With the AP, sometimes it’s difficult to tell the difference between stupidity and bias. Take a look at this headline for today: Iraqi Shiites burn Bush effigy to protest US pact. Iraqi Shiites? Well, yes. They were indeed Shiites. As almost anyone who has been paying attention knows, Iraq is a Shiite majority country. That being the case, the implication of that headline might well be that the majority of Iraqis are protesting this pact. But in fact, if you click on the link, you discover it was Muqtada al Sadr’s followers who were doing the protesting, a very specific and militant Shiite sect. The better written article makes it clear that the Sadrists represent only 30 lawmakers in the 275-seat parliament. A better head might have been “Sadr followers burn Bush effigy” but apparently the AP headline writers haven’t gotten the new orders. It’s okay to tell the truth now- Obama’s in.
Roger L. Simon
Blacklisting Myself Memoir of a Hollywood Apostate in the Age of Terror
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10 Comments
1. Wellspring:It’s okay to tell the truth now- Obama’s in.
I didn’t get that memo, either. I thought that the spin changes, the rhetoric changes, but the mission remains the same. All for One and the One for… well.. himself.
Nov 21, 2008 - 12:59 pm 2. hermie:When Obama is burned in effigy, I’m sure some bright AP editor will proclaim that Obama was feted by a local BBQ joint.
Nov 21, 2008 - 1:39 pm 3. Matthew O'Brian:When Obama is burned in effigy, I’m sure the democrats will be screaming that it’s racist.
Nov 21, 2008 - 3:54 pm 4. srlucado:It’s okay to tell the truth now- Obama’s in.
The truth? The AP can’t handle the truth.
Scott
Nov 21, 2008 - 5:17 pm 5. Jeff:The liberal MSM can handle the truth, but only in very small doses. It’s sad to see how much of a role the media played in getting Obama and his leftist illuminati ideals elected.
Nov 21, 2008 - 9:21 pm 6. Roy M:Bias (or stupidity) is writing an accurate story with a headline that lacks nuance about precisely which muslims are fighting America and the West?
How does PJM rate on that scale would you say? More or less stupid/biased than AP?
Nov 22, 2008 - 3:45 am 7. cfbleachers:Sorry, Roger. The AP has a tic that won’t disappear that easily. The entrenched media (I steadfastly refuse to call them “mainstream”), are not interested in truth. They are interested in infusing the “message”.
Since the “message” hasn’t changed, neither will their distortions. If you had “hope” for “change”…unfortunately, the entrenched media won’t be the place to find it.
Nov 22, 2008 - 7:02 am 8. Andrew Koenig:I thought Iraq was majority Sunni, and it was Iran that was mostly Shiite. Am I missing something?
Nov 23, 2008 - 9:18 am 9. Roy M:Iraq is majority shia but power lay with sunnis under Saddam. This is one of the reasons why the biggest winner in the war, so far, has been Iran. Certainly they have done better than America.
Nov 23, 2008 - 9:47 am 10. Thomas Hazlewood:Andrew, Sunni are about 20% of the Iraqi population. The Kurds, likewise, are about 20%. And, yes, Iran is almost entirely Shiite. Every OTHER Mideast state is Sunni.
Saddam ran Iraq using the Sunni minority, via the Baath party, as his controlling force.
Nov 24, 2008 - 11:12 am