Are Journalists Going to Convert Back from Islam?

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Columnist Mark Steyn writes that although two Fox News journalists were forced to "convert" to Islam, the rest of the media have already pledged a loyalty to Allah.

Did you see that video of the two Fox journalists announcing they had converted to Islam? The larger problem, it seems to me, is that much of the rest of the Western media have also converted to Islam and there seems to be no way to get them to convert back to journalism.

Consider, for example, the bizarre behavior of Reuters, the once globally respected news agency now reduced to putting out laughably inept terrorist propaganda. A few days ago, it made a big hoo-ha about the Israelis intentionally firing a missile at its press vehicle and wounding its cameraman Fadel Shana. Mr. Shana was posed in an artful sprawl in a blood-spattered shirt. But it had ridden up revealing his spotlessly white undershirt, like a summer-stock Julius Caesar revealing the boxers under his toga.

What's stunning is not that almost all Western media organizations reporting from the Middle East are reliant on local staff overwhelmingly sympathetic to one side in the conflict -- that has been known for some time -- but the amateurish level of fakery that head office is willing to go along with.

Down at the other end of the news business, meanwhile, one finds items like this snippet from The Sydney Morning Herald:

"A 16-year-old girl was tailed by a car full of men before being dragged inside and assaulted in Sydney's west last night, police say ... .

"The three men involved in the attack were described to police as having dark 'mullet-style' hair cuts."

Three men with "mullet-style" hair, huh? Not much to go on there. Bit of a head scratcher. But, as it turned out, the indefatigable Sydney Morning Herald typist had faithfully copied out every salient detail of the police report except one. Here's the statement the coppers themselves issued:

"Police are seeking three men described as being of Middle Eastern/Mediterranean appearance, with dark 'mullet-style' hair cuts."

That additional detail narrows it down a bit, wouldn't you say? The only reason I know that is because the Aussie Internet maestro Tim Blair grew curious about the epidemic of incidents committed by men of no known appearance and decided to look into it.