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Isn't it interesting the way Iraq news gets reported in our media. A Jan. 10 Associated Press story begins: "Nine American soldiers were killed in the first two days of a new offensive to root out al-Qaida-in-Iraq fighters holed up in districts north of he capital. ... "The losses came as many enemy militants fled U.S. and Iraqi forces massing in Diyala" -- a lot of those guerrillas fleeing north into the province of Salahuddin -- AP correspondent Christopher Chester continues. Read down to the seventh paragraph -- halfway through the story. There, we finally learn that our troops "killed...

Excerpt - BAGHDAD, Jan 5 (Reuters) - An Iraqi soldier deliberately shot and killed a U.S. army officer and a sergeant during a joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol in the northern city of Mosul on Dec. 26, two Iraqi Army generals said on Saturday. U.S. military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel James Hutton said the incident was under investigation but gave no details. It is believed to be the first reported incident in which an Iraqi soldier has deliberately killed a U.S. serviceman. ~ snip ~

A "surge" of overused words and phrases formed a "perfect storm" of "post-9/11" cliches in 2007, according to a U.S. university's annual list of words and phrases that deserve to be banned. Choosing from among 2,000 submissions, the public relations department at Michigan's Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie targeted 19 affronts to the English language in its well-known jab at the worlds of media, sports, advertising and politics. The contributors gave first prize to the phrase "a perfect storm," saying it was numbingly applied to virtually any notable coincidence. "Webinar" made the list as a tiresome non-word...

CAIRO, Egypt — Al Qaeda has invited journalists to send questions to its No. 2 figure, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in the first such offer by the increasingly media-savvy terror network to "interview" one of its leaders since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. The invitation is a new twist in Al Qaeda's campaign to reach a broader audience, and represents an attempt by al-Zawahiri to present himself as a sophisticated leader rather than a mass murderer. "I think their media capability is sophisticated as ever," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert and professor at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. "It shows how...

Media watchdog website Honest Reporting has awarded their annual Dishonest Reporter Awards. Some of these stories you know and some you don't--probably because they were ignored by the media. Some were even covered here at NewsBusters. The "winners" included Christiane Amanpour for “God's Warriors,” the BBC for covering up an internal investigation into its Mid East reporting, US government funded Al-Hurra TV's former 'director Larry Register for dhimmitude, a UNC Daily Tar Heel article about breaking up with a boyfriend because of Israel and of course Charles Enderlin and the Mohammad Al Dura Fautography that launched the Second Intifida. See...

Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi photographer who had a hand in The Associated Press’s 2005 Pulitzer Prize for photography before being jailed without charges by the United States military, finally had a day in court last week. But his story, which highlights the unprecedented role that Iraqis are playing in news coverage of the war, is really just beginning. snip A spokesman for the military said that Mr. Hussein had been detained as “an imperative security threat” and that he has persistently been “treated fairly, humanely and in accordance with all applicable law.” In a lengthy e-mail message, the spokesman said...

The Other Fallujah Reporter Posted By Michael J. Totten On December 16, 2007 @ 2:17 pm “The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.” — Thomas JeffersonI just returned home from a trip to Fallujah, where I was the only reporter embedded with the United States military. There was, however, an unembedded reporter in the city at the same time. Normally it would be useful to compare what I saw and heard while traveling and working with the Marines with what a colleague saw and heard while working solo....

AP photographer Bilal Hussein was on the radar screen of US forces prior to his being detained in a chance encounter April 12, 2006. He was a stringer working in Fallujah who filed numerous reports and photos that seemed to need a high degree of cooperation from the terrorists. He has been in custody for 19 months and will soon face trial by the Iraqi government on charges related to his activities with Sunni insurgents in Fallujah and Ramadi. Evidence against him is expected to be given to the Iraqi government this week. Geoff Morrell, Pentagon Press Secretary had this...

