Bias at U.S. News and World Report

Here’s another example of a headline/caption writer introducing bias into a news article, this time in the August 14, 2006 edition of U.S. News and World Report.

The article is entitled “Carrying Costs – Despite the burden of war, neither Israel nor Hezbollah folds easily.”

Not bad so far.

Yet, herein lies the rub.

There are four photographs in the article. One shows a man carrying an elderly woman in a Lebanese village and another shows Israeli soldiers returning from battle.

Those photos are fine.

It’s the other two photos that show the bias.

Here’s photo #3, showing the Lebanese side of the suffering:



Note the caption of this sad photograph:
“Lebanese rescue workers carry a dead boy from the rubble in Qana”.

However, we all know that Israeli children are also suffering, thanks to Hezbollah’s Katyusha rockets.

Here’s the photo showing the Israeli side of the suffering:



The caption reads:
“Medical personnel help a slightly wounded child in Nahariya, Israel.”

Wow. Israel must not be suffering as much as Lebanon, since Israeli children are only “slightly” wounded, while Lebanese children are dying.

Why, oh why, must the word “slightly” be added to the caption? It would be just as accurate if it read “Medical personnel help a wounded child in Nahariya, Israel.”

But no, the editor chose to add the word “slightly”.

I can only deduce that the word was added to minimize the impact of the photo and influence the reader into thinking that the only real suffering is on the Lebanese side of the border.

If our media wants to be taken seriously, they have to excise this type of manipulation from their articles. The fiasco at Reuters uncovered by Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs has started a long-overdue examination into the dubious practices of the mainstream media.

It’s about time. Thanks Charles.

(Original link to this post: http://thephantomrepublican.blogspot.com/2006/08/bias-at-us-news-and-world-report.html)