Reuters, the British newswire notorious for refusing to call terrorist organizations anything more incendiary than "militant," is now worrying that a Bush administration decision to declassify intelligence that makes Syria look bad may harm "diplomacy."

In their April 24 article, "U.S. lays out Syria intelligence, may harm diplomacy," reporters Arshad Mohammed and Paul Eckert seek to lay blame at the feet of the Bush administration should "diplomacy" fail and/or Syria grow belligerent towards Israel:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States laid out intelligence on Thursday it believes shows North Korea helped Syria build a suspected nuclear reactor destroyed by Israel last year, a step that may complicate its diplomacy both on the Korean Peninsula and in the Middle East.

In breaking its official silence on the mysterious September 6 Israeli air strike, the Bush administration is taking the risk that Syria could be angered by the public disclosures and could seek to retaliate against Israel.

The bulletproof hoodie that has so many in the British press up in arms today is more than likely a cynical fraud by a company that obvious knows how to play up the easily excitable U.K. press, but who doesn't have much of a chance of following through with a product that can do what they claim.

According to the company's web site:

Bladerunner have now created " The Defender Hoodie " which is BULLET PROOF throughout the main body area.

This Hoodie is rugged and tough just like a normal Hoodie but this one has a removable Inner Shell that gives you Balistic Security at Level NIJ STD 0101.04

Number 1: Never trust your "Balistic Security" to a bunch of over-zealous fashion designers that can't spell "ballistic."

Number 2: There is no such thing as "bullet proof," just bullet resistant, a fact that any responsible armor designer will tell you that Bladerunner blows right past in a bit of self-promoting puffery.

The April 1 Independent story about a looming "Great Depression" in the United States was positively risible. But as Jim Geraghty at National Review Online noted yesterday, the stark-looking photo for the paper's story (at right via Getty Images) was three years old.:

Their caption: "Disadvantaged Americans queue for aid in New York."

Here's the actual caption from Getty Images:

International journalism advocacy group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is declaring March 12 "Online Free Expression Day" to raise awareness to government repression of Web-based journalism in over 20 countries throughout the world.

RSF now lists 15 countries as "Internet enemies" (such as Cuba, Iran, and North Korea) and 11 other nations in a less-severe but nonetheless troubling designation as "countries under watch" (emphasis mine):

Update (18:18 EDT): BBC has updated their article to note the Democratic party affiliation in the 3rd graf (link). Our tipster DB informs us that the BBC's North America editor Justin Webb replied to his e-mail with a promise to "try to get it changed."

The BBC initially noted Gov. Eliot Spitzer is a Democrat, in an early draft of an online news article. The mention was in the 6th paragraph. But that stuck for all of 37 minutes as NewsBusters reader DB informs us (screengrabs shown below page break):

The BBC's first draft mentioned that Spitzer was a Democrat in the 6th
para:
http://i27.tinypic.com/20zr48m.jpg

The second draft removed all mention:
http://i31.tinypic.com/2lbfddc.jpg

DB also noted that the BBC has placed Republican Party affiliation in the lede paragraph in political scandal stories where the offenders (Sens. Vitter and Craig) are members of the GOP.:

The US media seems to think that their job description includes deciding what information is and is not legal to leak and print- never mind that we elect Presidents, Senators and Representatives to do this, not members of the scribbling class. This arrogance and complete lack of care for their fellow Americans was famously demonstrated in the NSA and SWIFT banking exposes by the New York Times resident anti-Americans, James Risen and Eric Lichtblau.

However, these are not the only such cases. Recently, Risen has once again exposed classified data with the aid of hidden law-breakers in the government. In this case, Risen exposed a CIA-Mossad operation to destabilize Iran. Risen has been subpoenaed by a federal court to reveal who gave him this data, but predictably, he sees his mission of aiding America's enemies and assisting said enemies to kill American citizens as more important that assisting the government to uphold laws about leaking sensitive information. And equally predictably, the rest of the mainstream media is rallying to his defense. Haaretz, an Israeli news source, reported on the topic today, casting Risen in the role of victim.

In rural parts of the country, it happens from time to time; a person appears uninvited on someone's property, and the landowner tells them that "elsewhere" is a better place to be. Typically these confrontations are benign in nature, even when on occasion either the property owner or the trespasser turns out to be armed.

