Monday, March 28, 2016

The Political Biases hidden in an AP news story

Vincent J. Curtis

28 Mar 2016

An news article written by Lorne Cook and Raf Casert of the Associated Press was published under the headline, “Hundreds of ‘hooligans’ trample Brussels shrine for terror victims.” in today’s Hamilton Spectator.

A few observations about the piece: the writers put all the lies into quotes, as I will explain.

The word ‘hooligan’ was used to describe the bad people in question, a word I normally associate with the Soviet Union or Russia who use it to describe people who cause trouble for the regime.  The word was used in quotes and attributed to Brussels’s Police Commissioner Christian De Coninck.

The AP did not use the word “hooligans” to describe those people who shut down Donald Trump’s rally in Chicago, Ill, the other week, nor did they describe them as “left-wing” or “progressive supporters of Bernie Sanders” or even as “Democrat supporters.”  They were described as “protesters,” a more noble term than” hooligan.”  Or earlier, the rioters in Ferguson, Mo, were not described as ‘hooligans’ or the “Black Lives Matter” movement or the anti-Wall Street protesters.  Funny how the AP can be selective in its choice of descriptors for people it condemns and those it does not.  That selectiveness reveals a left-wing bias.  (I'm shocked!!)

A very precise number, 340, was employed to describe the size of the crowd, not “about 350” not “between 300 and 400”, but precisely 340.   The article did not explain how the police come to this precise number.

Again, in quotes, it was said that the bad people were “right-wing”, “doing the Nazi salute,” and attributing the declaration, “death to Arabs” as a “right-wing idea.”   The photograph accompanying the article shows the protesters doing a clenched fist, right arm salute, which was characteristic of the left-wing Republican anti-fascist forces in the Spanish Civil War.  This wasn’t a Nazi salute, this was the anti-fascist salute!   Moreover, the Nazis and the Muslims admired each other because of their mutual hatred of the Jews.  To claim that the Nazis and Muslims were at each others’ throats would indicate a fissure on the “right,” which makes Islam a right-wing movement, doesn’t it?  And ipso facto evil, doesn’t it?  Oops!  Keeping this left and right thing straight can be confusing.

Early on in the piece, the Police Commissioner was quoted as saying that the 340 were “football hooligans,” and by the end of the piece the hooligans became “right-wing.”  Now, by what process did the AP transform dedicated soccer fans into right-wing ideologues?  Actually, the process was by changing the person quoted, leaving enough distance between the two that the inattentive reader would not notice the slight-of-hand.

“Death to Arabs” is not a right-wing idea.  If anything, judging by results, it is an Arab idea.  The right-wing idea is that Muslims and Arabs should live in their house, and western Europe will live in it’s house.  Muslims live in dar-al-Islam, and the Europeans will be left alone in dar-al-harb. 

Unfortunately, left-wing Europe is trying to get Europe to commit cultural suicide by admitting millions of Muslims to western Europe and letting them live on the public dole until, by out-breeding the Europeans,  Europe will come to live under Sharia law, western civilization will come to an end, and the sins of Europe’s past will be expiated.  This is the tendency that the right-wing football hooligans were protesting.

Since cultural survival runs counter to the left-wing European desire to commit cultural suicide, the AP slanted the story such that the last sparks of European identity were viewed as an evil deserving to be stamped out.  That is the larger narrative being served by the AP story.

The devil is in the details, and in the details of the story the biases of the AP are manifest.

When you start asking, “how do they know this?” you being the realize how much of a news story carries made-up crap.
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