A MAN purporting to be a Muslim cleric wrote to the father of slain Australian soldier Luke Worsley telling him he "can't be proud" of his son who "died for nothing" - then posted the letter online. John Worsley, father of 26-year-old commando Private Luke Worsley who was killed by the Taliban in Afghanistan last month, received the letter from “Sheikh Haron” just days after news broke of his son’s death. “We were hurt (by the letter),” Mr Worsley told NEWS.com.au. “We’re very proud of our boy.” The letter – topped with Mr Worsley’s home address – has been posted...

For months, our magazine has been subject to accusations that stories we published by an American soldier then serving in Iraq were fabricated. When these accusations first arose, we promised our readers a full account of our investigation. We spent the last four-and-a-half months re-reporting his stories. These are our findings. ::very big snip:: In retrospect, we never should have put Beauchamp in this situation. He was a young soldier in a war zone, an untried writer without journalistic training. We published his accounts of sensitive events while granting him the shield of anonymity--which, in the wrong hands, can become...

Transcript: HELEN THOMAS: Does the President want no troops out from Iraq on his watch? I’m talking about all the troops. MS. PERINO: Well, 5,700 troops will be home by the end of the year, so that is some troops coming home. The President said that troop levels are going to be made by commanders on the ground, and that we’re going to have to talk about – THOMAS: Why should it be? Why can’t the American people have a say? MS. PERINO: — return on success. The American people have had a say. They elected a President who is...

'Dead' Iraqis Show at Press Conference Smiling, Waving By Jim Hoft | November 30, 2007 - 10:07 ET How Embarrassing!Picture this...You report to the international news agencies that 11 of your family members in Iraq have been slaughtered! You hold several press conferences and gain great sympathy.(AFP)You become an overnight sensation with the antiwar media.You've never had so much sympathy and attention in all your life. You even get a state funeral in Jordan where you make a living as a Baathist anti-Iraq War journalist.(Awad Awad, Deseret)You get photos taken of you and your official government guest sobbing in grief....

NEW YORK (AP) - The U.S. military's plan to seek a criminal case against an Associated Press photographer in Iraq without disclosing the charges or evidence against him makes a mockery of American democratic principles, AP President and CEO Tom Curley said Saturday. "This is a poor example—and not the first of its kind—of the way our government honors the democratic principles and values it says it wants to share with the Iraqi people," Curley said in a column in The Washington Post. The U.S. military notified the AP last weekend that it intended to submit a complaint against Bilal...

BAGHDAD — Coalition forces detained (24) suspects Sunday during operations targeting al-Qaida networks in central and northern Iraq. Coalition forces captured a wanted individual during operations north of Samarra. The wanted individual is believed to be involved in al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI) media networks and was involved in attacks against Coalition forces. In addition to the wanted individual, Coalition forces detained three suspects without incident. During other operations in Samarra, Coalition force detained (11) suspects during operations targeting al-Qaida’s courier and media networks, as well as weapons facilitators and associates of senior terrorist leaders. During operations in Baghdad, Coalition forces...

Media: An Associated Press photographer is about to be handed over to an Iraqi court on terrorism charges. The media are howling persecution. But what's so improbable about a terrorist trying to infiltrate the U.S. media?That's why the case of Bilal Hussein ought to be looked at more seriously than the "how dare you" denials the AP and its pals at press-freedom watchdogs are putting out. The AP photographer, who took enough close-up shots of al-Qaida in combat to help win a Pulitzer Prize for AP in 2005, somehow never found the same kind of danger Wall Street Journal reporter...

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The US military has filed a formal complaint with an Iraqi criminal court accusing a detained, award-winning Associated Press photographer of being a "terrorist media operative," the Pentagon said Monday. Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, said the military made the complaint about Bilal Hussein, who has been held for more than 19 months without charges in US military custody, to Iraq's Central Criminal Court. "We believe Bilal Hussein was a terrorist media operative who infiltrated the AP," he said. "MNF-I possesses convincing and irrefutable evidence that Bilal Hussein is a threat to security and stability as...

