CNN'S IDIOCY OF THE DAY

CNN's Idiocy of the Day (BackSpin)

This from CNN:

It was the fifth consecutive day in which Israeli forces launched air and ground operations against militants in northern Gaza, aimed at stopping what Israel says is a steady barrage of rocket fire into its towns.

If it's possible there's no steady barrage, how do we explain all the recent headlines from Sderot and Ashkelon?

Insurance fraud?

ANSWER: THEY'RE BOTH WRONG.

Credible Sources (BackSpin)

Which of the conflicting Palestinian sources is more credible? AFP's?

Seventeen-year-old Ziad Abu Raqba died after being shot in the chest during an incursion east of the Al-Bureij refugee camp in the centre of the territory, medics said, adding that the teenager was not a member of a militant group.

Or CNN's?

A 17-year-old Palestinian who belonged to Hamas died in an Israeli operation in central Gaza Sunday, Hamas security and Palestinian medical sources said.

ISRAEL CABLE TO DROP CNN FOR AL-JAZEERA

Israeli Cable To Drop CNN For Al-Jazeera (BackSpin)
Strange as it sounds, Israel's largest cable TV provider plans to drop CNN for Al-Jazeera English TV for financial considerations. But it's not clear cut that Israeli viewers will tune in. The Jerusalem Post writes:

"It's incomprehensible," Liebes said. "Whatever functions CNN performed, none of them will be performed by Al-Jazeera. It's a whole different kind of person who will watch."

WHICH ONE IS WORSE AND IS THERE A DIFFERENCE?

LIED TO BY CNN

LIED TO BY CNN? (Honest Reporting)
Jewish community professional Jay Tcath describes in the Jerusalem Post what happened when CNN asked him to assist in and appear on Christiane Amanpour's " God's Warriors":

She [CNN's producer] learned of our JCRC through her mother, a non-Jewish resident of a Chicago suburb who admired our leading role in advocating an end to the Darfur genocide. It was precisely this type of activity, the noble pursuit of justice by grassroots people motivated by religious impulses and acting through religious institutions that the young producer claimed the network and its star correspondent, Christiane Amanpour, wanted to explore. After all, she told us, it is such a decent, important activity and so much more real, common and under-reported than the conventional stereotypes promoted by the mass media. She insisted that CNN's aim was not to focus - as others do ad nauseam - on the radical fringes among the Jews, Christians and Muslims....

Tcath said the CNN crew arrived in February to film his organization painting Israeli bomb shelters and holding talks with representatives on Capitol Hill on subjects ranging from Israel and Darfur to hate crime legislation and social services.

So why then did virtually all of the footage end up on the cutting room floor? I have my suspicions:

1. The producer was sincere and she and perhaps others at CNN wanted to create a program along the lines she originally described, but lost an internal battle over editorial content;

2. She and perhaps others at CNN sought to lull us into doing or saying something on tape that would have fit their "Jewish Warrior" story line, or;

3. We were simply lied to.

EVISCERATING CNN'S CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR

CNN's "God's Warriors": Hard on Jews, Soft on Islam (BackSpin)
Christiane Amanpour's six-hour documentary special creates controversy. View for yourself the bias, inaccuracies and false moral equivalence demonstrated by CNN's Chief International Correspondent and read Maurice Ostroff's thorough critique of the series at HonestReporting's latest communique: CNN's "God's Warriors": Hard on Jews, Soft on Islam

A Shot At God's Warriors (BackSpin)
Dan Abrams fires a shot across Christiane Amanpour's bow, slamming her recent report on God's Warriors. Click [here] to see his sharp criticism. Must see. Newsbusters has a transcript of Abrams.

Amanpour's Apologia ( INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY)
Global Jihad: CNN's chief apologist for Islam, Christiane Amanpour, has gone too far this time. Not content to just whitewash jihad, she says Jews and Christians are terrorists, too. READ MORE

Christiane Amanpour's God's Warriors, "the Jews," and "the Occupied Territories": Is this for Real? by Robert Eisenman (Huffington Post)

CNN's Scheduling Bias (CAMERA)
In CNN's 3-part series, "God's Warriors," Christiane Amanpour repeated the phrase "God's Jewish warriors" 20 times, but said "Muslim warriors" only four times. Was CNN trying to place extra emphasis on the Jewish warriors and less on the Muslim warriors? Maybe.