Such was the case in Texas this past weekend when a Danish reporter wandered into the yard of an elderly Texas woman, and she shooed him off, a gun apparently in hand.

CNN's Ed Henry made quite a big deal out of the incident, promoting it as a near "international incident" writing in the lede that the Dane came "this close to getting shot."

He characterized the confrontation this way:

An important trial in France revealed the Pallywood fauxtography machine and its media pipeline. Last week, expert testimony supported media critic Philippe Karsenty's claim that France 2 reporter Charles Enderlin's coverage of the Mohammad al-Dura affair was doctored and staged.

Karsenty appealed a verdict that he libeled Enderlin when he questioned the claim that Israel killed the boy who was crouching behind his father during a gunfight between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian shooters. 

Al-Dura's iconic image sped around the world and sold stamps, T shirts and the Second Intifada. It inspired violence, riots, terrorism and became a 21st century Blood Libel. On March 3, Israel's Haaretz reported the stunning news that if the boy and his father were actually shot at all, the bullets could not have come from Israel's position, only the Palestinians' (bold mine throughout):

Much of what we do here at Newsbusters is serious commentary on the leftist bias in this world, issues that are consequential to the debate between right and left. But, today we can sit back and have a little lighthearted fun with our lefty friends without all that worry and seriousness hovering over us like a cloud of leftist generated noxious gas. So... do ya wanna hear something funny?

The Telegraph brings us the heart wrenching tale of one Mr. Mark Boyle, the man who thought he was going to backpack on foot from Bristol, England to Mahatma Gandhi's birthplace in Porbander, India. Unfortunately, Mr. Boyle was crestfallen to have to quit this noble effort early. And we are all the poorer for it.

Speaking of poorer...

The lynchpin in the anthropogenic global warming theory is the shrinking Arctic ice, but now that some of that ice is actually increasing, scientists claim, without a trace of irony, it is normal for temperatures and ice sheets to fluctuate.

Greenland's Sermitsiak reported, “The ice between Canada and southwestern Greenland has reached its highest level in 15 years.” Denmark's Meteorological Institute used satellite images to track the southward expansion of the ice and when the paper asked how these findings “fit in with” continual reports of Arctic ice “melting at a record rate due to increasing temperatures,” global warming was, of course, affirmed  (map) (bold mine throughout):

First it killed adorable polar bears and caused Darfur; now the Loch Ness Monster! (h/t Ace)

A February 13 article in the UK's Daily Mail reporting the retirement of legendary American Nessie hunter Robert Rines, alerted the world to yet another example of the growing devastation of global warming. 

The 85-year-old WWII veteran said after 40 years, he is “running out of age” but will try one more time to see Nessie and her "25ft-long hump," but he isn't holding out much hope. 

Rines now fears global warming has struck down the magnificent Nessie:

Over across the pond, the Brits are having a spirited discussion about Islamic law following a statement by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, that sharia is inevitable within the UK. This has pleased some of the more extremely politically correct people who are calling for the creation of a dual-tier legal system which would enforce the medieval dictates of Islamic sharia law.

While he may not be quite that foolish, it seems British journalist Martin Fletcher (h/t LGF) does appear to be more of the useful idiot, at least judging from an op-ed he published which praises his "brush with Islamic justice:"

As one who has been hauled in front of a Sharia court I would like to risk having my hand — or head — chopped off a second time by suggesting that the Archbishop of Canterbury just might have a point.

"How would you like to get the terrorists' perspective on tonight's State of the Union address?" asks Red State's Erick Erickson, noting the prime real estate -- "just three to four steps away from the House Democratic Whip's Office"-- that the al Jazeera network is getting to cover the State of the Union and the corresponding Democratic response tonight.

See picture below fold:

Remember that touching picture of Yassar Arafat donating his blood to the 9/11 victims that was conveniently published after CNN ran footage of Palestinians cheering and handing out candy to celebrate the destruction in New York? Now France 2 journalist Charles Enderlin says that photo was staged; Arafat never gave blood.