NEW YORK (AP) - The U.S. military plans to seek a criminal case in an Iraqi court against an award-winning Associated Press photographer but is refusing to disclose what evidence or accusations would be presented. An AP attorney on Monday strongly protested the decision, calling the U.S. military plans a "sham of due process." The journalist, Bilal Hussein, has already been imprisoned without charges for more than 19 months. A public affairs officer notified the AP on Sunday that the military intends to submit a written complaint against Hussein that would bring the case into the Iraqi justice system as...

Powerline headlines The "public secret" of Middle East Journalism and refers us to two web sites that illustrate the ways in which the supposed objective media are manipulating the images and fact that we are fed to essentially tell us lies. The evidence emerging from the ongoing Al Dura trial in France indicates that Western journalists are fully aware that some of the footage they use in their reports on the Mideast conflict is staged, charges Richard Landes. When confronted with the pervasive evidence of staging in the case of Al Dura, the reaction of France 2, which ran the...

It doesn't matter how many Oscar winners are in front of or behind the camera — audiences are proving to be conscientious objectors when it comes to this fall's surge of antiwar and anti-Bush films. Both "In the Valley of Elah" and, more recently, "Rendition" drew minuscule crowds upon their release, which doesn't bode well for the ongoing stream of films critical of the Iraq war and the Bush administration's wider war on terror."Rendition," which features three Oscar winners in key roles, grossed $4.1 million over the weekend in 2,250 screens for a ninth-place finish. A re-release of "The Nightmare...

Muslims throughout the world celebrate Eid Al-Fitr today marking the end of the fasting month of Ramadan. Ramadan is not only abstaining from food and drink; it is a time of intense spiritual renewal for those who observe it in a truly Islamic way. The same spirit should inform and illuminate our celebration of Eid too. This means we should spend the day and those following it in enhanced piety and with a sense of fellowship, brotherhood and unity. True, we should make our friends and relatives happy, but without forgetting those who are less fortunate. Eid should be celebrated...

Media Bias: Why would two Muslim men travel 3,000 miles to kill random people in the nation's capital a year after 9/11? CNN investigated and found Islamic terror had nothing to do with it. ..... ......... "Somehow CNN's "special investigations unit" managed to overlook this pile of courtroom evidence. It showed only one drawing — a self portrait of Malvo shedding tears."

As preparations for the American peace conference continue, the leaders of the Palestinian Authority have announced their demands for a future Palestinian state with an area of 6205 square kilometers. This would include the Gaza strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. However, the message they have conveyed to their people for years, and continue to convey on the eve of the conference, is that "Palestine" exists and it replaces all of Israel. A clip broadcast by Fatah-controlled Palestinian television this week shows a map in which Israel is painted in the colors of the Palestinian flag, symbolizing Israel turned...

The "missing" brother of a UT student has come forward to smash his sister's claims that he disappeared while serving in the Iraq War. The Minaret has learned that UT student Bree Laro fabricated much of her story about the missing soldier, which was featured in The Minaret's last issue of the 2006/2007. Her brother, Joe Laro, who was actually in the U.S. while Laro was completing a series of interviews, has stepped forward to say he was never missing. Confronted with his statement, Bree claimed she had never explicitly told The Minaret he was missing. However, suitemates and Bree's...

August 6, 2007 6:30 AM Harry Potter and the Deathly Intelligence Leakers can only Scholastic keep a secret? By Peter Hoekstra The fate of Harry Potter in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows was a closely guarded secret that was not supposed to be revealed before the book’s official release on July 21. The U.S. Postal Service tried to protect the secret when a mailman asked a Chicago-area woman to give back two copies of the book he had accidentally delivered before the release date. The mailman feared that he would lose his job for delivering the...

