Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Biased Reporting of the Day

Should you go with this video clip of Greg Mitchell being interviewed on MSNBC? He's there to talk about the bias in the media, and engages in quite a bit of bias himself, not to mention fails to note the bias of the MSNBC talking head who omits relevant details about Israel's situation.

Mitchell goes off comparing apples to oranges - 400+ casualties in Lebanon (many of whom are terrorists) versus about 40 in Israel. He quickly turns to the issue of disproportionality of force used by Israel, despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of Israelis are displaced, more than a million are in bunkers and the society at large is hunkering down for a prolonged conflict in Israel.

And this guy wants to blame the US for the situation.

Never mind that the disparity is due to the fact that journalists are ignoring the situation in Israel. That more than 300,000 Israelis are refugees elsewhere in Israel or that 1 million are hunkered down in bunkers and bomb shelters doesn't make for as good video as showing bombed out buildings - many of which housed Hizbullah facilities.

Then, there's the issue of the AP reporting of Israeli strikes into Gaza. The headline reads: 3 girls among 18 Palestinians killed. Only when you read the actual article that a true sense of what happened takes shape:
Fourteen of those killed were militants; it was unclear if one man killed in Gaza City was a militant or a civilian. Most belonged to Hamas or Islamic Jihad and died in Gaza City of tank fire, airstrikes or clashes with Israeli troops. One of the militants was killed by an artillery shell in northern Gaza.
Put aside the fact that these are terrorists, not militants, the fact is that of the 18 people killed, 14 were terrorists. The remaining casualties were the result of the terrorists operating in civilian areas and who hope to use such civilians as human shields.

Atrocious reporting, poor headline writing, and biased sources. Another fine day in the MSM.

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