Jan 23 Media Critique: "Heads Roll at Reuters"

Ho hum.

HR is still trying to make waves over the non-issue of Reuters 2007 Calendar. Says HR,

Judging by the volume of e-mail that reached Reuters following our January expose of politicized imagery and captions in its 2007 calendar, the media organization certainly got the message that this pernicious form of bias is simply unacceptable. After we alerted you to Reuters' weak initial response to your complaints, many people attempted further correspondence. Lacking any more credible excuses the Reuters press office went silent.

Maybe they just got tired of a bunch of emails all saying the same inaccurate things.

Not to be deterred, HR suggest that its readers try again,

Can we expect to see Reuters applying its new improved standards in the future and will the organization's calendar be subjected to the same internal investigation? Ask David Schlesinger yourself by posting a comment on the Reuters Editor's Blog.

Again, we can only marvel at the lack of what HR claims is its principle target - “anti-Israel media bias” - in the media world, so much so that HR must settle for criticising corporate calendars.

"AP USES THE 'TERROR' WORD?"

But HR briefly return to an old favourite - the media’s alleged refusal to use HRs favourite term.

Associated Press (and many other media outlets) have an aversion to using the terms "terrorism" or "terrorists" - unless the perpetrator happens to be an Israeli Jew:

In a bizarre twist, the Israeli referred to in the story is a Palestinian convert to Judaism who planned a terrorist attack in cooperation with his Palestinian brother, described by AP as a "militant".

If you are also wondering why AP is happy to label an Israeli Jew (albeit a former Palestinian) as a "terrorist" but not a member of the Islamic Jihad, send your comments to info@ap.org.

HR then link to an AP report. As ever, HR have to distort facts to come up with their allegations. This is what the AP report actually says,

Asaf Ben-David, an Israeli Jew, is facing charges of conspiring to carry out a terror attack with a wanted Palestinian militant — his brother.

So AP simply report that Ben-David has been charged with “conspiring to carry out a terror attack”. That is, they've described the facts of his case. Does AP describe Ben-David as a "terrorist" anywhere in the article? No.

Here’s the AP article, check it yourself and see that HR is, yet again, making things up.

More fabrications and false allegations from HonestReporting.

If you’re ever wondered where HR get their information, this gives a clue – HR released this on Jan 23^rd, and on Jan 22^nd another site had the same AP story making the same basic allegations.

Guess who? Little Green Footballs. The good people at LGF Watch have kindly provided the links to demonstrate the falsity of the general charge that the media never use the terms terror/terrorist/terrorism, except in reference to Israel.