As Israel prepares to mark the first anniversary of the Second Lebanon War, Prime Minister Olmert extends a hand for peace to Syria's President Bashar Assad. Military intelligence assess that failure to embark on peace negotiations may lead to another war, ten times worse than last summer's conflict, they warn.07/11/07

That Hamas and the BBC have close relations isn’t exactly a revelation. See here and here, for example. But finally the BBC, the world’s biggest broadcaster, has itself admitted to being in touch with Hamas – the group that unlike other Islamic terror groups, has made a habit of deliberately targeting children (in school buses, bat mitzvah birthday parties, pizzerias filled with kids and so on). A senior BBC executive has confirmed that the BBC held private meetings with Hamas – whose gunmen usually wear ski masks to hide their identity – in the days leading up to the release...

The internet is playing a key role in the on-going psychological war waged on America by the Iraqi insurgence. A series of mock-up Hollywood film posters - with a chilling message for US troops in Iraq - has started to appear on the web. Link

Organizers Needed to End the War Reply to: XXX@craigslist.org Date: 2007-07-02, 4:50PM CDT Field Organizers for national campaign targeting congressional and senate votes to end War in Iraq needed in Michigan, Virginia, Minnesota and Maine. Political organizing and campaign training for motivated activists; weekly stipend, housing and gas expenses paid. SNIP Stipend of $400/week and housing provided plus reimbursements for gas and tolls during the program. Spanish and other languages very helpful, women and minorities encouraged to apply, and must be able to relocate.

In Baghdad, at an informal meeting of the incoming U.S. ambassador to Iraq and members of the media, the ambassador got an earful about how difficult it was to cover this war. Despite the dainty hors d’oeuvre and wine (in the first real glasses I have seen since my arrival in Iraq), the press brought out a laundry list of issues preventing them from doing their job: checkpoints, transportation, the bureaucracy of blood tests at the border, and the need for more personal security. For what was supposed to be a meet and greet, the greet did not last long....

Media Get Tricked by More Fake News Posted by Matthew Sheffield on July 4, 2007 - 19:41. NB contributor Bob Owens has a great piece over at Pajamas Media on how he helped spot yet another instance of the Western press getting snookered by a fake news story promulgated by terrorists in Iraq. Once again, the media's desire to portray Iraq as a total disaster let them get tricked: On Thursday, June 28, The Associated Press—and to a lesser extent, Reuters, and a small independent Iraqi news agency—ran stories claiming that 20 decapitated bodies had been found on or near...

BAGHDAD - Reports of 20 beheaded bodies found south of Baghdad earlier this week were untrue and may have been fabricated by insurgents aiming to incite violence and revenge killings, the U.S. military said Saturday. On Thursday, many international and Iraqi media outlets — including The Associated Press —reported the discovery of the bodies, quoting unnamed Iraqi police. The decapitated bodies had allegedly turned up on the banks of the Tigris River near Salman Pak, 15 miles southeast of Baghdad.

If you follow the link, you will be treated to some scenes from the strenuous life of a professional Muslim protester in the Kashmiri city of Srinagar. Over the last few years, there have been innumerable opportunities for him to demonstrate his piety and his pissed-offness. And the cameras have been there for him every time. Is it a fatwah? Is it a copy of the Quran allegedly down the gurgler at Guantanamo? Is it some cartoon in Denmark? Time for Rage Boy to step in and for his visage to impress the rest of the world with the depth...

MEMRI is ‘propaganda machine,’ expert saysBy Lawrence Swaim, Staff Writer The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) provides daily English translations of film and print media stories originating in Arabic, Iranian and Turkish media. It also furnishes original analysis of cultural, political and religious trends in the Middle East. It sends its daily postings to every news outlet in the United States and Europe, in addition to politicians and cultural leaders. And it’s free, which makes it a Godsend for journalists, editors and policy analysts. But according to its critics, it is also a dangerous, highly sophisticated propaganda operation, disseminating...

