Tim wrote: > I'm scanning all four COWed networks--CNN, Fox, MSNBC, > CNBC--for images > from the downtown Baghdad market and housing area strike. > Supposedly Al > Jazeera is showing the images of dismembered children, > frantic searches > under rubble, body parts blown against walls. Estimates are > of 50 dead, > though this may change.
I am currently in Europe and while I had very little time to watch TV, I indulged myself last night for a few hours. The UK stations are as worthless at the US stations: all fluffy propaganda all the time. When a news station uses the phrase "the Iraqi leadership alleges" (that a US helicopter has been shot down) while the screen shows close-ups of the downed helicopter, you know that you might as well listen to the official propaganda station. One satellite channel that I found, EuroNews, is doing significantly better. The clips of a suicide bombing that I saw included close-ups of blood and tissue splatter. A human leg, severed just above the knee, was clearly visible on the sidewalk. A second clump of meat, perhaps part of a shoulder or perhaps a butt cheek, was some 10 feet away from the leg. I don't know if those chunks came off the martyr or from one or several of the targets. Some folks in the local activist scene here are running private-access streams of Al Jazeera and even Iraqi TV - if I had the time I would set up a mirror - and while I have not seen any of this programming myself, I am told by those who have been watching the streams near-continuously that the Arabian streams are even more graphic, frequently contradicting the Coalitions' claims of insignificant civilian casualties. I suspect US and UK network reporters, who unlike Al Jazeera appear nowhere near the action, may well discount any such reports as being caused by the Iraqis bombing their own market places for propaganda reasons. But even just watching mainstream non-English language news in Europe it becomes pretty obvious from which corner the propaganda is emanating. --Lucky
