Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Getting those facts straight

Just to be clear that we here oppose photo fakery in all its forms, and are not secretly Hezbollah moles, we at Blogoland denounce the mad fake-photography skillz of Adnan Hajj. An idiot, to be sure. A liar. A discredit to all reporters everywhere. Investigate all his stuff, find out what you can, full disclosure and all that.

What strikes us, though, is the opportunism from those mediaphobes in certain segments of the blogosphere who have taken the occassion to -- shockingly -- use the incident to proclaim that no one ever in the rest of the living world in perpetuity should ever trust the evil media fascists again.

Hilarious, of course, and not at all agenda-driven.

Today, InstaPundit picks up on an unsigned piece in Investor's Business Daily (subtly titled "Jihad Journalism?" -- love that passive-aggresive punctuation!) that wonders casually whether, you know, Reuters is an arm of the terrorists who want us all to die (a favorite InstaPundit trope, by the way). The piece is the usual load of crap that includes this smear-all quote, pulled lovingly by InstaPundit:

Is Reuters a patsy or collaborator? Either way, it is helping the cause of terrorism and undermining civilization.

Unless it wants to become just another branch of Al-Jazeera, it had better make meaningful institutional changes soon.


Helpfully, InstaPundit rejoinders "I think it's the 'unless' that's the problem, here." Because of course Reuters actually desires to be an arm of the terrorists! Get it?

As a final note, you'd think the uber-patriots at a publication like Investor's Business Daily would have the werewithal to nail down easily verifiable facts. IBD states in its piece :

Here we return to Johnson of the Little Green Footballs blog. For his effort in pointing out the phoniness of the photograph, he got a warm message from a Reuters account that said: "I look forward to the day when you pigs get your throats cut." The so-far-unidentified person used "zionistpig" as his or her e-mail address.


No, no and no. The email was not sent in response to the photo, it was actually sent in May. All you have to do is click on the LGF link to find out. I'm sure the accuracy hounds at IBD will issue a quick correction.

Permalink posted by Jonathan : 8:30 AM



<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?