Internet to tell us which news media to trust or not” and don’t at all ponder on the possible motivations and funding for that specific op - all this does did was add another link of uncertainty not solve the trust problem, and, worse, it’s a centralized one (a newspaper can only be or not be trustworthy, whilst these guys if they’re dishonest or incompetent actors can impact the preceived thrustworthiness of hundreds of newspapers) which makes it a much more desirable position for a propagandist.

      • TokenBoomer@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        I get it. We gotta have guidelines or we get Daily Wire and The Blaze posted. But when The NY Times and Wash. Post isn’t covering Gaza accurately, shouldn’t they be held to the same standards? I’ve found corroborating news from Palestine on YouTube, Middle East Eye and Al-Jazeera. Only to find silence from Western sources. It’s disheartening.

        • Doorbook@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          You seems genuine in your post so I would like to inform you that the middle east eye is owned by Qatar or Al-Jazeera.

          In general most news outlets are biased. That’s why you read multiple sources to confirm a report. Or if it is written by credible sources, or have clear videos and images.

          • ???@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            Honestly providing multiple sources for the same story is not a bad idea, but sometimes that would mean 5 articles that are copy-pastas of each other

        • nekandro@lemmy.ml
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          11 months ago

          I mean, basically no one in the West covers China at all except to say “China bad and is simultaneously going broke and bankrolling all US politicians”

          • theneverfox@pawb.social
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            11 months ago

            Which in fairness, seems like it is actually true… Those aren’t actually mutually exclusive

            My bigger problem is I can’t get a read on the state of China. They’re seasoning stones and ice because they’re having food issues… But it’s a continent sized country. It contains multitudes.

            There’s a lot of crazy shit going on over there, but is it falling apart, in decline, or just undergoing some crazy shit?