The Media Misses on Lebanon Bombing

The New York Times today has a pretty good article, by Times standards, on the bombing of a bus in Lebanon yesterday. You can read it here. Pretty good except for a big elephant in the room that the Times didn't notice: the fact that the victims were Christian and the perpetrators were obviously from Hezbollah.

The rest of the media also pussyfooted over this rather obvious fact. The Chicago Tribune made the point clearer. The AP said that the bombing took place in the "Christian heartland."

But why not just say what happened, which was that Muslims killed Christians? What is wrong with the MSM that it cannot get its teeth around that obvious fact?

This is part of a pattern of coverage that downplays Islamic terrorism aimed at the shrinking Christian communities of the Middle East.

What Does the New York Times Correct?

Mediacrity contributor Bruce Kesler has the following excellent analysis of the corruption of correction procedures at the New York Times. It is cross-posted from his website, The Democracy Project:

Few bother to dig through the dead wood and crippled thought at the New York Times, and its wire service customers do not see its occasional corrections that appear after gross errors. Thus, the New York Times’ prominent postures or the attention and misunderstanding originally created do their damage.

Last week, I demonstrated the error of the premise of the New York Times mischaracterization of the American Jewish Committee as a “conservative advocacy group” as lead paragraph support by the NYT's leftist reviewer belittling a critique of Israel-attacking Jews.

David Bernstein at Volkh.com drew my attention to the following “correction” by the New York Times, and adds his comment.

Posted by David Bernstein: N.Y. Times Issues Correcton re American Jewish Committee: http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2007_02_04-2007_02_10.shtml#1170593602


An article in The Arts on Wednesday about an essay titled
"'Progressive' Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism" on the Web
site of the American Jewish Committee referred incorrectly to the
committee. Its stance on issues ranges across the political
spectrum; it is not "conservative."

Well, that's better, and given that the AJC identifies itself as
"centrist," it's about all we can expect. But don't be fooled, as Ilya
pointed previously, the AJC's stance on issues does not "range across
the political spectrum"; it is consistently mainstream liberal,
including on Israel-related matters.

Maybe, if enough Vietnam veterans lived in the Upper West Side of Manhattan and socialized with New York Times editors, the New York Times would have gotten around to correcting its repeated erroneous mischaracterization of the Swiftees’ documented charges as “unsubstantiated” and gotten around to actually investigating and reporting, rather than being a transmission organ for Kerry.
— Bruce Kesler