Monday, December 14, 2009

More broken boilerplate

Residing somewhere on the Reuters Middle East server, lies a word processing file saved as anti-Israelpropaganda.docx -- or so we imagine.  It's the only way to explain the pernicious boilerplate appearing in scores of Reuters' stories, like for example, this:     
Ideological divides run deep in Israel, especially over the future of some 500,000 Jews who live among 2.7 million Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, areas captured in a 1967 war which Palestinians want for a viable future state.
Now, we understand the value of boilerplate for a writer under pressure to meet a daily deadline.  We just think Reuters ought to inspect the veracity of that boilerplate before repeating it and selling it on to hundreds of other news publications.  For the reality is, a large majority of Israelis support settlement construction in the disputed territories and two-thirds either oppose any evacuation of Jewish settlements in a final peace deal or say only a small number of communities should be dismantled.  Moreover, 85 percent of Israelis oppose dividing Jerusalem in exchange for peace with the Palestinians.

Not much of an "ideological divide" there.

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