On his program last night Fox News host Bill O'Reilly blasted his cable competitors for their "delight in showing Iraqi violence," a product of an editorial mindset at CNN and MSNBC that "want[s] Americans to think badly of President Bush." "And that strategy has succeeded," he added. O'Reilly's words came in response to remarks made by CNN president Jon Klein who accused FNC of dialing back Iraq coverage as violence in Iraq has increased. "It illustrates the danger of cheerleading for one particular point or another because they were obviously cheerleaders for the war," He told the AP. "When the...

Yet Top Media Ran More Than 6,000 Stories on Abu Ghraib Abuses ALEXANDRIA, VA—The U.S. Defense Department released photos last week of an al-Qaeda torture chamber in Iraq, which showed various torture tools—blow torches, meat cleavers, hammers, drills, metal files—drawings of torture methods, and photos of actual victims found in another house in Karmah who had been burned, mutilated, and tortured in myriad ways. To their credit, CNN and Fox News Channel ran stories on the declassified material. Yet nine days since the material was released, neither ABC, CBS, NBC, The New York Times nor The Washington Post has run...

I remember the day Cindy Sheehan first arrived in the President’s hometown in Crawford, Texas in early August 2005. It was a blistering hot Saturday and she and a small band of supporters got off a dilapidated bus that pulled up in front of the Crawford Peace House – home of a resident anti-war activist. I was there with a CBS News camera crew and conducted the first interview with Sheehan. She said her son Casey was a U.S. Army soldier killed in Iraq a year earlier and she blamed President Bush for his death. She bitterly resented his recent...

An aspect of the war on terrorism that gets too little attention, yet is as important as any other, is the media war. Whether they realize it, members of the mainstream media are participants in the war on terrorism, and nowhere is that more evident than in Iraq. Blogger Bill Roggio, who has embedded as a journalist in Iraq and Afghanistan, says the enemy’s documents reveal that much of their strategy revolves around manipulation of the media. An enemy unable to beat us on the battlefield is employing a strategy of attacks planned specifically for maximum media coverage and effect....

Students at San Jose University disguise as soldiers, Palestinians at improvised checkpoint to condemn Israeli army's occupation of West Bank Eyal Marcus Published: 05.25.07, 07:13 / Israel News On Israel's Independence Day this year, Max Grossman, an Art and Design lecturer at the University of San Jose in California, fell upon a giant wall built on campus by a student organization called Students for Change. The wall was meant to symbolize Israel's security fence in the West Bank. Students set up a checkpoint near the wall where fifty students posed as either Kaffiyeh-clad Palestinians or armed Israeli soldiers. "I was...

Phony Soldier Charged With Making Up Claims of Atrocities in Iraq Sunday , May 20, 2007 AP SEATTLE — A man who tried to position himself as a leader of the anti-war movement by claiming to have participated in war crimes while serving in Iraq is facing federal charges of falsifying his record. Jesse Adam Macbeth, 23, formerly of Phoenix, garnered attention on blogs and in some alternative media after he began claiming in 2005 to have been awarded a Purple Heart for his service, which he said included slaughtering innocents in a Fallujah mosque. His story was contradicted by...

Pham Xuan An, 79; Reporter for Time, Spy for Viet Cong By Patricia Sullivan Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, September 21, 2006; B07 Pham Xuan An, 79, the Viet Cong colonel who worked as a reporter for U.S. news organizations during the Vietnam War while also spying for the communists, died of emphysema Sept. 20 in a military hospital in the former Saigon, now known as Ho Chi Minh City. The secret of Mr. Pham's double life was kept for almost 30 years, from 1959 until the 1980s. He was the first Vietnamese to be a full-time staff correspondent for...

Hizbullah won the Second Lebanon War by achieving a propaganda victory over Israel, a Harvard University study has concluded. Aided and abetted by a compliant and credulous press, Hizbullah achieved victory by convincing the world that Israel was the aggressor and that Israel's retaliatory offensive was a "disproportionate" response to the kidnapping and killing of its soldiers.

