Journalists Don’t Spin Stories, Do They?
This story, posted on Yahoo! News currently has this title “U.S. Troops Shoot Two Iraqis After Being Rocketed”, which is fine, but when I saw it for the first time this morning at around 0545, it had a slightly different title: “U.S. Troops in Shooting Spree After Being Attacked” (emphasis mine). Quite a bit different, isn’t it? The original story used the “shooting spree” line in the body of the story as well, whereas the new, improved version merely says “Residents accused the soldiers of firing indiscriminately.” It’s perfectly fine to report claims by residents of US troops “firing indiscriminately”, but to call it a “shooting spree” is editorializing at best, and spinning at worst. I’m guessing from the reporter’s name, Khaled Yaqoub Oweis, that he’s an Arab, but I’m not sure. Not that it would affect his reporting, right? After all, as a journalist he can detach himself from any emotional or cultural bias and just report the facts can’t he? Of course he can… At least that’s what the Dan Rather’s of the world would have us believe.
My biggest problem with this is that Reuters would send out a story with a title like that. The use of the phrase “shooting spree” was calculated to give the story an anti-American slant by the reporter, or perhaps the editors. The editors should have stopped it before it ever hit the wires. To someone’s credit, they’ve since changed it, but not soon enough.
