773

That's the number of Reuters stories published over just the last couple of years employing the propaganda mantra "the West suspects Iran" (of developing nuclear weapons), in a willful effort by the news agency to conceal and play down damning independent evidence of Iran's comprehensive program to acquire the bomb:

Both sides say they are ready at the meeting to work towards resolving the deepening dispute over the nuclear program which the West suspects is geared towards achieving a nuclear arms capability, but which Iran says has purely peaceful purposes.

In next to none of the 773 stories does Reuters make mention of that independent evidence, as produced for example, by the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency:

The information indicates that Iran has carried out the following activities that are relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device:
• Efforts, some successful, to procure nuclear related and dual use equipment and materials by military related individuals and entities (Annex, Sections C.1 and C.2);
• Efforts to develop undeclared pathways for the production of nuclear material (Annex, Section C.3);
• The acquisition of nuclear weapons development information and documentation from a clandestine nuclear supply network (Annex, Section C.4); and
• Work on the development of an indigenous design of a nuclear weapon including the testing of components (Annex, Sections C.5–C.12).

Reuters: systematically dumbing down the planet.

The Reuters virus

Reuters tightly coordinates and sustains its anti-Israel bias and propaganda campaign across its news bureaus by encouraging correspondents to employ identical boilerplate rhetoric when reporting on the Middle East conflict.  For example, at last count, there are over 1,700 instances of the propaganda mantra "occupied West Bank" appearing in Reuters stories over just the last couple of years.

Similarly, like a malignant virus spreading from tissue to tissue, the same pernicious fabrications infecting stories produced in Reuters Jerusalem Bureau are replicated by other bureaus and ultimately transmitted to the public via hundreds of media outlets like the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune. 

In a story for example, about the French government warning pro-Palestinian protesters not to travel to Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank") due to potential friction with Israeli authorities, Reuters Paris correspondents Pauline Mevel and Alexandria Sage write:

Palestinians, who want to create their own state together with the Gaza Strip, object to illegal Jewish settlements, trade restrictions and scant water supply, and their limited autonomy.

Note the reference to "illegal Jewish settlements", an unsupported and flagrantly false assertion that nevertheless, gets repeated in story after story after story.

The canard of a "scant water supply" for Palestinians is similarly false and yet reproduced in a host of Reuters stories which clearly seek to demonize the Jews of Israel.

Those in editorial positions at Reuters spearheading and enabling the agency's long-standing propaganda campaign targeting Israel might wish to review their employer's corporate governance charter, as the ethical violations of those "Trust Principles" pile up and for which they will ultimately be held accountable.

Racists@Reuters

Following and notwithstanding the victory of the Union in the American Civil War and abolition of slavery, predominantly White cities in the United States sought to expel their African-American residents through the use of terror, i.e., physical threats and attacks, and legal and economic coercion, i.e., preventing Blacks from renting or buying homes in the area.  The result was what was known as Sundown Towns, cities that were ethnically cleansed of their African-American communities.  (The term refers to the openly expressed edict that no black people were allowed after dark).

For similar overtly racist reasons, Jews were expelled from the eastern part of Jerusalem by the Arabs following the invasion and occupation of the city by the Jordanian-led Arab Legion in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.  Thousands of Jewish families were driven out, their property confiscated, their homes and synagogues looted and torched.

A holy city, originally founded and built by the Jews and where a Jewish community had survived for centuries despite successive waves of conquest and colonization, Jerusalem had been ethnically cleansed of its Jewish population and culture within weeks.

It was at that point, that the Old City of Jerusalem and its surrounds first became known, cynically, as Arab East Jerusalem.

Jerusalem was liberated and reunified by Israel in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and the 19 years of racial and religious exclusion at the hands of the Arabs came to an end.  Jews, and those of all religio-ethnic backgrounds, were able to once again live, work, and pray in any part of the city.  Today, Jews compose over 40 percent of the population of the eastern portion of Jerusalem.

For Reuters however, that cynical, ahistorical, and racist reference to Arab East Jerusalem persists:

(Reuters) - Israel's government broke all its settlement-building records in 2011, diminishing prospects for establishing a viable Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank, Israel's anti-settlement activist group "Peace Now" said Tuesday.
The group's annual report on building in Arab East Jerusalem and the West Bank - land the Palestinians want for a future state along with the Gaza Strip - showed that despite international calls to halt construction, thousands of new homes were being built.