When it comes to CNN's programming schedule, though, there is no doubt that the network was emphasizing the sins of the Jews. As of this week, CNN has broadcast its "Jewish Warriors" program a total of five times. The segment on the other two religions, on the other hand, have been aired only three times. Last Saturday night, CNN rebroadcast the segment about Jews twice, while rebroadcasting the other two segments only once. And again on Sunday night, the Jewish Warriors program got double duty.

On top of this, though CNN felt it was worthwhile to change the order of the Christian and Muslim segment from Saturday to Sunday — presumably so that the segment that played late-night on Saturday would run a bit earlier the following evening — the Jewish segment remained in the prime, earlier spot.

Here is the CNN schedule for the past weekend:

Saturday Eastern Time Pacific Time
9pm 6pm God's Warriors - Jewish
11pm 8pm God's Warriors - Muslim
1am 10pm God's Warriors - Christian
3am 12am God's Warriors - Jewish

Sunday Eastern Time Pacific Time
9pm 6pm God's Warriors - Jewish
11pm 8pm God's Warriors - Christian
1am 10pm God's Warriors - Muslim
3am 12am God's Warriors - Jewish

Why did CNN run the Jewish segment twice? Why did it leave that segment in a prime time slot despite switching the order of the other two segments? Ask CNN.

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS, HAMAS STYLE

That Uneasy Feeling (BackSpin)
Cal Perry of CNN shares his thoughts on interviewing Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal:

Sitting in a room with the top Hamas leader -- a man Israel would prefer dead -- is not an easy feeling, knowing that at any second a missile could shatter the building, killing everyone inside, myself included.

Knowing the respect Hamas has for journalism in general and Alan Johnston in particular, we can understand why Perry would politely express a worry about Israel hitting a safehouse in Damascus. We can only wonder if he really meant it.

SEE ALSO: Press Freedom: Hamas Tightens the Screws (BackSpin)
As if being a journalist in Gaza was bad enough, AFP reports another turn of the screw on free reporting:

Hamas said on Monday it planned to enforce a 12-year-old Palestinian press law designed to silence dissident journalists, amid a crackdown that has raised fierce protests from the local media. . . .

The 1995 law, which was brought in under the late Yasser Arafat but never enforced, bans the publication of information likely to "endanger national unity, incite crimes or hatred, division and religious dissent."

It also prohibits publication of "secret information" about the police, security forces, their weapons, movements and training camps.

Those convicted risk six months in prison and the three-month suspension of the offending publication or media organisation. . . .

The Hamas statement also said the committee had the right to conduct raids against media outfits and bureaux and "to summon their members over issues relating to their work."

This will have a very chilling effect. For better or worse, the MSM relies heavily on Palestinian stringers in Gaza, whose lives and families will be at risk.

Related reading: Hamas Gunmen Become Media Watchdogs

CNN: RELIGIOUS JEWS SAME AS SUICIDE BOMBERS

God's Jewish Warriors - CNN's Abomination
CNN's "God's Warriors," hosted by Christiane Amanpour, is a three-part series intended to examine the growing role of religious fundamentalism in today's world. Unfortunately, the first program in the series, "God's Jewish Warriors," is one of the most grossly distorted programs to appear on mainstream American television in many years. It is false in its basic premise, established in the opening scene in which Jewish (and Christian) religious fervency is equated with that of Muslims heard endorsing "martyrdom," or suicide-killing. There is, of course, no counterpart among Jews and Christians to the violent jihadist Muslim campaigns underway across the globe, either in numbers of perpetrators engaged or in the magnitude of death and destruction wrought. While in reality Jewish "terrorism" is virtually non-existent, the program magnifies at length the few instances of violence or attempted violence by religiously-motivated Jewish individuals - including having to go all the way back to 1980.

