Reuters Headline: 'Israel Kills Palestinian in Gunbattle'

March 21st, 2007 6:52 AM

I submit that a better headline would be “MSM Kills Journalism With Activist Reporting“. It is pretty clear to me that the term mainstream media does not imply professional journalism. Sure, they have the money to dress it up and send it out with all the glitz and glamor of the alluring red carpet spectacle that they have become. But underneath all that flash is a lonely band leader churning out the same droning beat, left, left, left, left… It really doesn’t matter who takes the lead at any given time. They all appear to have gone to the same school that has taught them to put the cart before the horse. Today’s motto, “Lead with your gut and piece together events and words to meet your agenda.” I didn’t start this article looking for bias in the mainstream media; it found me. Naturally I could cut the Reuters article up and only discuss elements that I thought pertained to my premise but there is no need. This style of reporting stands as a whole. The mainstream media suffers from a group think mentality that suffers greatly from a monosyllabic tendency to hire and utilize only those who agree with one political point of view. It is a sad state of affairs. The evolution of headlines alone telescopes the hand of the activist. Imagine, “Israel kills Palestinian in gun battle“. Of course it did; all 21,000 square kilometers of it, every person, every soul and all of her supporters killed the Palestinian in a gun battle. But as I said, the headline was just the tip of the hand. We could write it off as a typo, a dropped ‘i’ and missing ’soldier’ but that would be less forceful from an anti-Israeli point of view. Never mind the fact that the Reuters article portrays the Palestinian as simply a man; not a gun man, not a militant. The Israeli IDF claims he shot on them. And who knows? Perhaps he was an innocent casualty of a war between Israel and its neighbor that elected terrorists to lead their government. That fact, known but usually not spoken in the press, is somehow ancillary. Yet “Israel” killed him - never blame the militants. Every incident that occurs in this area is met with the same implication that seeks to find fault in the evil occupiers. Never does, nor should Israel defend her right to exist in the eye of the mainstream media reports. They should submit until one day their neighbors can rise up and force her into the role of the deserving defenseless victims the mainstream media wishes them to be. Long gone are the objective reports that simply report the news. Vanished are the discussions that thrive in the marketplace of free ideas. The mainstream has succumbed to the road without shame; the easy path where consensus is a survival tactic. So for now I’ll just leave things the way I think they should be. “MSM Kills Journalism With Activist Reporting”. Terry Trippany writes at Webloggin and urges people to read another story the MSM all but ignored : "A WWII Hero That History Almost Forgot"