The repeated use of the misnomer "Arab East Jerusalem" by Reuters correspondents is of course, quite deliberate, intended to dismiss over three-thousand years of Jewish life, history, religious connection and sovereignty over the city, and with the stroke of a pen (or the click of a keyboard), assign ownership of Jerusalem to the Arabs who have sworn to once again ethnically cleanse of Jews, any land they obtain through violence or negotiations.

This is not merely advocacy journalism, in and of itself a serious violation of the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles and Handbook of Journalism.  It is reprehensible and racist propaganda that reflects a deeply sick and twisted worldview and an epic failure of corporate governance at one of the largest news agencies in the world, which, by not correcting the failure, implicitly endorses it.

Reuters latest propaganda mantra

We define a propaganda mantra as a false, fabricated, or misleading construct appearing repeatedly in a Reuters story so as to drum the notion into the mind of the reader until he or she simply surrenders his or her critical faculty and accepts the propaganda as truth.

Correspondents in Reuters Jerusalem Bureau regularly dream up new entrants in this category and then employ them consistently in and across all stories published by the bureau.  Examples of the many Reuters propaganda mantras can be seen in our right sidebar with counts as to how many times these phrases have appeared in Reuters stories over the last couple of years.

The latest propaganda mantra to insinuate its way into Reuters Middle East coverage appears in a story by correspondent Dan Williams about a Salafi terrorist -- er sorry, "militant" -- killed by the Israeli air force as he was preparing to fire a rocket from Gaza:

Though Hamas echoes Salafi calls for Israel's ultimate destruction, its ambitions are framed within Palestinian nationalism, not al Qaeda-style global jihad, and include a possible ceasefire with the militarily superior Jewish state which, with Egyptian help, has tried to isolate Gaza.

Williams' (unsupported) assertion, i.e., that the goal of Hamas is one of merely achieving a Palestinian state rather than waging a broader war of jihad against non-Muslims so as to reconquer all land that has ever been under Islamic rule, is utterly false.  It is intended to draw a spurious distinction between Hamas and al-Qaeda for naive western audiences so that Williams and his colleagues at Reuters can carry on with their Palestinian advocacy campaign, justifying Palestinian violence under the deliberately misleading banner of "nationalism".

To see that Williams is simply blowing smoke, all one need do is read the Hamas Charter which, in setting out the terror group's mission and strategy, employs the word "jihad" no fewer than 36 times, including this section describing the relationship between Hamas and other jihadists:

Article Twenty-Three: Our Position Vis-a-Vis the Islamic Movements

The Hamas views the other Islamic movements with respect and appreciation. Even when it differs from them in one aspect or another or on one concept or another, it agrees with them in other aspects and concepts. It reads those movements as included in the framework of striving [for the sake of Allah], as long as they hold sound intentions and abide by their devotion to Allah, and as along as their conduct remains within the perimeter of the Islamic circle. All the fighters of Jihad have their reward. The Hamas regards those movements as its stock holders and asks Allah for guidance and integrity of conduct for all. It shall not fail to continue to raise the banner of unity and to exert efforts in order to implement it, [based] upon the [Holy] Book and the [Prophet’s] Tradition. “And hold fast, all of you together, to the cable of Allah, do not separate. And remember Allah’s favor unto you how ye were enemies and He made friendship between your hearts so that ye became as brothers by His grace; and (how) ye were upon the brink of an abyss of fire, and He did save you from it. Thus Allah makes clear His revelations unto you, that happily ye may be guided.” Sura III (Al-’Imran), verse 102.

And this section acknowledging that Hamas is an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood (which, like al-Qaeda, advocates for a global caliphate):

Article Two: The Link between Hamas and the Association of Muslim Brothers

The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of the Muslim Brothers in Palestine. The Muslim Brotherhood Movement is a world organization, the largest Islamic Movement in the modern era. It is characterized by a profound understanding, by precise notions and by a complete comprehensiveness of all concepts of Islam in all domains of life: views and beliefs, politics and economics, education and society, jurisprudence and rule, indoctrination and teaching, the arts and publications, the hidden and the evident, and all the other domains of life.