Disproportionate reliance on partisan voices, some extreme figures, skews the message dramatically. Jimmy Carter and John Mearsheimer, chief proponents of the discredited canards about Jews subverting American national interests to those of Israel, are repeatedly and respectfully interviewed. (CAMERA)

SEE ALSO: CNN Moral Equivalence Marathon, Part 1 ; CNN Moral Equivalence Marathon, Part 2 (LGF)

WHY DOES THE NYT CALL TERRORISTS, "MILITANTS"?

'Militant' media (JPost)
A New York Times July 6 report by Isabel Kershner had me mixed up. The headline read "Israeli Offensive in Central Gaza Kills 11 Militants" and the lead sentence began: "At least 11 Palestinian militants were killed in airstrikes and armed clashes during an Israeli Army incursion." It continued with these details: "Hamas officials said that seven of the dead were members of its military wing, known as the Qassam Brigades…The Islamic Jihad faction said one of its men was among the dead."

And to "balance" the information thus far provided, we next read that "Israeli military officials described the raid as a routine operation to root out 'terrorist infrastructures.'"

Why am I bewildered?

In the first instance, "militant" is used in the headline which is the main attention-grabbing element. It is also used in the lead sentence, the most important one, as any journalism student can tell you. But then the story acknowledges that 7 of the "militants" were members of Hamas's "military wing" and another was an Islamic Jihadist - individuals who generally specialize in anti-civilian warfare such as launching rockets into cities and blowing up buses.

However, when it comes to Israel's version, the term "terrorist" is in quotation marks, which means in the media lingo - don't believe them, that's only what they claim....

No matter how much we complain, the BBC, CNN, NYT and Reuters are stuck on "militants." They've taken a word that's synonymous with "combative" and employ it to describe those who specialize in killing unarmed civilians.

The right word is "terrorist."

In this way, the media is taking sides and corrupting not only language, but our minds. They are being zealously "militant" in perverting political and historical truth while inverting reality.

CNN WEATHER PAGE STILL INCLUDES NON-EXISTENT ARAB VILLAGES

CNN: Weather Still Includes Nonexistent Arab Villages in Israel (LGF)

Congratulations to all lizards who expressed their outrage to CNN about their anti-Israel weather page; it now includes the dreaded word "Israel" instead of "Jerusalem, null."

However, if you use their "Weather Selector" to look up the weather in Israel, you'll still find the names of several Arab villages that have not existed since 1948: Select your weather!

Israellycool pointed it out:

If you select Israel, a list of cities is displayed, which includes:

* Abu Shusha, an Arab village that has not existed since 1948
* Akbara, an Arab village near Safed that has not existed since 1948
* Al Atrun, which is the Arab name for the area of Latrun
* Dayr Ayyub, an Arab village that has not existed since 1948, and where the eastern segment of Canada Park is today

This cannot possibly be an accident. Someone at CNN added those Arab names to that page on purpose.

EVEN CNN'S WEATHER PAGE IS BIASED AGAINST ISRAEL

CNN: Even the Weather is Biased Against Israel (LGF)

Search the CNN Weather page for "Jerusalem," and here are the results:

Clicking "Jerusalem, null" brings you to the page for Israel, of course.

Could be an innocent mistake, you say? But that's not all—not by a long shot. Their "Weather Location Selector" lists Gaza and the West Bank as countries separate from Israel—and their list of Israeli cities includes several Arab villages which have not existed since 1948.

And in a related outrage, another reader emailed about Samsung's list of support centers in the Middle East—which includes the imaginary country of "Palestine," but not Israel.

HAMAS MICKEY MOUSE UPDATE

Death Cult Mickey Still on the Air (LGF)

Imagine my surprise. When the terrorists of Fatah announced yesterday that the degenerate, evil Mickey Mouse clone had been dropped by Hamas TV, they were lying: Hamas TV refuses to axe contested kids cartoon.

RAMALLAH, West Bank — A Hamas-run television channel has defied a Palestinian government request to axe a controversial children's cartoon in which a Mickey Mouse look-alike urges resistance against Israel.

A senior official working for Al Aqsa (Jerusalem) television in the Gaza Strip said that the program - "Tomorrow's Pioneers" - would air as normal this Friday in defiance of information minister Mustafa Barghouti.

