Second, Steyn twisted the facts to make it appear that the liberal media are so unpatriotic that they readily believe lies about American soldiers. His example was the Boston Globe, which, as you may recall, had just published a photo taken at a City Hall news conference in which pictures purportedly of American troops raping Iraqi women were visible in the background (see "Media Log," BostonPhoenix.com, May 12–14). Never mind that the accompanying story expressed deep skepticism about the authenticity of those pictures; Steyn lumped the Globe in with the London Mirror, whose editor was forced out after it was revealed that his paper had actually faked photos of British troops abusing Iraqi prisoners
Steyn was right. The Globe did print those pictures, without too much skepticism as I recall, and had egg all over their face about it. The local media review show, "Beat the Press" was all over them for it. By the way, those pictures were not, according to the letters of many servicemen, good enough to fool anyone who knew anything about military uniforms, thus revealing the press' abysmal ignorance of military affairs. |
