Sunday, December 04, 2005

More Hypocrisy on Payments to Reporters

The orgy of media hypocrisy over payments to Iraqi journalists continues, with sanctimonious editorials in the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times.

Here's the Times's pontification:

"The State Department trains Iraqi journalists how to be independent and fair; at the same time, the Defense Department contracts with an organization that secretly pays Iraqi publications to print stories making the American occupiers look good. As often happens with propaganda, when daylight exposes the secret, the stench is overpowering," says the Times.

The WaPo spewed forth similarly.

Fine. If these two papers feel so strongly about the "stench" of paid-off reporters, why hasn't either written a single word about payments to UN correspondents by the UN and pro-UN organizations? Here's some reading matter for the UN media: Click here and here, guys. Those links will bring you to articles in Accuracy in Media and FrontPage Magazine. There's a lot more, but these two organizations broke the story.

Outrageous, isn't it? So why not write about it?