When Thomas Sowell speaks...
...everyone should pay attention.
When he asks the question "Fourth Estate or Fifth Column?" about the American mainstream media, he should be taken seriously.
Sowell has seen a lot, and he's not a mincer of words about what he sees:
When he asks the question "Fourth Estate or Fifth Column?" about the American mainstream media, he should be taken seriously.
Sowell has seen a lot, and he's not a mincer of words about what he sees:
If a battle ends with Americans killing a hundred guerrillas and terrorists, while sustaining ten fatalities, that is an American victory. But not in the mainstream media. The headline is more likely to read: "Ten More Americans Killed in Iraq Today."Pay attention to Thomas Sowell.
This kind of journalism can turn victory into defeat in print or on TV. Kept up long enough, it can even end up with real defeat, when support for the war collapses at home and abroad.
Comments
http://news.bbc.co.uk/newswatch/ifs/hi/newsid_4220000/newsid_4222300/4222353.stm
The BBC has apologised for incorrectly broadcasting figures which suggested more Iraqi civilians had been killed by coalition and Iraqi forces than by insurgents.
The information was based on figures given by the Iraqi Ministry of Health to the BBC's Panorama programme. The statistics concerned the number of people killed in conflict-related violence in the second half of 2004.
The figures said that 3,274 people had died in that period, 2,041 of them as the result of "military operations".
The other 1,233 deaths were attributed to "terrorist operations".
The BBC reported the figures as suggesting that coalition and Iraqi forces could be responsible for up to 60% of conflict-related civilian deaths in Iraq.
However, the Iraqi Ministry of Health then clarified that the figures included not just civilians, but also insurgents and Iraqi security forces. And it said that the phrase "military operations" referred to Iraqis killed by insurgents as well as coalition or Iraqi forces.
The ministry said the BBC had misinterpreted the figures.
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Big surprise, that.