every media source advertises themselves as objective, Noah. Otherwise, who would believe them?

If you have been paying any attention at all, you would have noticed that it has already started. And it's not the West carrying it out against Islam, but rather the other way around. Thank Allah that they just aren't very good at it. Yet.

Peace in our time.

Yep. That's why Iran wants nuclear technology. For "peaceful" applications.

Coincidentally, they consider wiping the U.S., Europe, and Israel off the face of the Earth a major step in the direction of "peace".

And they will distribute their leftover radioactive waste products to be used in suicide bomb kits.

Check this out..........

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4944360.stm

Looks like the attackers were Polish. Maybe the reason the media didn't make a big deal out of the guys being muslim....was because they weren't.

Anybody feel a little silly?

LIBERAL MEDIA CONGLOMERATE
MEDIA CONSPIRACY
MEDIA OMISSIONS TO SATSFY THEIR AGENDA



OK, I'm guessing it's easy to jump to conclusions. We do it here all the time. :D

And who would that 'anybody' be? The initial witnesses or Belgian police who released the original possible descriptions of the suspects? Should the media from now on suppress all information regarding a suspect's appearance, ethnic background, etc. that would aid in their apprehension? Are all police descriptions of suspects to be assumed to be in error, and therefore, those descriptions will only be released to the public until after an arrest?

I think this shows how sensitive an issue this is in Belgium, and anything could set things off like a match in a tinderbox. The police need to be extremely careful with what information they release to the media, but I don't believe it is the media's role to censor that information to the public.

Indeed. You're jumping to the conclusion that non-Belgian media suppressed information because they knew in advance it was not true. This despite the initial descriptions given out by police.

"Spokesman Jos Colpin apologised and said the suspects were publicly identified by the prosecution as North Africans based on the first witness statements.

"Nearly every statement talked about North Africans or culprits of North African origin," Coplin said."

The initial claim I made that the media withholds information for the 'public good' still holds.

Hardly. The issue is a continent in deep trouble not simply from rising crime by a raging and defiantly separatist Muslim immigrant mass, but with a cowed and politically correct intelligentsia relentlessly apologetic to its outrages.

I would feel something more than silly for not only missing the importance of the stories coming out of Europe in the last 10 years, but missing the stories themselves.

Shame is more like it. The “see no evil” European (and American) media are marinated in shame.

As Bawer writes upon arriving in Europe: “I knew little about European Muslims. And I wasn’t alone. In 1998, Europeans were clueless. The media hadn’t covered the topic, the parliaments hadn’t debated it, the professors hadn’t taught about it. Only since then has awareness begun to spread – thanks less to the media, parliaments and professors than a relative handful of intrepid souls bent on getting the word out.”

Two of those souls of course were Mr. Van Gogh and Ms. Fallaci. Van Gogh was killed and Ms. Fallaci, at age 75 and with terminal cancer, was put on trial in the center of an "enlightened" European city for 18 counts of “defaming Islam.”

There are others. But, in the main, the European media continues its denial.

And dd74 is correct. It would be worse than foolish to believe this won't land here. It has already, in fact. At Belmont University in Tennessee, a teacher resigned under pressure for posting the Danish “Islamic” cartoons. At the University of Tennessee in Memphis, a Jewish guest lecturer was mobbed by Muslim students who had previously demanded she be forbidden from the campus. The college is reconsidering its policies for guest speakers. These are only a few examples. Of course, in an unheard of display of reverence discussed here, Comedy Central censored its own recent broadcast.

Fallaci warned about all this in the 1970s -- that the true Islamic goal wasn't really terrorism or battlefield victories (these were only methods of inciting fear, and with added motivational uses) but rather it was the slow mutation of a free society's assumptions about freedom. That is, a free people, out of fear of one thing, would make concessions with respect to another. And therein would lie their slow ruin.

You said it. As a boy, I had a crush on her, and dreamed of hitting the anti-fascist trails with her. It was all in those direct, dancing and incorruptible eyes. What a woman.

Naah, I'm not jumping to that conclusion. I'm just stating that the media are not as evil some portray them here. And the conspiracy claims are worthy of some quality time under the tin foil hat.

You're the one calling it a conspiracy - not me. I don't think it's a conspiracy, I think it's a deeply ingrained bias that seems to affect multiple news organizations. Almost every day it happens, too often to be unintentional errors.

One of the media's favorites are polls. They can't even get these right, and spin them in a way to look negative for Bush.
MSNBC said today that
"The New York Daily News says the same CNN poll showing Bush's approval at 32% also notes that 69% "said gas prices were causing them severe financial hardship."

Look at the actual poll and let me know where the 69% came from.

the 69% came from the tabloid, the New York Daily News, which misstated the CNN poll results. NYDN's misstatement was repeated by MSNBC's weblog, with credit to the source (NYDN). BTW, 69% is the total of moderately and severely impacted, which is what NYDN should have said, but didn't.

I think you jumped the gun on the AP story, and you're seeing phantoms here. I hope you'll be OK one of these days. :)