{"id":146,"date":"2004-01-03T15:12:49","date_gmt":"2004-01-03T20:12:49","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=146"},"modified":"2004-01-03T15:12:49","modified_gmt":"2004-01-03T20:12:49","slug":"war-is-the-continuation-of-journalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=146","title":{"rendered":"War is the Continuation of Journalism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>StrategyPage reports that Baathist dead-enders in Iraq are now <a href='http:\/\/strategypage.com\/fyeo\/qndguide\/default.asp?target=IRAQ.HTM'>using<br \/>\npress credentials as cover<\/a>.  Some Iraqis working for Reuters were arrested<br \/>\nafter an attack on U.S. troops guarding a downed helicopter. Reuters is now<br \/>\nprotesting that this was an error.<\/p>\n<p>Considering the virulently anti-American slant of Reuters coverage, this<br \/>\nis bleakly funny.  Those Iraqi employees thought, perhaps, that they could<br \/>\nearn a nice bonus by doing with lead what Reuters does with ledes. Why not?<br \/>\nAfter all, the terror network and Reuters share an important objective<br \/>\n&mdash; the breaking and humbling of U.S. power.<\/p>\n<p>Watch the aftermath closely.  If (as seems not unlikely) there were<br \/>\nReuters stringers involved in the attack, you will probably see<br \/>\nReuters condemn the actions of its employees only on the general<br \/>\ngrounds that actually <em>shooting<\/em> Americans jeopardizes the<br \/>\ncustomary privileges and immunities of the press, not because attacks<br \/>\non American troops are in any way intrinsically a bad thing.  The<br \/>\nanti-American slant of Reuters coverage will doubtless continue &mdash;<br \/>\nin fact, any suggestion that it might have contributed to or enabled<br \/>\nthe violence of yesterday will be met with shock and indignation.<\/p>\n<p>In the warped moral universe that Reuters and the BBC and much of<br \/>\nAmerica&#8217;s own elite media inhabit, American power is so frightening and<br \/>\nloathsome that Islamist barbarians are actually preferable to George<br \/>\nW. Bush.  They&#8217;ll print with a straight face quotes by al-Qaeda apologists<br \/>\ncondemning the U.S. as a &lsquo;rogue state&rsquo; and U.S. policies as<br \/>\nterrorism, while refusing to use the word &lsquo;terrorist&rsquo; for<br \/>\nAl-Hamas attacks that target Israeli children for mass murder.<\/p>\n<p>Reuters stringers firing bullets at American troops makes concrete<br \/>\na drama that has previously been abstract.  Today&#8217;s war on terror is<br \/>\nnot just a war between the West and fundamentalist Islam, it is a<br \/>\nconfrontation of the healthy versus the diseased portions of the West<br \/>\nitself.  The disease is Julien Benda&#8217;s <a href='http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/esrblog\/index.php?m=200211#82'>trahison<br \/>\ndes clercs<\/a> and all its sequelae.  And Reuters, marching in step<br \/>\nwith Old Europe and the American left, is objectively on the side of<br \/>\nthe West&#8217;s enemies.<\/p>\n<p>UPDATE: Three Reuters employees who were alleged to have been involved in the attack have been<br \/>\nreleased.  This does not change my evaluation that anti-U.S., pro-terrorist bias is<br \/>\npervasive and deep in Reuters international coverage, sufficiently so to put them on the enemy side.<br \/>\nAs an index of this bias, consider that by editorial policy Reuters will not use the word &#8220;terrorist&#8221;<br \/>\nto describe groups like Hamas or al-Aqsa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>StrategyPage reports that Baathist dead-enders in Iraq are now using press credentials as cover. Some Iraqis working for Reuters were arrested after an attack on U.S. troops guarding a downed helicopter. Reuters is now protesting that this was an error. Considering the virulently anti-American slant of Reuters coverage, this is bleakly funny. Those Iraqi employees&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=146\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">War is the Continuation of Journalism<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-terror","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}