CBC News: Newspapers accused of misusing word 'terrorist'

And who said semantics is dead. Here's an interesting example of opinion colouring the news. Reuters is all upset that CanWest Global is changing the wording of their stories. Now, let's identify the players shall we, you have Reuters, a long time provider of the news, which now has been bought by Arab interests. So the news they send out over their wire services is going to have a particular bias. Shall we say more pro-Palestinian then objective. Then you have CanWest Global, owned by the Asper family, it bought Southam news from Conrad Black, including the National Post. The fellow who did this was Israel "Izzy" Asper. Now with a name like that you can assume it's bias is pro-Israel. I think that's fair. So you have a rather anti-Israeli organization complaining that it's bias is being changed to reflect the bias of another organization.

It gets even more interesting, now a group called Council on American-Islamic Relations Canada wants to complain as well, since the National Post tends to portray terrorists as Muslim, wow, imagine that.

I must admit, Reuters does have a point, if the Post is changing the bias to reflect its bias, there should be some mention of it. I believe that's only fair. However, the Post does have the right to make comment on the news, so that it reflects its unique view of the world.

To the busybodies of the Council on American-Islamic Relations Canada I have only one word of advice, the same word of advice the Dark Lord of Black once gave to Maude Barlow, "if you don't like what I print, start your own newspaper". Come on guys, you're getting Al_Jazeera, you'll be able to have all the strident anti-Israeli propaganda you want.


Peace