Jul 22, 2006

improperganda

Sometimes I need to be reminded why I no longer watch network news. Last night at my parents' house after the local news ended, they left on NBC Nightly News for a while (read: until I changed it). The first ten minutes were a summary of recent events in the current Israel-Hezbollah Front of WW3, except a large portion of it was dedicated to journalistic wailing and gnashing of teeth over the civilian casualties in Lebanon. They went the entire segment without putting this unfortunate toll in context - the context of Hezbollah storing and firing rockets at Israel from Lebanese homes and businesses. It's not Israel's fault that Lebanese homes are being destroyed and "innocent" people killed; maybe the Lebanese "civilians" shouldn't let Hezbollah fire rockets from their houses. Israel is only firing back at precise locations where rockets were fired from, so if that happens to be someone's house or business, then too fucking bad. It's Hezbollah's problem, not Israel's.
This type of context-free journalism is what disgusts me about network news and most other leftist media outlets. It leads people to conclusions about world and domestic events that are at best not the whole truth and at worst utter fabrications.

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