The photos were taken by an AP photographer with a history of biased journalism and given captions that read like “a press release covering talking points.” Power Line's Scott Johnson reported Enderlin's revelation in a January 24 Weekly Standard article (bold mine throughout):

As Joel Pollak recounted online at the site Guide to the Perplexed [ed. link here], Enderlin told his Harvard audience "that Yasser Arafat had faked his blood donation to the victims of the September 11th attacks. Enderlin said the event had been staged for the media to counteract the embarrassing television images of Palestinians celebrating in the streets after the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks."

Writing in the January 16 Financial Times, reporter Marc Frank takes a look at Cuban politics as though it were an actual liberal democracy, not a Marxist dictatorship. Frank finds no irony or contradiction-in-terms in the way he qualifies the election as a public ratification of a pre-determined outcome. And in what amounts to a laughable print edition subheading, Frank's editor wrote this in the subhead to "Castro keeps world guessing on retirement":

Even if the head of state stands down, he may still be able to exert power from the sidelines, writes Marc Frank.

Gee, ya think?!

Here are the first few paragraphs of Frank's page 3 report, with my emphasis added:

They hate us, they love us, but they want us to comply with "Yankee go home," and leave them alone. Yet they crave our cash, our military protection, our cash, our leadership, our cash, our culture, oh, and our cash. Now they want to vote in our elections, too. To that end, a Brussels newspaper called De Standaard has issued the call for liberal Europeans to vote in our elections. And, WHY does Evita Neefs of De Standaard think she should be allowed to vote in our elections? Is it because we have such a great system, one she is dying to be a part of? No, it's because she wants a chance to vote into office candidates that will restrict the U.S. on the international scene, that's why. In other words, she wants the right to vote so that she might use that privilege to materially cripple U.S. interests. Well, at least she has the same goal as our own Democrat Party!

Now that global warmingists are getting governments like the UK and the US to ban incandescent lightbulbs, we're hearing some inconvenient accusations about the bulbs. This time, a January 3 article in the UK's Telegraph said the bulbs may cause migraines (h/t NB reader Linda).

The UK's Migraine Action Association reported that some of its members say the bulbs trigger the headaches. As a result, they want an exception for health reasons included in the UK's ban on traditional incandescent bulbs. 

Global warmingists claim that using fluorescent bulbs will reduce carbon emissions and help to stop anthropogenic global warming, but the Telegraph explained the bulbs may be a problem (bold mine):

Several versions use a technology similar to fluorescent strip lights and some migraine sufferers say they produce a flickering effect that triggers their condition.

Media watchdog website Honest Reporting has awarded their annual Dishonest Reporter Awards. Some of these stories you know and some you don't--probably because they were ignored by the media. Some were even covered here at NewsBusters.

The "winners" included Christiane Amanpour for “God's Warriors,” the BBC for covering up an internal investigation into its Mid East reporting, US government funded Al-Hurra TV's former 'director Larry Register for dhimmitude, a UNC Daily Tar Heel article about breaking up with a boyfriend because of Israel and of course Charles Enderlin and the Mohammad Al Dura Fautography that launched the Second Intifida. See how many of the stories over at Honest Reporting you know:

Dishonest Reporter of the Year (Christiane Amanpour)

This year's Dishonest Reporter voting marks a change for HonestReporting readers. Previous awards went to large, impersonal news services, but not so this year. One journalist made herself such a lightning rod in 2007 she easily defeated BBC and Reuters – the traditional disfavorites.

The Financial Times (FT) is reporting that an Iran-bound ship seized by the United Arab Emirates last month "contained materials banned by UN Security Council resolutions 1737 and 1747, while the purchaser of the materials has been barred by the same resolutions."

Those resolutions were put in place, FT writers Simeon Kerr and Najmeh Bozorgmehr noted in their December 5 article, "to curtail its [Iran's] nuclear development programme."

Although Kerr and Bozorgmehr's Emirati government source "declined to identify the contents of the cargo or the Iranian company" that ordered them, the development is newsworthy, particularly in light of the shift in the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), that now concludes that Iran stopped its nuclear program in 2003.

A search of the December 5 Washington Post found no articles similar to Kerr and Bozorgmehr's, although it's unclear if the FT reporters have an exclusive scoop.

On December 4, the Post ran two above-the-fold front page stories about the 2007 NIE, including a news analysis piece by Peter Baker and Robin Wright entitled "A Blow to Bush's Tehran Policy."