A Greenwald of a different color on Reuters and the record.
Reuters, the news agency with a policy forbidding the word “terrorist†from their stories and a penchant for printing doctored photos as evidence of Israeli aggression, has done it again.
Yesterday, Reuters posted a story entitled “Sadr Expected to End Truceâ€Â, implying it was likely that Iraqi Shiite leader Muqtada al Sadr would end his Mahdi Army’s six-month ceasefire in Iraq.
I can’t offer the URL of that story because once their cynical prediction was proved immediately wrong (today, Sadr announced that he’d be extending the ceasefire another six months) the link started bringing me to a new Reuters story entitled (surprise, surprise) “Iraqi Cleric Sadr Extends Militia Ceasefire.†Soon after that, the original headline disappeared from internet searches altogether. The only place on the web I’ve been able to find the old headline (which links to the new story) is way down in the comments section of the firedoglake blog.For Reuters, flesh-and-blood events of global importance seem to be no more than malleable bits of code. Stories are offered, embellished, and pulled at their discretion. Moreover, this lack of regard for a news-hungry public reveals a consistent bias: deception is okay when expressing opposition to the hopes and aims of the U.S.
Related: Malkin on NYT’s McCain story
Oh! Ferryboat.
Reuters has an anti-American bias? The hell you say.
The only place on the web I’ve been able to find the old headline (which links to the new story) is way down in the comments section of the firedoglake blog.
Heh. There’s a strange little irony to this.
Reuters actually yanked the story before being proven wrong, in favor of this story:
For all that Reuters has gotten wrong, they did correct themselves in this case upon getting new info, before being proven wrong.
For that matter, in the fauxtography case, they should have caught it in the first instance, but did respond to criticism from bloggers.
Compared to the general pattern of stonewalling that one gets from the AP, Reuters usually looks pretty good. Faint praise, I know.
I think that they still ought to have indicated the story they replaced, though, Karl.
A Democrat wins the presidency the entire narrative on media bias and the reporting in Iraq will change.
The people on that boat didn’t die. ANACONDAS ate ’em. There’s some bad shit in that river. Just ask Jon Voight and Ice Cube.
The heck you say. The last time I got et by an anaconda, I died — though maybe that snake just had really bad breath or something. ;-)