While the war between Israel and Hezbollah raged in Lebanon and Israel last summer, it became clear that media coverage had itself started to play an important role in determining the ultimate outcome of that war. It seemed clear that news coverage would affect the course of the conflict. And it quickly transpired that Hezbollah would become the beneficiary of the media's manipulation. A close examination of the media's role during the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war in Lebanon comes now from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, in an analysis of the war published in a paper whose subtitle should give...

As someone who has criticized the Bush Administration for not fighting back enough against relentless Democrat attacks and disinformation, I was delighted by Vice President Cheney's overdue dress-down of the Peter-principled and unprincipled Senate majority leader, Harry Reid. If the mainstream media (MSM) gave as much credence to stories of real deception by Democrats as they do to phony allegations of Republican deception, the political landscape would look dramatically different. But no, I'm not holding my breath. The MSM dutifully reports as fact the Democrats' false allegation that Bush lied about Iraqi WMD, when at worst it was a mistake,...

DUBAI - A Palestinian photographer for Agence France-Presse won an Arab award on Wednesday for a picture of the funeral of a Palestinian child killed during an Israeli incursion in the Gaza Strip. Mahmud Hams, 27, a native of Rafah, bagged the prize for photography of the Arab Journalism Awards handed out by Dubai Press Club at the end of a two-day Arab media forum in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. The 15,000-dollar prize “is a boost which will prompt me to work with more enthusiasm,” said Hams, who was shot in both legs while taking pictures in the...

A British government official and a former political researcher went on trial Wednesday for allegedly leaking a classified memo in which President Bush reportedly referred to bombing the Arab television station Al-Jazeera. David Keogh, 50, a cipher expert, and Leo O'Connor, 44, a lawmaker's aide, are accused of violating secrecy laws by disclosing a document relating to 2004 talks between Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair. Both defendants deny violating the Official Secrets Act. Prosecutors allege Keogh passed the memo to O'Connor in May 2004, who in turn placed it in a file he handed to his boss, Tony Clarke,...

DEAR ABBY: Our 17-year-old twin son and daughter met with military recruiters who came to their school and made the military sound exciting and glamorous. They are now saying that after they graduate next year, they want to join the military instead of going to college. They have even put up military posters in their rooms that they received from the recruiters. My husband and I are horrified. We cannot stand the thought of them going off to war, and do not believe that war is the answer to the world's problems. It will be a year, and hopefully the...

In a striking display of dissension, a group of Republican lawmakers broke ranks with the White House on Wednesday and embraced a resolution opposing more U.S. troops in Iraq — airing their criticism even as President Bush publicly defended his plan.

Free Speech for Islamofascist Hate February 6, 2007 BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Colin in London, England, it's nice to have you on the program. Yes. CALLER: It's actually Paul in London, but it's lovely to speak to you again. RUSH: I'm sorry, Paul. It says "Colin" up here, but I'll take the hit because I make the big bucks. CALLER: It's my hideous limey accent. Yeah. Well, firstly, most importantly, definitely "Fire" by The Crazy World of Arthur Brown. I've got to agree with you on that one. RUSH: Thank you very much. CALLER: Or if you can get Paul...

Young Lebanese drive through devastated neighborhood of South Beirut, 15 August. The international jury of the 50th annual World Press Photo Contest selected a color image of the US photographer Spencer Platt of Getty Images as World Press Photo of the Year 2006. Click here for the award winning picture. The picture shows a group of young Lebanese driving through a South Beirut neighborhood devastated by Israeli bombings. The picture was taken on 15 August 2006, the first day of the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah when thousands of Lebanese started returning to their homes. World Press Photo jury...

Anyone with an Internet connection can watch videos of bombings and sniper attacks against U.S. forces — shot and edited by Islamic militants and broadcast on YouTube, the world's largest video-sharing Web site. With the global spread of high-speed Internet connections and the relative anonymity afforded by the world's biggest and busiest sites, extremists have found a new theater to display violence and anti-American propaganda. On Friday, prosecutors in Britain charged six suspects in an alleged plot to kidnap and kill a British soldier — an act that police allege was intended to be recorded and posted on the Internet....