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July 12, 2007

Headline Verses Reality At BBC News On Iraq

It's not my favorite media, but I check out BBC News everyday anyway just to see what our enemy's apologists are saying about the war on terror. Today is no different than any other: The headline reads, "Iraq 'fails to meet US targets,' the byline is "The Iraqi government has failed to meet eight out of 18 political and military goals set by the US Congress, the White House has said in an interim report.

The reality is that in an interim report, the Iraqi government "failed" to meet eight out of 18 political and military goals set by the US Congress, and two were "less than satisfactory." As Fox News put it in their headline - "Iraq Progress Good on 8 of 18 Benchmarks," and in their byline that actually says it like it really is:

A U.S. official said Thursday the Iraq government has been given a satisfactory rating on eight of 18 political and security benchmarks measured in an interim White House report to Congress, a mixed rating on two and an unsatisfactory rating on eight benchmarks.

Sure, it's whisker close to beauty being in the eyes of the beholder or a glass being half full or half empty, but the fact is that framing it as a failure is more than a bit of a stretch. This is especially true in the context of a full-blown war among multiple players, many of whom are more than a few bricks short of a full load in the common sense department and hopped up on hate juice. In the overall perspective, half right isn't too bad, and a bit more than half right (2 being somewhat less than satisfactory rather than "failed") means we're closer to winning than failing.

However, through the prism of BBC News, given an opportunity to cheer for the terrorists instead of your own government whose fighting hard to defeat a global grab bag of ideological hate mongering terrorists so that all of us, including BBC News, can continue enjoying our freedoms (including being able to propagate your own views whether the government agrees with them or not - as in BBC News), they choose the terrorists even if they have to re-frame reality to suit their own agenda.

Now, having picked on BBC News, we ought to be fair about our criticism of the media's coverage of Iraq, in general, which is something close to being atrociously left-leaning and pro-enemy (the rest of ours, not the media's - they "heart" the people that want to destroy the West). It's actually so bad that Jules Crittenden wonders for the rest of us, is the media's coverage of Iraq, in general, simply Lazy, Stupid or Willfully Ignorant?

Right now, all the talk in DC is whether there has been any progress in Iraq. No one can wait till September. They need to know now. Primarily, it appears, because they need to kill the war for their own domestic political reasons before it kills them. Most people, of course, already have the answer they want.

But how come, if this is the pressing issue of the day, we've seen no serious effort whatsoever among our leading news organizations to tell us or our political leaders what is actually happening?

We've seen how the New York Times deals with Iraq. Pathetically inadequate. We talked about the AP. Shamelessly biased. Both of NYT and AP, along with the Washington Post, as the most influential U.S. news organizations, deserve to be more closely examined on exactly what they are contributing to our understanding of this situation.

Where is the comprehensive look at the execution of George Bush's counterinsurgency strategy, this thing that everyone keeps disparaging?

Posted by Richard at July 12, 2007 10:03 AM