Clicked on a link to a CNN article and read the first paragraph and half and stopped. It was obviously bullshit. Here’s how I knew.

The fight between U.S.-led forces and militants in and near Baghdad and the sectarian civil war raging in the capital has overshadowed another grim wartime reality — the factional strife in Iraq’s southern Shiite heartland.

The use of the expression ’sectarian civil war’ can not be found by any pro war media sources I have read. This includes Michael Yon who claimed well before any left leaning news sources that Iraq was heading towards civil war back in 2005. He reports a reversal these days in large part due to the surge. Another good source for actual, if not sobering news on Iraq is the site Iraq Slogger.

The next paragraph states

Experts who study the region attribute the instability to turf battles

I stopped reading there. This is a front page article whose second paragraph begins with some ‘experts’ opinion. Supposedly news covers facts and when it has commentary it marks it clearly as such. Even Fox news understands this basic journalistic principle. This article has failed to do so. This is precisely why I devalue the use of experts so strongly. For any political, scientific, legal, or personal matter an expert can be found to substantiate your claims. Given that the first paragraph tells me the author of this article already has determined a fictional narrative for Iraq, I know that this hand picked ‘expert’ is going to substantiate the author’s fantastical Iraq. Nothing in the first paragraph and a half indicates that an attempt solid journalism has been done. It’s only a thinly veiled attempt at passing a writers opinion as ‘news’.

Oh MSM how you lean to the left. It’s just so sad.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 27th, 2007 at 11:51 am and is filed under News Coverage, Iraq. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.