Monday 9 May 2011

When balance is imbalance

The BBC Worldservice has been reporting in cycle over the last 24 hours, news that "clashes between Muslims and Christians" have "broken out" in Egypt and that "scores of people have been killed".
Nicely balanced, right? Both sides involved, both sides culpable.  Even, balanced reporting.
Well, not really.
The reality, and hence the more correct reporting, is readily available to even cursory research. This would the more accurate reporting:
"Muslims attack Coptic Christians, and kill many of them".
There are other examples: in southern Philippines, it's "restive" instead of "Muslims attack local Catholic churches", in Thailand it's "the troubled South", instead of "Muslims attack buddhist temples".

I guess this is partly fear of the Religion of Peace and partly a misguided effort to attain "impartiality".  Whatever, it's inaccurate.
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Postscript: the usually Islamophilic, if not Christophobic New York Times, amazingly and unusually carried an op-ed on 12 May by John Eibner, which gives evidence for the fact that it's a Muslim war on non-Muslims, in the Arab middle east.  A copy is at the NYT-affiliated Boston Globe, "Christophobia in the Muslim World".  An excerpt:
Former Lebanese Prime Minister Amine Gemayel warned earlier this year that Islamic extremists are waging a war of “genocide,’’ while French President Nicolas Sarkozy now refers to the region’s Christians as the victims of “a perverse program of … religious cleansing.’’
Read it all.