Jan 4 Media Critique:“Reuters Responds: Pulling the Wool Over Our Eyes?”

More obsessing over the Reuters calendar from HonestReporting.

HR has decided, with the usual cynicism, that the issue is of the calendar being “politicized”,

The photos of the Iraqi woman and the G8 meeting, in fact, contain no political commentary at all. The only image that does is that of the Palestinian. Reuters dodges the key question - how did this image come to be used and why did it include the only caption containing a negative and politicized message?

The "politicized message" just being a factual caption. Can they really be so stupid? Unfortunately, yes. Obviously the only people with a “politicized” axe to grind are HR. Reuters produces a calendar for it’s clients with lots of pretty pictures. HR looks at it and starts ranting over “media bias” because one of the pictures is of a Palestinian, claiming that this makes it "politicized" Just the usual inversion of reality from HR.

Reuters has sent out standard replies to those HR zombies who complained over the photo, which politely say, 'f***-off you morons'.

Again HR is determined to demonstrate that there is no phenomenon of “anti-Israel media bias”. If there actually was, they wouldn't spend any time on this tiny and irrelevant matter.

What HR is showing is, again, their anti-democratic and anti-free expression position. We’ve seen it before when they attacked the South African newspaper, the Mail&Guardian, for allowing a South African govt minister to express his views. That was disgraceful enough, but now HR demonstrate their utter vacuousness and fanaticism, by launching this bizarre attack, not against a news story, or an opinion piece, but against a calendar that Reuters has produced as a bit of self-promotion that it distributes to it’s clients. I’d say something about a storm-in-a tea-cup, but this isn’t anything anywhere near as big as a tea-cup.

Their totalitarian bent can’t be satisfied by trying to stifle discussion and opinion they don’t like, now it encompasses images that they don’t like, images that aren’t even part of the news cycle. Not only must everyone think in lock-step with the HR Stalinists, our eyes must be shielded from what they deem to be inappropriate. Just to reiterate for the final time - all this is over a photo in a corporate calendar.

Obsessed, fanatical and 100% intolerant – HonestReporting.