"The program will continue and it will be broadcast tomorrow at 4.00 pm [1300 GMT]. Mustafa Barghouti misunderstood the issue," said the official on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press.

Earlier, the information ministry in the West Bank city of Ramallah said: "A politically-oriented children's television program was withdrawn by the Al Aqsa TV station today following a request by the ministry of information."

(Hat tip: LGF readers.)

UPDATE at 5/10/07 9:21:40 am:

The international media are absolutely disgusting and reprehensible with this story; they're doing their level best to whitewash and minimize the impact, and it's shameful beyond belief.

Palestinian children stand in front of a mural depicting Mickey Mouse as they hold Islamic and Palestinian flags in the West Bank village of Hawara, south of Nablus, in 2006. A Hamas-run television station defied Israel and the Palestinian government on Thursday by refusing to axe a controversial children's puppet show in which a Mickey Mouse lookalike calls for resistance. (AFP/File/Menahem Kahana)

The media have now completely covered up the fact that "Farfur Mouse" doesn't simply "urge resistance against Israel"—the mouse also talks about an Islamic takeover of the world. All mention of this part of the abomination is now gone from the media's reports.

Here's the video clip; see for yourself what they're hiding from you.

SEE ALSO: VIDEO - CNN's Glenn Beck explains why his producer pulled the Hamas Mickey Mouse segment based on what turned out to be incorrect claims from unnamed CNN Arabic translators that one word was incorrect. (BackSpin)

SEE ALSO: CNN's Glenn Beck Attacks CNN's Pro-Arab Bias (NeoConExpress)

This [VIDEO] is why I like Glenn Beck. He receives a check from CNN but refuses to suck up or bow to their stunning bias and down right stupidity. CNN pulled the Palestinian Mickey Mouse tape because they "discovered massive translation problems" and urged Beck not to use it on his show. WOW! So of course Beck held back to do more investigation. This is how the Islamist crowd sow doubt, by questioning the "translation" of material that puts them in a shameful light in the West, and their Western fellow travelers eagerly play along (as we see from comments on this site from time to time as well). Unfortunately for CNN, it turns out that there is no translation problem, let alone a "massive" translation problem. CNN's Arab translator disputed a single word, which hardly negates all of the rest of the tape, and according to MIMRI, the CNN Arab translator is dead wrong on the translation of the single word in question. I would tend to trust MIMRI's translation who have a long track record and grasp the Arabic language more than many Arabs do; And about a thousand times before I would trust the translation of a faceless CNN Arabist accountable to no one but CNN's own well known bias on all things related to the Middle East. Beck will eventually be fired by that cesspool, CNN, but until that happen we get to enjoy the great talent that is Glenn Beck.

A CNN HOST WHO LOVES ISRAEL

A CNN Host Who Loves Israel - Gary Rosenblatt
Pro-Israel critics of the media, and particularly of CNN, should check out "The Glenn Beck Program" sometime to give their high blood pressure a respite. The baby-faced former Top 40 radio disc jockey says that if America doesn't support and protect Israel, "we will lose our only strategic ally in the Mideast and we will lose our souls." "Prior to 9/11 my view of the Mideast was basically, 'will this fighting never stop, and just solve it yourselves'," he explained during a recent interview. The World Trade Center tragedy forced him to think about why "so much hatred was generated toward the U.S., and I started to do my homework." He concluded that Israel is "our only real hope for sanity" in the Mideast, and "my gut tells me that Israel is one of the world's great hopes."

Beck visited Israel several years ago and was at a bomb shelter where gas masks and injection kits were being distributed in case of attack. He said that when he noticed that the signs were in Hebrew, English and Arabic, he wondered why, if Israelis really hated the Arabs, they would "hand out medicine to save Arab lives." "That experience really opened my eyes and showed me that Israel is the closest to America" in shared values, he said.

Beck thinks the media spin on the Mideast situation is "horribly out of whack" and biased against Israel. The only solution, which he says applies to the U.S. as well as Israel, is to "to do the right thing, be good and just continue to beat your head against the wall until the truth prevails." (New York Jewish Week)