Media Promote Al Qaeda Propaganda, Spinning Fake Beheading Story

Reuters admits they were taken in by false beheaded Iraqis story but refuses to accept responsibility for their error

Remember when you were a kid and got caught telling a lie, but your excuse was that a pal "made you do it" and it was so hard to tell the truth anyway because of this reason or that? It didn't matter to your parents then, did it? Well, here we have Reuters revealing that they fell for a false story about 20 beheaded Iraqis that was planted by insurgents, but do they just admit it and take responsibility? No, they whine that it is "very hard" to get stories in Iraq because it is so dangerous for journalists there.

On the 28th Reuters and the AP along with most major news sources recklessly reported that 20 beheaded bodies were found by "Iraqi Policemen" on the banks of the Tigris River near Salmon Pak, 19 miles south of Baghdad.

I say recklessly because not one of these supposed professional news sources substantiated the story but merely accepted the "news" as fact with no corroboration. This is something we have seen dozens of times since we entered Iraq with these news services explaining away this breach of professional standards by saying that it is just too dangerous for journalists to be in those areas to do the leg work to make sure their stories are true before they publish them.

Even the title of the Reuters admission seems to deny the truth; "US says report of 20 beheaded bodies in Iraq false." It wasn't "report is false", but a more doubtful "US says" the report is false, as if it is just the US's opinion and perhaps not really a fact that the beheaded bodies is a fantasy planted by insurgents.

Reuters at least gave the military a line to explain what really happened, an unusual action taken by Reuters who normally would not bother giving the military an opportunity to get their own side of the story out.

But Reuters has a reason, see. It's just so darn hard to report the real news. It's MUCH easier to just print what ever they are told third and fourth hand without bothering to do any checking of the facts.

Now, don't get me wrong, IT am not saying that the danger they claim is not real. The last paragraph of this non-apology story reveals that the death toll for journalists and their assistants is high.

Dangerous conditions is a legitimate reason not to report too many stories, granted. But dangerous conditions is NO excuse for throwing away all standards and printing just any old thing you are told as if it is fact.

But, then, these so-called journalists really don't care much for the truth. They accept the insurgents' propaganda because they so want those false stories to be true that checking the facts is not something they're too inclined to bother much with.

As the old saying goes, "Let's not let the facts get in the way of a good story."

Worse, this explaining away of their failure to live up to traditional and correct standards in reporting means they have no intention of changing this slipshod method of gathering the news. They have already given the excuse and they will simply continue to fall back on it in the future.

So, Reuters gets 10 points for admitting on the 30th that they printed lies on the 28th, but minus 20 points for spinning excuses instead of accepting responsibility and making efforts to be sure it doesn't happen again. And minus 100 points for being the knowing dupes of our enemies.

Hi Everyone, This thread seems very closely related to another thread I have been frequenting.

100 Journalists Killed So Far This Year

The issues in this other thread are two, primarily: First, the role of modern "news" agencies in reporting a war and the effect on the war that reporting has, and secondly, when they are killed in their journalistic endeavors, did any of them deserve it, and is it fair or right to wish that fate on all of them.

I feel that the reporting done by these "news" agencies is damaging to the war effort. There are people who derisively say "Would you censor the press?" and I would say unequivocally, yes.

Wars are not won by annihilating the enemy on the battlefield or in their homes, although that sometimes happens. But just as often, enemies are annihilated and their homes destroyed, but if they have the will to fight on, they will. History has shown this.

Wars are won by convincing enemy combatants, their leaders and their people that the war should be ended even if that means surrendering. Basically, wars are ended by removing the will of one or both sides to fight.

Ostensibly, in the past, censorship in war has not been done to muzzle opponents of war as much as it has been done to protect sensitive information such as troop movements, developments in warfighting techniques and so on.

In the past, most (if not all) journalists understood two things: One, that their activities could cause emotional pain on the home front and cause emotional pain and death on the battlefront, and Two, that the elected government ran the war and made political decisions about the war, not them.

Since Vietnam, that has changed. Journalists do not care if their reporting causes emotional pain and death on the homefront and the battlefront.

They believe it is their job to shape public opinion, not report the facts. This is indisputable. Many of them WILL NOT ADMIT THIS.

And most of them (the vast majority) are allied with liberal causes. This is well known and no surprise. A recent survey showed that upwards of 85% of all journalists vote liberal and contribute money to liberal causes.

Nobody disputes their right to support the causes they choose.

However, the avowedly activist and partisan nature of the media has put them in the position of constantly deriding and discrediting the military and the war effort. Their attitude that the Commander in Chief is in office due to political chicanery, deception and legal maneuvering pervades the spectrum through which all situartions are viewed, and they have taken it on themselves to bring him and the war effort down.

To verify the veracity of this statement, one must only ask if the press would be this overwhelming negative and biased if a Democrat was in the White House on 9/11?

The honest answer to that would be "No".

