Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Card stacking and parroting reign at Reuters

Card stacking, or selective omission, is a propaganda technique which involves presenting only information that supports the propagandist's view and omitting information contrary to it.  Reuters continues to write the book on this technique.

In a story on Israel's decision to withdraw from the northern part of the village of Ghajar and the unhappy response by villagers to seeing their town divided, Reuters correspondent Douglas Hamilton adopts and parrots Arab rhetoric to "explain" to readers why the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah has refused to disarm:
Hezbollah, an ally of Syria and Iran, holds sway in southern Lebanon and has ministers in the Lebanese government. Resisting calls to disarm, it has cited Israel's troops in Ghajar as continued occupation of Lebanese soil that must be fought.
Those passive and anonymous "calls" to disarm actually come from the United Nations which in UNSC Resolutions 1559, 1680, and 1701 specifically require Hezbollah and all other extra-governmental groups in Lebanon to disarm.  The UN has also definitively demarcated the Israel-Lebanon border and declared the southern part of Ghajar as non-Lebanese.  So Israel is not occupying "Lebanese soil".

Reuters propagandist Hamilton will have none of these facts and refuses to disclose them to readers.

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