THE GERMAN PRESS AND IRAQ.
Michael Fumento comments in National Review
today on anti-American German reporting on Iraq in the Financial Times Deutschland. It's
interesting how popular quotations and "human interest" have become in reporting, given
that they are so easily manufactured to support the biases of the reporters and are such
a good way for a reporter to lie and then disclaim responsibility. A nice summary by Mr.
Fumento:
The difference between an op-ed and biased "straight reporting" is that the opinion
writer says what he thinks while the reporter scrounges up others willing to support his
position.
He follows this with a discussion of the biased reporting, e.g.,
"I'd like 100 Saddams and no Americans," cries the owner of "the best Kebab restaurant
in Iraq," according to our investigative reporter-turned-gourmet. "There is no freedom
so long as there's an American occupation of Iraq." The reporter apparently sees no
irony in placing this quote immediately after saying the city was a major recruiting
center for Saddam's secret police, a virtual carbon copy of Hitler's Gestapo.
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