Great article in the Investors Business Daily today about the bias in the MSM:
The attention given to any event that shows the U.S. in a bad light, and the inattention paid to news that makes U.S. mistakes pale by comparison, never ceases to amaze.
Case in point: word last Thursday that a Canadian photojournalist was beaten, tortured and raped before dying two years ago while in custody in Iran.
This got all of 2 1/2 inches inside both The New York Times and Los Angeles Times, and we doubt another word will be heard.
But then, this wasn’t a case of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib being forced by U.S. soldiers to wear dog collars or women’s underwear. We’ll probably never hear the end of that.
Nor was it a case of a woman journalist — like Giuliana Sgrena of the communist newspaper Il Manifesto — being fired on as her limousine ran an American checkpoint in Baghdad. That prompted an Italian outpouring eclipsed only by the death of the pope.
Still, the Canadian death in Iran involved both a prisoner and a female journalist, and you tell us which was most “horrific.”
The journalist was Zahra Kazemi, 54, a freelancer of Iranian origin who had the guts — or just the professionalism — to take photos outside a Tehran prison during student-led protest against the ruling theocracy. For this, she was arrested.
Just days later, Kazemi was taken — unconscious, with bruises all over her body — to a military hospital. Prison officials said she was suffering digestive problems and had vomited blood.
The hospital doctor who examined her, and who has since won asylum, told reporters last week in Canada that the blood Kazemi vomited had poured down her throat from a smashed nose.
That wasn’t all. The doctor, Shahram Azam, noticed injuries to her entire body that could only have been caused by torture and rape. They included a skull fracture, two broken fingers, missing fingernails and a crushed big toe. There were also deep scratches on the neck and evidence of flogging on the legs and back.
Azam said that as a male doctor in a military hospital, he was barred from examining a woman’s genitals. But he said the nurse who did so told him of “brutal damage.”
Iranian officials have said Kazemi died after she went on a hunger strike, fainted and struck her head as she fell. Other authorities at various times have acknowledged that she was killed by state security officials. But the official explanation remains unchanged.
Case — and, no doubt, news coverage — closed.
Now THIS journalist was assassinated, unlike Sgrena….not only that, she was REALLY tortured, unlike those poor widdle terrorists in Abu Ghraib who were forced to wear womens panties over their heads….gasp!
It’s unbelievable the kind of stink the MSM made over the Abu Ghraib story but have hardly made a sound over this one.
See author page