Indeed, even the Brotherhood affiliate in Tunisia, the al-Nahda party, boasts of Jerusalem becoming the center of the new caliphate -- once of course, it is conquered by the Palestinians:

Palestinian dead are "civilians", "physician", "children". Israeli dead are #$%!@&*

On Thursday, Palestinian terrorists operating out of Egypt attacked two Israeli cars and a passenger bus with Kalashnikov semi-automatic rifles killing eight people, seven of whom were civilians, including sisters who worked as educators.  Following the initial hail of gunfire, the Palestinian attackers shot the sisters and their husbands in the heads at point-blank range.

Of course, if you read Reuters, you wouldn't know much of this.  Within 24 hours of the attack, the Israeli victims had been reduced to typographical errors:

Israeli forces were swift to blame the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) armed faction for Thursday's attack near the Red Sea resort of Eilat which killed when eight Israelis. [sic]

By contrast, Reuters correspondents Nidal al-Mughrabi, Ari Rabinovitch, and Allyn Fisher-Ilan are quite meticulous when reporting details of those Palestinians killed in the ensuing Israeli attacks -- twice:

Among those killed in Israel's strikes were 11 militants and four civilians, including a physician and children aged 2,5 and 13, said Hamas medical sources [...]

The radio tirade followed Israel's latest air strike launched just before midnight, targeting a militant riding a motorcycle in Gaza City. The missile also slammed into a passing car, killing three civilians including a medical doctor and a child, Hamas medical officials said.

Funny how those word processing errors only seem to occur when Israelis might be humanized.

One year on, Reuters still lying about Mavi Marmara

In May of last year, İnsani Yardım Vakfı (IHH), a Turkish Islamist NGO with ties to various terror groups, sponsored and manned a flotilla to Gaza with the intention of defeating the Israeli weapons embargo of the Hamas-run territory.  The ship where the majority of IHH operatives were based, the Mavi Marmara, became the scene of a violent confrontation between Israeli naval commandos attempting to board the ship and passengers armed with knives, iron rods, and by some reports, pistols.  Following the incident and seizure of the Mavi Marmara, an inspection of the cargo hold revealed no humanitarian aid on board the ship.

In story after story on the incident last year, Reuters falsely characterized the Mavi Marmara as an "aid ship".  One year on, the agency is still doing so:

(Reuters) - Democratic governments cannot stop their citizens launching another pro-Palestinian flotilla to Gaza, Turkey's foreign minister said on Monday, a year after the storming of an aid ship by Israeli marines.

This, of course, is not accidental.  Reuters is attempting here, via deployment of the propaganda techniques of historical reconstruction, i.e., fabrication, and repetition, to implant in the minds of its readers the false notion that the Mavi Marmara was carrying humanitarian aid to the Palestinian Arabs.  In fact, as we noted above, it was chartered with the specific task of breaking a legal sea blockade so as to facilitate the flow of arms to the genocidal Islamists running Gaza.

Reuters, the definition of insanity

Well, it was just a week ago that Reuters correspondents were busy, en masse, misrepresenting President Obama's speech on the Arab-Israeli conflict.  We highlighted some of those misrepresentations here, here, and here.

Reuters correspondents demonstrate their sheer arrogance and unflappable commitment to deceive their audience by continuing, in several stories today, to misrepresent Obama's proposal for a negotiated peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians:

In a bid to break the deadlock, Obama said in a major policy speech last week that a future Palestinian state should be based on the borders as they existed on the eve of the 1967 Middle East, with land swaps mutually agreed with Israel.

No he didn't.  As we've noted too many times to recount, Israel had no borders prior to the 1967 war and, in conjunction with a territorial neck only 9 miles wide, this lack of recognized borders encouraged the surrounding Arab states to prepare an invasion in June of 1967.

Reuters is deliberately misleading readers by misquoting Obama, who actually referred to the 1967 "lines".

Nor is this simply a semantic distinction.  Reuters correspondents are attempting, via the propaganda technique of repetition, to implant the suggestion that, in rejecting the 1967 lines (actually 1949 Armistice Lines) as an international border, Israel is rapaciously seeking to expand its territory beyond an official "border" and devour land belonging to another country.

Of course, this is an utterly false allusion as there is no country east of the 1967 lines -- until one reaches Jordan.

So, we have a settlement offer of our own for Reuters, whose writers and editors frequently visit and comment on our site: when you guys get with the program and decide to write a straight story on the Arab-Israeli conflict, we'll give up the criticism and resume our day jobs.

