Reuters is at it again, promoting its pro-Palestinian spin on news events even if it has to manipulate the facts to do so. In this case, they've been found to be cropping photos of the Israeli commando operation against the "fraud flotilla" to eliminate evidence that those on board the ship were armed with weapons.Reuters was once a respected news agency, the creation of Paul Julius F. von Reuter, a German Jew who converted to Christianity and eventually moved to Great Britain. Starting with carrier pigeons, von Reuter became a pioneer in the use of telegraphy to transmit financial news and developed his business into one of the most successful news agencies of the 19th Century. Among their hallmarks was a devotion to speed, accuracy and fairness.
But the Reuters family has long passed from the scene and
the business is now Thomson Reuters. And, sad to say, in the new business model, accuracy and fairness have become victims to a dangerous ideology.The offense to readers is more than the now infamous line of Reuters global news editor Stephen Jukes, "We all know that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" in explaining why their news reports wouldn't use the word "terrorist" in their news reports (unless it is put in quotation marks).
It's also the ongoing pattern of anti-Israel reporting, so sharply slanted that Reuters reporters and editors have been caught several times in distorting actual events. It has involved over-the-top prejudice in reporting, deliberate obfuscation and omission of central facts, intentional misrepresentation of a story through the selection of photographs and captions, and even doctoring photos to make them fit a predetermined storyline.
But though they keep getting caught doing it, they don't stop.
In the latest case, Reuters was caught cropping photos of the flotilla conflict so that the knives wielded by the so-called humanitarians aboard the ship were not shown. They had evidence in these photos that corroborated the testimony of the Israeli soldiers and sailors (testimony that was backed up by plenty of other visual evidence) revealing that the persons on board ship were indeed armed and quite active in using those weapons against Israelis.
But rather than show the truth -- the basic responsibility of a news agency -- Reuters cropped the pictures so that the knives were not shown.Irresponsible? Much more than that. A simple error? No way.
Even Reuters is admitting they didn't do their best work here. But the admission is still very defensive and self-justifying. And, most important, they wouldn't even admit the photos had been doctored until after others provided the evidence.
Reuters' desire to promote the violent cause of Palestinian terrorists has taken over whatever sense of balance or journalistic responsibility they ever had. Paul Julius must be turning over in his grave.
