[Zeppo]

There are celebrations reported across the Arab world, after the news of more American casualties in Iraq.

This is a very thinly-sourced "news" article. No identification is made of who, exactly, is doing the celebrating, how that came to the attention of the reporter, how widespread the sentiment is alleged to be, or other concrete details. Was this based on some reporter's own observations? Was this something seen on TV? Was there an editorial in a fundamentalist or a government-operated newspaper?

[nwrep]

This is a very thinly-sourced "news" article.

I agree. It is a hot wire copy, and was picked up by many outlets. We should wait for AP to get more meat into it.

[JohnnyZ]

No identification is made of who, exactly, is doing the celebrating, how that came to the attention of the reporter, how widespread the sentiment is alleged to be, or other concrete details. Was this based on some reporter's own observations? Was this something seen on TV? Was there an editorial in a fundamentalist or a government-operated newspaper?

Well, it came from the AP, so I'm guessing it was their employees doing the celebrating.

[Yardstick]

The media loves reporting arab glee over this sort of thing. It's the way the media gets to punish us for supporting the war effort and for electing and supporting the president who led us into the war. I also think certain elements of the media cheer *vicariously* through the arabs. It's easy to see how the media would be motivated to overreport the celebrations. It would be interesting to know how many actually do cheer, either in the streets or in their hearts. I suspect it's probably far fewer than some would like us to believe.