Until then, talleyho!

Reuters misrepresents Obama

In our post just below, we noted the way Reuters correspondents regularly fabricate so as to advance their personal, and perhaps as well, corporate political agenda.  Central to the media giant's efforts to assign ownership of Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank") and Jerusalem to the Arabs has been to deliberately and regularly mischaracterize Jewish settlements there as "illegal".  Consistent with international law as resolved by both the League of Nations and United Nations, Jewish settlements anywhere west of the Jordan River are in fact, fully legal.

Reuters correspondents clearly believe however, that by repeatedly drumming into the minds of their readers, in story after story, and in various incantations, an utterly false message, i.e., Jewish settlements are "illegal", they will win the day in the forum of public opinion.

Mohammed Assadi, Louis Charbonneau, Crispian Balmer, Douglas Hamilton and editor Peter Graff have another go on the fabrication carousel with this false citation:

Obama, who has said Israeli settlements in territories it captured in a 1967 war are illegal and unhelpful to the peace process, is opposed to a U.N. move that in Washington's view could shatter hopes of reviving the stalled talks.

So, has President Obama ever publicly asserted that the settlements are "illegal"?  No.  And of course, this is deliberately the case because Obama, advised by scores of international lawyers and State Department officials, knows very well that the settlements are, as noted above, entirely legal.  To assert otherwise, in a speech or other public forum, would be to contravene international law.

If only Reuters correspondents had as much respect for their own code.

Reuters still running interference for Iran

Over the seventeen months we have been commenting on Reuters Middle East coverage, the agency has published hundreds of articles on Iran and its nuclear program.  In all but a handful of these stories, Reuters correspondents refuse to come clean with respect to the overwhelming global consensus, led by the IAEA at the United Nations, that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons.  Rather, the agency hypnotically repeats one of its favorite propaganda mantras that merely the US and Israel, or alternatively, the amorphous "West" are making this claim:

Iran is at odds with major powers over its nuclear activities, which the United States and its allies suspect are aimed at producing a nuclear weapon. Tehran has denied the allegations and said it wants only to generate electricity.

Framed this way, the scope of Iran's nuclear program (as well as its serial violations of the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty) is always in murky waters, one of subjective debate, unsupported claim and denial, between Iran and her adversaries.

Reuters apparently hasn't a clue as to whether any independent evidence has emerged -- like this, this, or this -- to confirm American "suspicions".

Alternatively, why does Reuters, an agency that trumpets itself as the foremost source of "unbiased and reliable news", continue to deliberately conceal the facts about Iran's nuclear program?

Racism rampant@Reuters

As we've noted dozens of times, Reuters correspondents have an obvious and odious agenda which manifests relentlessly in their stories on the Middle East conflict.  That agenda is to use the bully pulpit as the largest news agency in the world to advance Palestinian Arab interests by delegitimizing Israel and Jewish claims to the city of Jerusalem and surrounding territory.

Their primary technique in furthering that agenda is propaganda, which Smith (1989) defines as any conscious attempt "to influence the beliefs of an individual or group, guided by a predetermined end and characterized by the systematic use of irrational and often unethical techniques of persuasion".

Central to Reuters' efforts in this respect is to persuade its readers to accept the notion that Jerusalem is, was, and rightfully always should be, an Arab city.  And the most direct way to accomplish this is to hypnotically suggest Arab ownership by employing an epithet, repeatedly, when referring to the city.  As in Arab East Jerusalem.

That term originated following the Israeli-Arab war in 1947-48 and the Arab Legion's ethnic cleansing of the entire Jewish community from the city of Jerusalem.  A community whose ancestors founded the city over three thousand years ago, built its walls, roads, and Temples.  A community that represented the majority religio-ethnic group in the city from at least the 1840s in the modern era.  And a community that was forcefully pushed out, homes gutted, synagogues destroyed, and cemeteries desecrated.  All perpetrated by the Arabs to whom Reuters now attempts to grant ownership of the city.

In repeatedly referring to "Arab East Jerusalem", Reuters correspondents are thus endorsing ethnic cleansing of the Jewish community between 1948 and 1967 (the latter year in which Israel liberated the city following the Six-Day War).  Further, they are engaging in a willful deception -- a racist, willful deception -- to lead readers to believe that the eastern part of Jerusalem is by rights or tradition, exclusively Arab when in fact, this was only the case for a period of 19 years of a history stretching over three millennium. 

