Skewed news

At the Camp Katrina blog, Spc. Phil Van Treuren points out an "interesting omission" in the New York Times report on the latest suicide bombing in Iraq. (Hat tip: John Cole) The article says:

A suicide car bomb exploded Thursday near an American convoy at the entrance to the main hospital in the volatile town of Mahmudiya, killing at least 30 Iraqis and wounding dozens of others...

The omitted detail, supplied by the Associated Press, is that at the time of the bombing the U.S. soldiers were "handing out candy and food to children" (The Washington Post also mentions that nearly all the dead were women and children).

Was the omission an accident? Or was the Times downplaying, consciously or not, both the brutality of the "insurgents" ("freedom fighters" to some) and an instance of friendly rapport between the American soldiers and the Iraqi population?

Like John Cole, I'm generally very wary of assigning malign motives to such things and seeking out the minutest evidence of "liberal bias" (that way madness lies). But still, this kind of thing makes you wonder. I mean, the fact that the U.S. convoy was handing out candy and food to children at the time, and that one of Kurt Vonnegut's heroes plowed an explosive-laden car into a crowd of kids, is not exactly a minor detail.

Meanwhile, The Heretik points out something else: the version of the Associated Press story Camp Katrina links to, on the Fox News site, edits AP's copy to change "suicide bomber" to the idiotic "homicide bomber." This is right-wing newspeak at its most laughable. Any bombing that kills people is a "homicide bombing." The distinct feature of "suicide bombing" is that the bomber also kills himself (or herself). On at least one occasion -- the London bombings last July -- the insistence on referring to suicide bombings as "homicide bombings" already led Fox down the path of glaring stupidity. I'd like to know who first came up with the imbecilic idea that the phrase "suicide bombing" somehow makes the bomber sympathetic. I'd also like to know when someone at Fox is going to have enough sense to put an end to this ridiculous policy of rewriting wire copy to fit their propaganda slant.

Meanwhile, as The Heretik wisely says:

Do we just see in the “news” what we want to see? Our soldiers struggle to do their best, to be most human in the most inhumane circumstances. Those people are still dead. Damned media, damned blog. Damn us all. Oy.