Torturing the News

Wednesday's Example of Media Bias   —   Posted on March 15, 2006

Tom Fox, a member of the anti-American Christian Peacekeeper Teams, has been murdered by terrorists in Iraq who held him hostage for more than three months, the New York Times reported on Saturday. On Sunday, the paper carried a follow-up report that Fox “had apparently been tortured by his captors before being shot multiple times in the head and dumped on a trash heap next to a railway line in western Baghdad.”

The story of Fox’s death ran on page A8; the story of his torture, on page A10. So what made the Times’ front page on Saturday? Yet another story about Abu Ghraib.  [NOTE:  Salon.com has since challenged the identity of the man claiming to be the Abu Ghraib prisoner.  The Times then reported (on page 10) that its Abu Ghraib story may have been fake.]

For the complete posting, go to the fourth item at OpinionJournal.com