Friday, January 27, 2012

Dan Williams, ventriloquist

Deeply dishonest Reuters correspondent Dan "Willful" Williams continues to employ a propaganda technique for which he and his colleagues in Jerusalem are notorious: conflating a quote by an Israeli official with the journalist's own biased message so as to deceive readers into thinking that the official had conveyed and/or agreed with the journalist's message.

In a story on Israel offering, and the Palestinians rejecting, proposals for international borders between Israel and a future Palestinian state, note Williams' sly ventriloquist act to deceive and manipulate readers:
Israel's approach to territorial compromise in the occupied West Bank includes the principal that "most Israelis will be under Israeli sovereignty and obviously most Palestinians will be under Palestinian sovereignty," the official said.
Williams precedes a truncated quote by the Israeli official with his own biased rhetoric characterizing the territory in contention as "the occupied West Bank", a propaganda mantra appearing in thousands of Reuters stories on the Middle East conflict intended to assign, in the minds of readers, rightful ownership of the land to the Palestinian Arabs.  Of course, these are actually Williams' own words but a cursory read suggests the Israeli official had used the loaded term.

As we stated at the top, Williams is notorious for employing this propaganda technique.

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