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Thursday, June 29, 2006

Beach bias at the WaPo

The Washington Post has a column called World Opinion Roundup, ostensibly to show other sides of news stories from other countries.

But when the reporter, Jefferson Morley, discusses the Gaza beach bombings, he introduces the discussion with a comment from an American blog.

Juan Cole's blog, to be precise.

Not surprisingly, he goes on to show how seemingly everyone in his universe believes that Israel bombed a family on the beach, and only the IDF seems to believe that Israel is not responsible. (He mentions the Sueddeutshce Zeitung as well.)He quotes the British newspaper triumvirate of Israel-bashers, he quotes Mark Garlasco (misspelled in his column) - as if HRW is a media outlet - and he quotes a slew of Arab newspapers calling it a cold-blooded crime.

Somehow, he doesn't manage to mention any reasons why Israel's account is far more believable than the critics'. He has no problem mentioning critics' not believing the timeframes, for example, but not a word about the shrapnel Israel found in the victims' bodies showing it was not from Israeli artillery.

Yet another example of bias in an "even-handed" report.