By Warner Todd Huston
Saturday, September 29, 2007
This AP report is a perfect example of how the western media hasn't the temerity to call things as they are, a perfect example of how it soft-sells the truth for fear of violating those vaunted codes of politically correct conduct -- and why we could lose this war with a radical Islam that isn't afraid of how they are perceived by their enemies. The weakness this time is displayed in an AP report titled "Ministry: Taliban spokesman arrested", in which the AP can't even call the Taliban a terrorist organization and treats these murderers as if they were just another normal government entity by according them the respect of the kind of language you'd reserve for the spokesmen of any legitimate government.
First off, at the top of the story, the Taliban is described merely as an "insurgent movement" instead of a terrorist agency.
KABUL, Afghanistan - A Taliban member who acted as a leading spokesman for the insurgent movement has been arrested in southern Afghanistan, the Interior Ministry said Thursday.
Wow is that benign sounding, isn't it? An "insurgent movement" could describe many sorts of groups, the term not necessarily denoting a terror group. It could describe pro democracy movements in China, for instance. Or nationalist separatists in Chiapas, maybe. Heck, the term "insurgent movement" could have described the Founding Fathers of our own country for that matter!
But the Taliban is no mere "insurgent movement." They are oppressors, murderers, and terrorists, yet the AP would rather soft peddle their evil with benign sounding labels.
That isn't the only legitimacy the AP affords the Taliban in this story. Throughout the piece the AP talks of the Taliban's "spokesmen" with their "comment" patiently asked after by AP reporters as if the reports that these so-called spokesmen dole out are legitimate news sources and not propaganda fed to a gullible western media.
But, if read closely, this AP report makes a mistake by admitting its own failures. This AP report admits, most likely by accident, that the AP knows that these supposed Taliban spokesmen can't be relied on to tell the truth. Worse, the AP admits that it cannot even ascertain if these "spokesmen" are legitimate representatives of whatever terror group they claim to belong to.
But it remains virtually impossible to confirm the identity of Taliban spokesmen because they do not appear in public and communicate only by phone or text message. Nor is it possible to establish their location and ties to the Islamic militia's leadership.
There was no response to calls to Ahmadi after the government announced his arrest on Thursday morning. His phones appeared to be turned off.
Well, here's a question: if the AP admits that they cannot prove the legitimacy of the word of these purported "spokesmen," why does it rush to report their claims while wasting no time checking sources at the same time? Why does the AP so quickly and repeatedly report the words from these terrorist mouthpieces if even the AP can't say that they believe a word these "spokesmen" say?
Yet, after that admission, in the very next paragraph, the AP reports another Taliban claim quite regardless of whether it can be believed or not.
But an Associated Press reporter received a text message from his phone at 5:23 a.m. Thursday claiming that a Taliban attack on a checkpoint in southern Uruzgan province killed three police.
Now, we all know the MSM has been repeatedly scammed by insurgent, terror groups selling them fake massacre stories over the last few years. But, it's obvious that the wire services haven't learned a thing from their gullibility because they are knowingly reporting unsubstantiated stories on a daily basis from that part of the world.
So, what is the "truth" in news? Can I claim anything I want to claim and have the AP report it as "news?" Why not? They themselves do this every single day by accepting the propaganda offered them by these shadowy terror groups.
In any case, along with the unbeliveability and unverifiable nature of the MSM's reporting from the mid east, we also have to suffer with them affording these same disorganized terror groups the legitimacy that they would afford a real government with real ministers, press secretaries and spokesmen.
So, in practice, the AP treats these terrorists in the same way they treat the British government, or even Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai.
On second thought, they treat the Taliban better than they do Hamid Karzai. Because in this report they denigrate the legitimacy of Hamid Karzai's government by terming it "the Western-backed government of President Hamid Karzai." Instead of affording Karzai the courtesy of being termed the democratically elected president of his country, he is just a western puppet.
So, as it turns out, Karzai's government gets less respect from the AP than does the Taliban!
But, who is surprised, anyway?
Warner Todd Huston's thoughtful commentary, sometimes irreverent often historically based, is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, townhall.com, men'snewsdaily.com and americandaily.com among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a guest on several radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book "Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture" which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com.
Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston.
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