It's all in the words employed - and who's doing it

The news we get, in whatever form, is dependant on the author's use of appropriate words. So, we now all know that some people are described as "freedom fighters" whereas others will label the same people as "terrorists". The Israeli soldier Galit is mostly described as having been "kidnapped". He wasn't! He was captured by Hamas in the course of military action between Israel and Hamas in Gaza - just as Israel has "captured" Gazans and imprisoned them without trial.

Glenn Greenwald in a piece on Salon, takes up the issue of how reportage is done, often depending on who is involved:

"A newly released study from students at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government provides the latest evidence of how thoroughly devoted the American establishment media is to amplifying and serving (rather than checking) government officials. This new study examines how waterboarding has been discussed by America's four largest newspapers over the past 100 years, and finds that the technique, almost invariably, was unequivocally referred to as "torture" -- until the U.S. Government began openly using it and insisting that it was not torture, at which time these newspapers obediently ceased describing it that way".

Continue reading, here, is you are interested in determining how accurate what you read and hear might be.

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Mahler's Prodigal Son

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