Now imagine the public outcry if a Reuters correspondent referred today to Rosewood Florida as "Caucasiantown"or identified Tulsa Oklahoma as "White South Tulsa" decades after African-Americans returned to their homes in these cities following violent riots and expulsion in the 20th century.

How long would that correspondent retain his Reuters press credentials?

Brain damage affects both long-term and short-term memory

As we noted in our post below, Reuters correspondents suffer from selective amnesia when it comes to their collective inability to recall that Jews founded Jerusalem as their capital, resided in Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank") for over three-thousand years before the first Arab Muslim stepped foot onto the land, and were ethnically-cleansed from the area by Arab troops following the 1947-48 War.

Dementia is a terrible thing, and affects not only long-term memory but short-term memory as well.  In scores of recent stories, Reuters correspondents have been repeating the one notion that appears to have survived their loss of mental faculty:

The New York meeting comes as the United States works to revive talks that began in Washington on September 2 but were suspended by the Palestinians three weeks later when [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu refused to extend a 10-month limited building freeze in West Bank settlements.

Completely gone, is any recall of Netanyahu's offer to freeze settlements in exchange for Palestinian recognition, as the United Nations did 63 years ago, of the Jewish state of Israel.

That offer was made -- and rejected -- only 30 days ago but has already dissipated from the Reuters memory banks.

So few words, so many transgressions

In a story of just 83 words, Reuters manages to embed two propaganda devices and three violations of its Handbook of Journalism:

Abbas moots US recognise Palestine on '67 borders

RAMALLAH, West Bank Sat Oct 9, 2010 2:59am EDT

RAMALLAH, West Bank Oct 9 (Reuters) - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has told Arab leaders he may seek U.S. recognition for a Palestinian state taking in all of the West Bank should peace talks with Israel stay stalled, an aide said on Saturday.
The idea, raised during Arab League deliberations in Libya on Friday, would place new pressure on Israel to extend a freeze on construction of Jewish settlements in the occupied territory, without which Abbas has said peace negotiations cannot continue.

First, note the reference to Israel's "'67 borders" in the headline, a falsehood known as historical reconstruction.  In fact, Israel has no internationally-recognized border to the east because the Arabs rejected the UN Partition Plan creating a Jewish state and launched a declared war of annihilation against the country in 1947-48 ending in a stalemate and temporary armistice lines separating Israeli and Jordanian forces.  These armistice lines are what Reuters mendaciously characterizes here as the "'67 borders".

Second, Reuters refers to the disputed territory between Israel and Jordan as the "West Bank".  This Arab-designated term originated following the 1947-48 war when the Arab Legion conquered the territory and drove the 3,500 year-old Jewish community out of the area.  Israel's name for the area is "Judea and Samaria" and Reuters' failure to provide this alternative appellation reflects a violation of the Social Responsibility guidelines in the agency's Handbook.  Reuters' repetitive use of the term "West Bank" in the dateline, lede, and body of the article so as to drum the Arab-ethnocentric message into readers' minds is another propaganda technique.

Finally, Reuters reports that absent an extension on the freeze in construction of Jewish settlements, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has said negotiations "cannot" continue.  Actually, Abbas and Palestinian officials have been quoted numerous times as refusing to continue negotiations unless the moratorium on Jewish building is extended.  By paraphrasing Abbas euphemistically, Reuters is willfully distorting Abbas' explicit position in an effort to relieve him of personal responsibility for terminating peace talks with Israel.  This reflects two further violations of the agency's Handbook, the use of euphemisms and a failure to reflect reality.

Prove it.

That's our reply to Reuters latest iteration of this unproven assertion:

The [Jewish] settlements are deemed illegal under international law

appearing in over one-hundred stories on the agency's website.

As we've noted nearly as many times as Reuters has repeated the lie, Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank") are entirely legal as per League of Nations and United Nations resolutions, the pinnacle of international law.

An unsupported assertion is a propaganda technique and a violation of professional journalistic ethics.

The latest Reuters propaganda mantra

Repetition is a propaganda device designed to:

drum the message into the target audience's subconscious by repeating keywords or phrases over and over until resistance to the message weakens. The target audience eventually accepts the message often without even realizing it. Adolph Hitler emphasized the need for repetition in propaganda.

