The Machinery of Night

Posted 6:36 PM by Angie Schultz

Declaring "War" on "Reuters"

OK, that's "it". "I" am "officially" declaring "war" on "Reuters", the "news" service which last "fall" decreed that its "coverage" would not use words like terrorist, because, as its global "head" of news, Steven "Jukes", put it, "We all know that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter..."

One man's news organization is another man's steaming pile of cat excrement. (After Vodka Pundit, I think.)

But that's old, old news, and I wouldn't bring it up again except for this little jewel.

The caption to this picture of the site of the former WTC reads, "Recovery and debris removal work continues at the site of the World Trade Center known as 'ground zero' in New York, March 25, 2002. Human rights around the world have been a casualty of the U.S. 'war on terror' since September 11."

Forget their quotes. "Human rights around the world have been a casualty of the U.S. 'war on terror'..."?

This is the news agency with such delicate sensibilities that it could not bear to label the wanton slaughter of innocents "terrorism"? And now they have no compunction about 1) editorializing in a photo caption, 2) making an unsupported assertion about the recent status of human rights around the world, and 3) linking the status to the US "war on fundamentalist freakoids who would see us all dead and that means Steven Jukes too".

Even before September 11 I have gnashed my teeth--sometimes right here in this very blog---at the band of bozos that is the BBC, but I will give them this: their immediate choice of words for the 9/11 attacks was terrorist atrocities. After Reuters announced its terminology decision, the BBC decided that this would be its policy too. But that apparently didn't filter down to the news anchors for a day or so; they were still calling terrorism "terrorism" even after I heard about their bosses' decree.

This isn't the first time Reuters' neutral halo has slipped a little, but this is really beyond the pale.