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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (107944)	7/25/2003 7:55:58 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

As if we needed any more proof of Reuter's anti-americanism. BEST OF THE WEB TODAY BY JAMES TARANTO A Mugging in Reuterville On Tuesday we noted that Reuters had published an anti-American screed about the Jessica Lynch story: Jessica Lynch, the wounded Army private whose ordeal in Iraq was hyped into a media fiction of U.S. heroism, was set for an emotional homecoming on Tuesday in a rural West Virginia community bristling with flags, yellow ribbons and TV news trucks. But when the 20-year-old supply clerk arrives by Blackhawk helicopter to the embrace of family and friends, media critics say the TV cameras will not show the return of an injured soldier so much as a reality-TV drama co-produced by U.S. government propaganda and credulous reporters. It turns out even the byline was a lie. Reuters attributed the story to Deanna Wrenn, who we later learned is a reporter for the Daily Mail, an afternoon paper in Charleston, W.Va. Out of curiosity, we went to the Daily Mail's Web site and read Wrenn's account of Pfc. Lynch's homecoming. It reads nothing at all like the Reuters piece: Jessica Lynch looked and sounded great, residents and visitors said after she rode through town on a Mustang convertible. But many wanted to get a longer glimpse of the 20-year-old Army private they consider a hero. "She looked absolutely beautiful," said Angie Kinder, who came from Huntington with her two girls, Grace, 4, and Caroline, 1. "I expected her to look worse." The piece continues in this vein, without a hint of Reuterian anti-Americanism. In a column in today's Daily Mail, which the paper generously permitted us to reprint, Deanna Wrenn explains what happened. She submitted a story for Reuters that was quite different from the one the "news" agency actually printed. The lead sentence: "In this small county seat with just 995 residents, the girl everyone calls Jessi is a true heroine--even if reports vary about Pfc. Jessica Lynch and her ordeal in Iraq." Some unknown writer or editor simply created an entirely new story, reflecting Reuters' anti-American views, and stuck Wrenn's name on it. According to Wrenn, the only similarly between the Reuters dispatch and what she filed was a single quote, which disappeared entirely in later versions of the story--though those still carried Wrenn's byline. "Apparently, when Reuters asked me last week if they could use my byline, they weren't talking about the story I wrote for them last week. They were talking about a story I never wrote," writes Wrenn. "By the way, I asked Reuters to remove my byline. They didn't." Now, wire-service stories often are collaborations between many reporters and writers; a single byline doesn't necessarily mean the putative author is responsible for every word of the story. If Reuters had stuck to simply reporting the news, this would not be a scandal. The problem is that, especially since Sept. 11, Reuters has been practicing opinion journalism, imbuing much of its reporting with a strong anti-American slant. Well, it's a free country. If Reuters wants to publish anti-American propaganda, that's its right. But doing so under the guise of news is dishonest, and attributing it to a reporter who does not share Reuters' views is outrageous. At the very least, Reuters owes Deanna Wrenn an apology. opinionjournal.com