This technique forms one of the cornerstones of Reuters Middle East reporting.  As an example, a phrase like "occupied West Bank" -- which reflects a biased political view and violates the Reuters Trust Principles and Handbook of Journalism -- has appeared in over 1,600 Reuters stories over the last couple of years. 1,600.

The latest propagandistic phrasing to be adopted by Reuters and repeated in scores of stories on its website goes something like this:

The settlements are on territory captured by Israeli forces from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East war and are deemed by the World Court to be illegal, a finding disputed by Israel.

As we noted here, the reference to the World Court is irrelevant to the question of the legality of Jewish settlements as the court's rulings are merely advisory and non-binding.  One could just as well argue that settlements are illegal because the Organization of the Islamic Conference deems them so.  In fact, Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria are entirely legal as per international law enshrined in the UN-adopted and never-abrogated Mandate for Palestine:

The Administration of Palestine, while ensuring that the rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced, shall facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions and shall encourage, in co-operation with the Jewish agency referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes.

Reuters truncated characterization of the settlements as being "on territory captured by Israeli forces from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East war" reflects an attempt by the news agency to suggest that the land properly belonged to the Jordanian Arabs which of course, is not accurate.  Jordan invaded and conquered this portion of the Palestine Mandate during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and its occupation of the area was never recognized internationally.  Jordan then ethnically cleansed the territory -- including the eastern portion of Jerusalem -- of all Jews living there.

With these key omissions, Reuters is willfully distorting the historical record.  By repeating the distorted message in scores of stories, the agency is demonstrating its intent to compel its audience to accept, uncritically, a propagandistic mantra.

Jeffrey Heller: propagandist moonlighting as journalist

Reuters Editor-in-Charge in its Jerusalem Bureau, Jeffrey Heller, picks up the ball on the latest piece of Reuters propaganda:

More than 500 Israeli civilians died in 140 Palestinian suicide bomb attacks from 2000 to 2007. More than 4,500 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in the same period.

Heller is actually employing two propaganda techniques here: card stacking and repetition.  In an illustration of card stacking, whereas Heller cites the total number of Palestinians killed by any means during the period, he cites only the number of Israeli civilians killed and only those killed in suicide bomb attacks.  In fact, over 1,000 Israelis were murdered by Palestinians from 2000 to 2007.  We note the second propaganda technique, repetition, because this is at least the third time in recent weeks Reuters correspondents have repeated this distorted message in stories appearing on the Reuters website.

Along the way, Heller censors the word terrorist, substituting the word militant while paraphrasing an Israeli perspective:

The area, where Western-backed President Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority holds sway, is enjoying economic growth and Palestinian security forces have been praised by Israel for taking measures to curb militants.

And with another propaganda technique/logical fallacy, appeal to authority, Heller defers to a non-authoritative body in an effort to portray Jewish communities beyond the 1949 Armistice Lines as illegal:

Settlements on land that Israel occupied in 1967 have been deemed illegal by the World Court, a finding the[sic] Israel disputes.

In fact, the World Court's decisions are purely advisory and non-binding on all parties.

All of Heller's rhetorical devices cited above represent violations of the Reuters Trust Principles and Handbook of Journalism.

Reuters tests our brain power

Did you know that human beings use only 10 percent of their brains?  Of course you knew that because you've heard it repeated over a hundred times.  It's actually false.  A popular myth.  An argumentum ad nauseam -- something we've given up refuting because its been repetitively drilled into that 10 percent of our brain we use.

Did you know that the Turkish ship boarded by Israeli commandos was carrying aid for the people of Gaza?  Of course you knew that because you've read it in over one-hundred Reuters stories.  Like this one today:

Already strained by Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's repeated criticism of the Jewish state's policies toward Palestinians, relations dived after Israeli marines killed nine Turks aboard an aid ship trying to run a blockade of Gaza on May 31.

Except that, as documented, it's false.  There was no aid for the people of Gaza on-board the Mavi Marmara.  There were Jihadists. There were cold weapons.  (Is this what Reuters means by "aid"?)  But there was no humanitarian aid.  Let us repeat that: there was no aid for the people of Gaza on-board the Turkish ship.

