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Friday, October 20, 2006

A little more media bias

Omri notes the bias at the LA Times in reporting on Hezbollah firing cluster bombs all over northern Israel.

LAT was only slightly worse than most news outlets, and even the HRW report itself compares Hezbollah cluster munitions with Israel's:
“We are disturbed to discover that not only Israel but also Hezbollah used cluster munitions in their recent conflict, at a time when many countries are turning away from this kind of weapon precisely because of its impact on civilians,” said Steve Goose, director of Human Rights Watch's Arms Division. “Use of cluster munitions is never justified in civilian-populated areas because they are inaccurate and unreliable.”
"Not only Israel..." In other words, we expect immoral acts of war from the Jewish state, but we are shocked that our heroes in Hezbollah would lower themselves to that level!

While it is not known when and how Hezbollah obtained these foreign-made cluster munitions, and while Hezbollah used far fewer cluster munitions than Israel did in the recent war, the new findings raise serious concerns about the proliferation of these weapons to non-state armed groups, as well as states.
So the LAT was just taking the lead from a hugely biased "human rights" organization, that took two months to realize that damage like this was not caused by a crude Qassam-like rocket:


But the Gold Star for media bias in this case goes to AFP, who put this photo out on their wire in response to the report:

Members of the Mine Action Group (MAG) search for cluster bombs in southern Lebanon, on October 9. A Human Rights Watch (HRW) report has said that Hezbollah fired cluster munitions into northern Israel during this summer's 34-day war with the Jewish state.(AFP/File/Marwan Naamani)

That's right...to illustrate Hezbollah's use of cluster bombs they had to find a file photo of people looking for Israeli explosives.

I guess it would just strain their resources too much to call up an Israeli stringer to shoot a photo of a damaged building in Kiryat Shmona.