You know how you can read something in a newspaper lede and - without knowing anything about the context or the writer - how you can know that something's wrong? Like there's a word that clangs loudly to the ground because it doesn't fit - something that's obviously a hamfisted attempt to frame the story in a particular way? And you can't believe that somebody thought they were being subtle when they wrote it - but it's more aggravating because you just know that they were pleased with themselves. Like the hack who inserted the word "kingpin" into this Reuters lede:

Well that's funny. We've never heard Reuters refer to any political leader as a "kingpin" before. That's a word that they usually seem to prefer for Israeli drug lords and Jewish producers. Never ever ever ever ever for political leaders. And Mohammed Dahlan isn't just any political leader. He's a member of the Palestinian parliament and the presumptive favorite to lead Fatah after Palestinian President Abbas exits the stage. In a story about Hamas thugs fighting Fatah thugs, why would you smear Dahlan of all people?

Dahlan is the closest thing you get to a moderate among Palestinian leaders. Which is to say that while he does occasionally throw around vicious anti-Semitic blood libels (although not enough to reach positions of power in the UN), he is also at least arguably open to recognizing Israel. He's so much a Palestinian centrist that he's regularly vilified as an Israeli-American agent by the Arab media and Hamas. Hamas, in fact, has been trying to kill him for a while.

Why - of all the Palestinian leaders - would you want to frame the story to make Dahlan look like the instigator? We're not ready to declare that this journalist is deliberately trying to make readers view Hamas sympathetically or to minimize Hamas's role for the chaos. But we will point out that Dahlan - who this journalist smeared - is arguably the lead Fatah figure working to undermine the Hamas government.

And so of course the author is Reuters propagandist Nidal al-Mughrabi. We're thinking of adding tags to MR just so we can keep track of this jagoff. Here he is:

* Misleading readers about Hamas's violation of international law
* Being vaguely celebratory about the ambush of Israel soldiers
* Doting on an arch-terrorist that Israel brought justice to
* Defending human shields by calling them protesters
* Calling rockets falling on Israeli schoolhouses a ceasefire (usual warnings apply about how everybody was doing that)

So yeah, that's the guy reporting on Israel for The International Wire That's Still Better Than AP. "Fatah kingpin" indeed. Seriously, who writes that? Who even thinks that's OK?

Previously: http://www.mererhetoric.com/archives/11272895.html, Reuters Pretends That History Is What Reuters Would Like History To Be, Reuters Has No Idea What's Going on in Israel