Only 172 more repetitions and we're certain we'll have put a dent in the myth perpetuated by the liars at Reuters.

Reuters repeats lie that Gaza is facing humanitarian crisis

Repetition is a classic propaganda technique designed to lead the reader to an hypnotically-induced acceptance of the propagandist's message.  Repetition combined with mendacity has potentially catastrophic consequences as millions of people can be led to believe, and react to, malicious disinformation and calumnies.  Joseph Goebbels understood this -- as does Reuters.

In a story on US Vice-President Joe Biden commenting on the Gaza flotilla incident, Reuters correspondent Ross Colvin repeats the Big Lie:

The United Nations says the blockade has led to a humanitarian crisis among the territory's 1.5 million people.

No.  The United Nations has said just the opposite.  Viewed objectively as well, there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

UPDATE 2:15 PM: Reuters Bureau Chief Alastair Macdonald and Editor-in-charge Jeffrey Heller repeat the lie in another story here.

The robots at Reuters

Reuters correspondents robotically refer to the territory between Israel and Jordan as "the occupied West Bank".  In so doing, they transgress truth, history, and their own professional code.

Following Palestinian Arab rejection of the UN Partition Plan, the territory remains formally unallocated as per international law and is thus, literally, no man's land.  It is de jure "disputed" rather than "occupied".

Further, as we've noted a number of times, the term "West Bank" was coined by Transjordan following its invasion and conquest of the territory in the 1948 war with Israel.  This, in an effort to erase a Jewish connection to the land going back three millenia.  Reuters glibly adopts the Arab alias for the territory, ignoring Israel's own appellation, "Judea and Samaria".  This is a clear violation of the Reuters Handbook of Journalism which states:

We must be on alert for language that could imply support for one side of a conflict, sympathy for a point of view, or an ethnocentric vantage point. We should, for example, provide the dual names of disputed territories.

And to underscore Reuters pathological bias, note how correspondents Ori Lewis and Tom Perry hypocritically handle history:

After 1948, the Green Line separated the new state of Israel from the Jordanian-held West Bank and East Jerusalem. Both were captured and occupied by Israel in the Six Day War of 1967, along with the Gaza Strip.

Catch that?  Following the war in 1948, the land was "held" by Jordan.  Following the war in 1967, the land mystically commuted to "occupied" under Israel.

No ethnocentric vantage point there, we're sure.

A lesson in propaganda

Reporting on a large-scale, five-day air raid drill in Israel to prepare for the eventuality of Iranian-backed rocket attacks by Hamas and Hezbollah, Reuters correspondent Allyn Fisher-Ilan wants her readers to know:

Iran denies its uranium enrichment programme is a quest for nuclear arms and says it is purely for power. Israel is widely believed to have the Middle East's only nuclear arsenal.

Note what has occurred here.  Employing the common propaganda technique of repetition, Fisher-Ilan parrots Iran's long-standing and risible claim that it is enriching uranium (to levels which far exceed the 3-4 percent needed to generate electricity) "purely for power".  She then juxtaposes Iran's denial with the strong suggestion -- employing the bandwagon fallacy -- that Israel has nuclear weapons.  The focus of suspicion is thus neatly shifted from Iran to Israel.

Fisher-Ilan writes:

Iran's nuclear ambitions, which the West and Israel believe are aimed at building atomic weapons...

thus singling out Israel and the amorphous "West" as credulous while making no mention that the United Nations nuclear watchdog IAEA has drawn the same conclusion.

All in a day's work for the propagandists at Reuters.

They're ba-a-ack!

Well the holiday is over and correspondents from Reuters Middle East Bureau are back with more broken boilerplate.  In a story on a clash between the Israel Defense Forces and Palestinian Islamic Jihad on the Gaza border, Reuters reporter Nidal al-Mughrabi embeds language that has been similarly seeded within literally hundreds of Reuters stories over the last 15 months:

Hamas has largely held its fire since a costly three-week war with Israel in the opening days of 2009 in which some 1,400 Palestinians, mainly civilians, and 13 Israelis, mostly soldiers, were killed.

The casualty figures provided are actually disputed, drawn from a war fought over a year ago, and largely irrelevant to al-Mughrabi's story.  Yet Reuters cunningly employs the propaganda technique of repetition to sear the numbers and corresponding allusion to Israeli wantonness into the subconscious of its readers.