Beit Hanoun Meme Watch - (8) "Israeli Terrorism" - Want To Guess Who Reuters Is Willing To Label A Terrorist?
(Intro) Beit Hanoun Meme Watch
(1) "Rage and Tears" - Apparently Theats Of Genocide Are OK If You're Really Upset
(2) "The Palestinians Are Really Pissed Off" - And The NYT Will Publish Death Porn To Prove It
(3) Stupid Headline Tricks - Hey Listen, Calling It A "Massacre" Is Still Bias, Even If You Think You're Being Clever By Quoting Someone
(4) "The al-Athamnah Family" - If You Make The Tragedy Seem Really Personal, Then People Will Really Get Outraged
(Interlude) Convergence of Bias - With This Simple Formula, You Too Can Produce Solid Anti-Israel Journalism
(5) "World Indifference" - We Learned About That Indifference From Every Major Newspaper On The Planet
(6) "Israelis Demoralized and Blaming Themselves" - Actually, No They're Not
(7) "Palestinian Unity (Government / Suicide Bombings / Whatever) Is Israel's Fault" - LIARS
(8) "Israeli Terrorism" - Want To Guess Who Reuters Is Willing To Label A Terrorist?
(9) "It's All About Olmert's Domestic Political Situation" - Predictable Bias Is Real Bias
This story could have gone under the Stupid Headline Tricks post. But the bias in both form and content is just so mindbending that it deserves its own post. Here's Reuter's headline so you can get a taste of where this is going:
You'll recall that there was a scandal a while back, where Reuters asked subscribers to remove the Reuters byline from stories that they altered to include the word "terrorist", because "we don't use emotive words when labeling".
Anyway, after the headline the rest is predictable. And by predictable, we mean that the next two paragraphs use the word terrorism to describe Israel three times:
"This is terrorism, this is state terrorism," Palestinian U.N. Observer Riyad Mansour told an emergency Security Council meeting. "These are war crimes for which the perpetrators must be held accountable under international law."
Oh, but there's the Reuters editorial policy has an exception for not labeling terrorists if you're using a quote. Of course it has an exception for that! How else could they use their It's Not Bias If You Quote Someone Else trick if they didn't have an exception allowing them to use any kind of quote they want?
So it's not bias to call Israelis terrorists four times before the second paragraph is done - because it's a quote? Who choose to use the quote for the headline? Who choose to use a gigantic extended quote for the first two paragraphs?
Oh, and we're sure that if we checked, we'd find plenty of headlines where Reuters used quotes from Israeli sources in their headlines to identify Palestinians as terrorists. We're sure that happens ALL THE TIME.
All. The. Time.
Previously: Chinese Support for Hamas - Not So Much Blindingly Hypocritical as Confidently Unworried, Actually, Israel IS At War With the Palestinian People, Reuters and AP Won't Use "Terrorist" Label Even As Quote From Syrian Official
