Sunday, November 30, 2008

Braindead in the Water

During the recent massacres of 170 or more people in India, the New York Times described the perpetrators as "militants". (They omitted to specify what they were militant about -- vegetarianism perhaps? or maybe pacifism?) This sat badly with hundreds of Indians who wrote to protest the Times' apologetic phrase.

Since Indians are neither Jews nor white, it is politically incorrect to countenance massacring them. This created a problem for the editors and writers of the Times. So the Newspaper of Record responded to the pressure. This is a considerable novelty for them.

The Times has for decades pointedly ignored Jewish protests of their murderers being described as Islamic concerned citizens or some such. But the massacre of non-Jews, especially of non-white non-Jews, could not be brushed aside so cavalierly. Something had to be done.

So the Times' editors and reporters fearlessly thought of yet another apologetic evasion. The former "militants" have become the even more sanitary "attackers".

Such is the Times' obdurate refusal to acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, terrorists should be called "terrorists".

But the Times has to rely on reports from other news services, which generally are not as politically correct as the Times. The other news services do use the word "terrorism" to describe incidents of -- what shall I call it?, oh, say, for lack of a better word -- terrorism.

Apparently Indian news services were unwilling to have their reporting perverted and their people insulted. So the Times was obliged to use the word "terrorism". But not "terrorists". This is like admitting there is golf but refusing to admit the existence of golfers.

The surface absurdity that the Times has wrought for itself reflects their underlying intellectual dishonesty.

However, let it not be thought that the Gray Lady has relinquished their underlying refusal to report honestly. Their three page description and summary of the massacre of more than 170 people nowhere contains any reference to Islam, to Muslims, nor to Jihad.

Which means that their reporting leaves the event utterly inexplicable. It just happened. No reason is given. If the reader does not already know who the "attackers" were, or the reasons for the attack, she will not find out from reading the Times.


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1 comment:

  1. Anonymous9:15 PM

    Thank you, dear Jack, for pointing this fact out. NYTimes categorically does this especially when talking about Israel and its "attackers." I'm so glad you noticed...why should anyone be surprised?!

    ReplyDelete