War on Terrorism

Will the New York Times write stories on how eavesdropping is what alerted U.S. authorities to the terrorist airplane attack? Time magazine reported in an exclusive that the "U.S. picked up the suspects' chatter and shared it with British authorities." The operation involved cooperation between British and American authorities. Britain's MI-5 intelligence service and Scotland Yard had been…

How strong is the word "martyr"? After the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi last June, Aljazeera.net reported that a Jordanian got in trouble for using that word to describe Zarqawi, his former countryman. Jordan's parliament has condemned an Islamist MP for calling Abu Musab al-Zarqawi a "martyr" and demanded that his party question him and three other members for attending the dead al-Qaida…

I guess we should have predicted this. After all, in the minds of many in the mainstream media, history began on March 20, 2003, when America invaded Iraq; unless absolutely necessary, all prior events relating to terrorism are to be ignored. As such, we shouldn’t be at all surprised that a New York Times front-page story about the recent thwarted terrorist plot in Great Britain tied the event to…

Putting aside more conspiratorially-minded critics of the mainstream media, genuine practical concerns and mounting evidence suggest Western media has been co-opted by Hezbollah in Lebanon to a significant agree. So much so, in fact, that it may be unable to paint an accurate picture of the current conflict. The two year old image at right is from a Reuters video of Palestinian terrorists…

Brian Williams of "NBC Nightly News" surely intended to praise the heroism and selflessness of our various service people. But he employed at best an awkward, at worst an inappropriate and offensive manner of doing it.On this evening's 7 PM ET edition of Hardball, Chris Matthews mused about the UK-born terrorists whose plot was foiled today:"Here we have maybe 24 people who have lived in London…

Made-in-the-UK Islamic radicals are trying to murder people - and it's the UK's fault for not doing a better job integrating them into society.That was the view expressed on Fox News this afternoon by Angela Corpe of Sky News - Fox's UK sister network. Fox's Page Hopkins asked: "Given that you had 7/7 and we in New York know what it was like after 9/11. [Is it] still very fresh in Londoners'…

Quick Take: Reuters' initial reaction to the UK airliner bomb plot arrests was to tie it to Tony Blair and Israel's actions in Lebanon. A later story, perhaps in response to blog criticism of the original, added the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as "reasons." Nowhere is the idea that Islamic Jihadism, independent of day-to-day events in the Middle East, is involved. More important, and worse --…