So the media, time and time again (including this story, the overall context of what happened at Abu Ghraib, the focus on the daily US casualty counts, the overwhelming 'leading bleeding' suicide bomb stories, overall eagerness to move Iraq into the realm of a civil war, the various 'massacres' and other negative stories) has shown that it is not only willing to print whatever stories reflect poorly on the allied efforts in that region, but has taken an active role in trying to influence policy.

In their minds, if a few soldiers are killed, dishonored or discredited because they erroneously (or purposely) report that our personnel kill non-combatants as POLICY not because that happens in war, then it is okay because the overall goal of ending the war and "teaching our arrogant leaders a lesson" is a right and moral thing to do.

And if the jobs of our soldiers are made more difficult, and their lives put in more danger because journalists say US personnel used Korans as toilet paper and flushed them down commodes or something like that, then that is not their fault. They are simply reporting the "facts".

Like children who are given privileges only to have them revoked based on demonstrated irresponsibility, journalists have shown time and time again they cannot be trusted to report accurately in a time of war. And we should treat them that way. They are harming the war effort. I say that their access should be severely limited and supervised. If someone writes something that makes the job of the commander in the area more difficult, they should be shipped out.

Before Vietnam, if a reporter printed something that hurt the war effort, harmed soldiers physically or the emotional state of them and/or their families, there would be repercussions, ramifications and the reporter's career would suffer. Their employers and fellow reporters would castigate and censure them.

Now, they are feted at big liberal-leaning fundraising dinners and events.

KSFO Speech at San Jose Civic Auditorium ... More and more people are independently informed and can now watch or read certain elements of the media and know -- I mean, the worst thing possible that can ever happen to the New York Times is happening, it's what's always happened to the National Enquirer. You read the National Enquirer and say, "Gee, what if that's true?" (Laughter.) You open the New York Times and read the front page, hmm, that can't possibly be true. I know it's not true. And you know it isn't true, because you know there is an agenda on the front page.

Media Mandate: "Whatever It Takes" ... We should assume that journalists are lying, behaving in unethical ways, and covering up their own mistakes. We should assume that that is what great journalism is. They are every bit what we call them and think of them. You know, frankly, I don't think that Woodward and Bernstein and Bradlee or the mainstream media realizes that the more we learn about Mark Felt and his motives and the Post's reporting techniques, the more sleazy and disreputable they all look.

The Israeli-Hezbollah War of 2006: The Media as a Weapon in Asymmetrical Conflict By Marvin Kalb ... The upshot is a new kind of populist journalism, which strongly influences the story that is being covered. Indeed, the journalist or, in this new age, the commentator, often becomes part of the story. During the Lebanon War, for example, the bloggers had more influence over the flow of the story than they had had during any other war. Ravi Nessman, the senior Jerusalem correspondent of the Associated Press, thought the influence of the bloggers, especially in the United States, was "unprecedented." When the bloggers [in the U.S.] discovered that photographs had been doctored, "the credibility of the bloggers ... skyrocketed and our credibility plummeted." Nessman added, "After that everything that we did was suspect. And that makes it very difficult to cover a war, to have honest people who are trying, who are not doctoring photographs, who are not taking one side or the other, but who are trying to present the truth of what is going on there, and have everything we say be examined, which is fair, but basically be questioned as a lie, and starting with that premise that the media is lying."

AP journalists celebrating their Pulitzer Prize for Felony Murder for photos taken by Islamofascist stringers of their Islamofascist buddies murdering Iraqi election officials.

LGF Exclusive: How Much Does It Cost to Buy Global TV News? The vast majority of the TV news pictures you see are produced by two TV news companies. Presented here is a case for how a large amount of money has been used to inject a clear bias into the heart of the global TV news gathering system. That this happens is not at question, whether it is by accident or design is harder to tell. You may not realize it, but if you watch any TV news broadcast on any station anywhere in the world, there is a better than even chance you will view pictures from APTN. BBC, Fox, Sky, CNN and every major broadcaster subscribes to and uses APTN pictures. While the method by which they operate is interesting, it is the extra service this US owned and UK based company offers to Arab states that is really interesting. . . . A Separate Service for Arab States However, there is another significant part of their business model that affects the rest of the business. While most of the world takes news pictures with minimal interpretation beyond editing, the Arab Gulf States have asked for and receive a different and far more expensive service. These states pay for a complete news report service including full editing and voice overs from known journalists. The news organizations in the Arab countries don’t do anything (beyond verify that they are appropriate for local tastes) before broadcast. What this means is that while there are around 50 people producing news pictures for the whole world working in Camden at any time, there are a further 50 Arabic speaking staff producing finished stories exclusively for the Arab states of the gulf. This has a tremendous effect on the whole feel of the building as these two teams feed pictures and people back and forth and sit in adjacent work areas. The slant of the stories required by the Gulf States has a definite effect on which footage is used and discarded. This affects both the Gulf newsroom and the main global newsroom.
This full service feed is much more expensive for the customers than the usual service, but it is also much higher margin for APTN. This is partly because there is great commonality in what they can send to most of the Gulf States taking this service: stories are made once and used in a number of countries.

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