Media Bias, We report - you decide

Shamalama, I wish your son, and you, the very best of luck and the blessings of the Creator.

With all due and proper respect, this problem is not limited to the Isamic world. There are many Christians who value the Holy Bible over human lives and there are definately ignorant and violent subcultures within the Christian world who lack tolerance of other's beliefs. Newsweek doesn't seem to be in any rush to publish articles that might inflame those groups, though. Maybe they are too close to home, eh?

Human nature is what it is and ANY fanatic, regardless of his or her "cause", is a dangerous human being.

Swanny

From across the pond, Melanie Phillips writes that Robin Aitken, who spent his entire career as a BBC journalist, has written a book, "Taking Sides: Bias at the BBC", accusing the BBC of institutionalised leftism.

Oh the horror! Say it ain't so!

In Aitken?s words, there is a centre-left consensus at the BBC that colours its entire output and undermines its impartiality. Dislike of US Republicans, he says, is close to being an article of faith. The flagship Today programme failed to present a balanced view of Iraq; it was hostile to the very notion of a war simply because it couldn?t bear the fact that President Bush was both a Republican and an evangelical Christian.

...

With a few honourable exceptions, the BBC views every issue through the prism of left-wing, secular, anti-western thinking. It is the Guardian of the air. It has a knee-jerk antipathy to America, the free market, big business, religion, British institutions, the Conservative party and Israel; it supports the human rights culture, the Palestinians, Irish republicanism, European integration, multiculturalism and a liberal attitude towards drugs and a host of social issues.

...

Who can be surprised at Britain?s visceral hatred of Israel when, having all but ignored such atrocities as the two decades of genocide in southern Sudan or the systematic Muslim persecution of Christians worldwide, the BBC obsessively transmits a twisted view of the Arab war against the Jewish state which presents genocidal Hamas terrorists as heroic freedom fighters and Israeli attempts at self-defence as unwarranted aggression?

...

The terrifying thing is the BBC?s inability to acknowledge that there is a problem. Senior BBC executives appear anxious to produce impartial journalism. But presented with example after example of bias, they are baffled. They can?t see the prejudice ? because they themselves share it.

Even more alarmingly, they think their position represents the centre ground. They therefore think that those who oppose it are extreme. So their idea of balance is utterly unbalanced, and they subscribe to a thought system that is closed.

I have to stop here and rub my eyes. Is Robin Aitken, and Melanie, speaking about the BBC or the mainstream media in the US - it's hard to differentiate.

All hail the Blogosphere - the truth is out there.