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November 10, 2005
Western World: Understanding Ideological Prejudices
Several of my friends express the hope that as Muslims get more and more vicious in their attacks on the West, "people will wake up" and start fighting back. I always answer them: "it is not events themselves, but understanding the events that matter." If people think we deserve the hatred and violence visited on our societies, they will likely remain in the sidelines, as things get progressively worse.
We are beginning to see that in the debate over the French riots. The "intellectuals" find themselves in agreement: it had nothing to do with Islam, and everything to do with "poverty". Classicist Bruce Thornton explains how the ideological blinders of the Press--and the intelligentsia at large--confuse and paralize our societies: Troubling "Facts" of the Paris Riots
The media's techniques for smuggling opinion into what are supposed to be news stories are so pervasive that often we don't even notice when they are at work. Here's an example from the Friday, November 4 New York Times, in a story about the Muslim riots in Paris. Most of the article simply describes the events and the political fallout for various French politicians.It's in the last paragraph that the reporting of news gives way to disguised opinion: "The continuing unrest appears to be fueled less by perceived police brutality than by the frustration of young men who have no work and see little hope for the future." In Saturday's coverage, this opinion migrates to the front of the story, with references to "underlying frustrations" and "decades of high unemployment and marginalization." To statements such as these any perceptive reader should respond, "Says who?"
Notice the use of the impersonal weasel-word "appears." Appears to whom?[...]
I beg of you, do read it all.
Posted by Ruy Diaz at November 10, 2005 10:39 AM
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