al-Yahoo Update

[Update:   Another misleading headline from AP, here.  I suppose if you’re going to lament the terrible quality of our intelligence, you have to be even more depressed about the quality of the information we often get from our news media.  It strikes me as hypocritical for those responsible for the latter fiasco to be caustic in their criticism of the former fiasco.  At least the  CIA  can say that it’s not easy to unveil the deceptions of  secretive tyrannies.  The AP’s editors  can’t even read their own reports correctly.]

Here is what Yahoo’s home page wanted me to know today:  “Group says Al-Qaida No. 2 mocks Bush”

Here is my  completely sincere question:   can someone please tell me  something about “Nadia Abou El-Magd?” Would the ascendancy of al-Qaeda and more attacks on the United States affect her the same way  it might affect her American audience?  Here are two lists  of stories she has written.  Her work has focused heavily on Saddam Hussein’s health and terrorist news releases, which of course may mean nothing at all absent the necessary context of where she grew up, who she’s worked for,  her political and sectarian  affiliations, or  what views she might have stated in the Arabic language press.  The idea of “neutrality” between terror and the defense against it is a perversion of objectivity.

I say again:  we need a database of the journalists who report our news, so that we don’t have to operate in a factual vacuum.  As I argued and illustrated  here, it’s not only fairer for us, it’s also  fairer for the journalists themselves, since the better ones are now being pulled down by the adverse reputation sown by the hacks and infiltrators  among them. 

All that said, al-Magd isn’t responsible for the fact that Yahoo hired Axis Sally  to write its  headlines.