Good grief! Of all the important issues out there that need confronting and analysis, this must be the stupidest post ever.
What, in your opinion, constitute “important issues that need confronting and analysis”? Anti-Israeli (i.e., anti-Semitic) bias in the MSM doesn’t rise to your level of importance, obviously.
Funny, how can you judge any issue you read in the paper when you know the reporters and editors willfully lie about the issues they write about? You see, those “issues” you care so much about probably don’t even exist. The writer/editor fed you a line that was false, you believed it and now you are out protesting for a lie. Probably the stupidest thing you could do.
The most important issue is the truth, something you won’t be getting from most newspapers, as evidenced by this post…
If you’re pressed for time, you don’t rewrite so thoroughly. You truncate and append—like so:
”Palestinians run as they try to cross to the Israel side at the Erez Crossing , in the northern Gaza Strip, Saturday , June 16, 2007. Dozens of Palestinians converged on the Erez crossing with Israel on Saturday, trying to leave the Gaza Strip following Hamas’ takeover. At the same time, hundreds of people looted police positions on the Palestinian side of Erez, and at one point Israeli troops fired in the air to keep the crowd at bay. The looters walked off with furniture and scrap metal. (AP Photo/Hatem Moussa)”Only a small number were allowed through.
All the information of the Strib caption, with none of the inaccuracies, and even less time due to how computer-based text editing works.
Good grief! Of all the important issues out there that need confronting and analysis, this must be the stupidest post ever.
Good grief! Jeepers! Gosharootie! Land’s sakes! My stars! Gracious!
How dare you stupidly point out the rampant bias and bone-deep, reflexive dishonesty of our mainstream media?
How dare you show by example after example that the mainstream media is so rotten that it’s now manufacturing news that conforms to the preconceived notions of journalists, editors, and publishers?
"The main impact of the abridgment [of the caption] was to eliminate all reference to looting or other misbehavior by the fleeing Palestinians.” That’s an understandable confusion by someone with little time. From the caption: “Dozens of Palestinians . . . [were] trying to leave the Gaza Strip following Hamas’ takeover, . . . [while] hundreds of people looted police positions on the Palestinian side of Erez.”
There were two sets of Palestinians. Some of those shown running likely were Fatah-affiliated police who served on the Palestinian side of the border crossing with Israel at Erez. The looters likely were other Palestinians who, seeing the posts abandoned, tried to make off with whatever wasn’t bolted to floors or to the ground.
If men were fleeing expected further reprisals in Gaza, trying to cross into Israel (actually, through Israel to the West Bank), or into Egypt, how could that reflect badly on either Egypt or Israel? One ought to be skeptical of much that today’s journalists claim, but this writer accepts “a stupid mistake.†As for not specifying that the error consisted of wrongly sticking Egypt into the edited caption, well, a Stribster tried to slip past the matter with as few words as possible.
To err is human. One has ample reason to suspect bias in the news media. And posters should ease up on insults of others and their work. Too often, as in this instance, such insults are uncharitable, unworthy, and inaccurate.
Would someone please point out to me where the anti-Semetic bias is?
I haven’t seen the Strib story appended to the photo & caption, and so I don’t have the full facts.
But from Scott’s comments it would seem that the gist of the caption was that ordinary Palestinians were being intimidated & chased out of Gaza by Hamas, but that only a few actually were allowed out through the Erez Crossing.
The point was they felt the need to flee, and the place they were fleeing to, whether Israel or Egypt, was not really important to the story. So how does that inaccuracy constitute anti-Israeli bias?
I suppose you could argue that the state on the other side of the Erez Crossing got some negative PR, since it was accused of allowing only a few of the refugees actually to escape Hamas/Gaza - but the fact that the article mistakenly identifies Egypt as the [cold-hearted] state that blocked the refugees would seem (if there is any bias at all) to be an anti-Egypt bias, not an anti-Israel bias.
JMO, and, of course, based on less than full set of facts.
To point out that Palestinians had to flee to Israel to be safe is to point out the two are not equivalent moral entities. In the mind of the leftist newspaper persons Israel is no better than the Palestinians, so they must do nothing that might point out there is civilization and safety in one, and evil and danger in the other.
These are your same newspaper leftists who want to make Hamas equal to Fatah equal to the Israeli political parties. They carry water for the Palestinians by constantly telling us the Palestinians want “peace"… and always go out of the way to show us the “victims” of Israeli aggression. No, to them there is no way they can acknowledge a difference between the madness of the Palestinians in Gaza and the safety and security in Israel.
I can understand the temptation to attribute a copy editor’s goof to the perceived biases of a newspaper’s upper management and/or editorial board, but I can assure you that you are wrong to do so.
Copy editors couldn’t give a rat’s ass what their papers’ biases are, and papers couldn’t give a rat’s ass about their copy editors’ politics. I’ve worked at a paper far more ideologically oriented than the Strib, and I can assure you there was no political test for copy editors. If anything, most of the copy editors (and many of the reporters) detested what their paper stood for.
Can haste cause a ridiculous error? Of course. Have you ever sorted laundry? What could be simpler—dark goes in dark basket, light goes in light basket. And you’re not even facing a deadline, but inevitably you screw up. It’s hard to understand if you’ve never done the job, but you’ll type some wacky things under deadline pressure. China becomes Japan, Rabin becomes Shamir, Vermont becomes New Hampshire, Israel becomes Egypt. I don’t expect you to understand, but you are way off base.
Yeah, funny how those wacky errors always end up being anti-Israel, anti-American, anti-religious, anti-conservative, ... you get the idea. Of course, you got the idea before you made your first post because this obviously hit very close to home for you. Sorry, but we are not off base. From your response I would say it was a bullseye. Have fun with the rest of your rat.
