Reuters is obviously slanted--but can forgive them for photo mess which was not too big a deal--but purposely misleading people (just one example below) to fit there agenda rates them a rag publication in my book.
Reuters Changes Reporter?s Story to Match
Liberal Spin
Reuters apparently decided a contributor?s story wasn?t hostile enough to the U.S. military and condemnatory of how the Jessica Lynch rescue was turned into a Pentagon ?propaganda? offensive, so someone at Reuters just added the opinionated language -- all to the consternation of the reporter who got blamed for it because her byline was on the story.
A July 22 Reuters story, datelined Palestine, West Virginia, and which carried the byline of Deanna Wrenn, began: "Jessica Lynch, the wounded Army private whose ordeal in Iraq was hyped into a media fiction of U.S. heroism, was set for an emotional homecoming on Tuesday....Media critics say the TV cameras will not show the return of an injured soldier so much as a reality-TV drama co-produced by U.S. government propaganda and credulous reporters."
The first half of that is opinionated and doesn?t belong as the lead to a news story, but is basically accurate, though ABC News provided a possible explanation for the Pentagon?s false reports about Lynch firing back (see more later in this item). The second claim, however, about the rescue being a faked action reality series for film is right out of the anti-American play book of the BBC and has been discredited.
Thursday?s Charleston Daily Mail newspaper carried a piece by Wrenn, whose full time job is as a reporter for the newspaper, about how Reuters altered her original submission and then refused to remove her byline when she requested that be done. (Thursday?s Romenesko, OpinionJournal.com?s ?Best of the Web? and FNC?s Brit Hume all picked up on Wrenn?s article distancing herself from Reuters.)
An excerpt from Deanna Wrenn?s July 24 opinion page piece, ?Dear Elizabeth: I didn't do it,? picking up after she recited the lead, quoted above, which Reuters inserted:
....Got problems with that?
I do, especially since I didn't write it.
Here's what I sent last week to Reuters, a British news agency that compiles news reports from all over the world:
"ELIZABETH -- In this small county seat with just 995 residents, the girl everyone calls Jessi is a true heroine -- even if reports vary about Pfc. Jessica Lynch and her ordeal in Iraq.
"'I think there's a lot of false information about her story,' said Amber Spencer, a clerk at the town's convenience store.
"Palestine resident J.T. O'Rock was hanging an American flag and yellow ribbon on his storefront in Elizabeth in preparation for Lynch's return.
"Like many residents here, he considers Lynch a heroine, even if newspaper and TV reports say her story wasn't the same one that originally attracted movie and book deals."
What I typed and filed for Reuters last week goes on in that vein. They asked me if they could use my byline, which I had typed at the beginning of the story I sent, and I said that would be no problem.
When I got to work Wednesday, e-mail messages were flooding my inbox calling me everything but Peter Arnett....
I hope the people of Wirt County have been too busy to notice the Reuters story, the beginning of which takes a tone I never would have used.
I'm not sure what reporter or editor actually wrote the story that has my byline attached....
I understand that news wire services often edit, add, remove or write new leads for stories. What amazed me was that a story could have my byline on it when I contributed only a few sentences at the end -- and in later versions I didn't contribute anything at all.
The stories contained apparently fresh material attributed to sources I did not interview.
Maybe that's the way that wire service works.
I would like to make it abundantly clear that somebody at Reuters wrote the story, not me.
I may not be a member of the world's largest multi-media news agency, but I learned at West Virginia University how to report fairly, which is what I thought I was doing for Reuters last week.
Apparently, when Reuters asked me last week if they could use my byline, they weren't talking about the story I wrote for them last week. They were talking about a story I never wrote.
That was the misunderstanding.
By the way, I asked Reuters to remove my byline. They didn't....
END of Excerpt
For Wrenn?s rendition in full:
www.dailymail.com
The original Reuters story on July 22 included even more about the Pentagon?s false ?propaganda.? An excerpt from the 7:45am EDT story, as posted by Yahoo:
Jessica Lynch Due Home After Media Hype on Heroism
Tue Jul 22, 7:45 AM ET
By Deanna Wrenn
PALESTINE, W.Va. (Reuters) - Jessica Lynch, the wounded Army private whose ordeal in Iraq was hyped into a media fiction of U.S. heroism, was set for an emotional homecoming on Tuesday in a rural West Virginia community bristling with flags, yellow ribbons and TV news trucks.
But when the 20-year-old supply clerk arrives by Blackhawk helicopter to the embrace of family and friends, media critics say the TV cameras will not show the return of an injured soldier so much as a reality-TV drama co-produced by U.S. government propaganda and credulous reporters.
"It no longer matters in America whether something is true or false. The population has been conditioned to accept anything: sentimental stories, lies, atomic bomb threats," said John MacArthur, the publisher of Harper's magazine....
Lynch became a national hero after media reports quoted unnamed U.S. officials as saying she fought fiercely before being captured, firing on Iraqi forces despite sustaining multiple gunshot and stab wounds.
In the end, Army investigators concluded that Lynch was injured when her Humvee crashed into another vehicle in the convoy after it was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.
Far from a scene of battlefield heroism, the Army said the convoy blundered into the ambush after getting lost and many of the unit's weapons malfunctioned during the battle.
The U.S. military also released video taken during an apparently daring rescue by American special forces who raided the Iraqi hospital where she was being treated.
Iraqi doctors at the hospital said later the U.S. rescuers had faced no resistance and the operation had been over-dramatized....
SUSPEND Excerpt
This seems to be the only part actually written by Wrenn, the last three paragraphs of the story:
In Palestine, a rural neighborhood 225 miles west of Washington, residents were more concerned with protecting Lynch from the reporters who have flooded into the community for her homecoming.
"She's a hometown hero, no doubt about that," said shopkeeper J.T. O'Rock as he hung a flag and a yellow ribbon on his storefront.
"That poor little girl will have to hide just to get any peace and quiet," he added.
END of Excerpt
For the entire Reuters article: story.news.yahoo.com
In a story for Friday?s Washington Times, Robert Stacy McCain relayed Reuters? defense:
Reuters defended its coverage yesterday after Ms. Wrenn's account appeared on the Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal Web site.
"We always reserve the right to temper a story with copy from both sides of an issue to better service our global readership," Reuters said. "The advance story focused on the media controversy that has ensued since the rescue first took place....We feel strongly that our coverage of Private Lynch's return presents both sides of the issue fairly."
Reuters also said that "the controversy surrounding Private Jessica Lynch's capture and rescue is a story of global importance."
"The overnight advance story we carried was based on copy sent to us by Ms. Wrenn, who was working as a free-lancer for us at the time, and was supplemented by additional copy and editing from others Reuters staffers."
END of Excerpt
The July 25 Washhington Times story on Reuters? byline misuse:
www.washingtontimes.com
As for U.S. propaganda in the rescue of Lynch, see the June 3 CyberAlert: NBC News versus ABC News and the BBC. Back on May 7 ABC's World News Tonight with Peter Jennings belittled the military effort to rescue POW Jessica Lynch, focusing on how the U.S. forces knew they would face no opposition, unnecessarily frightened the staff and caused a lot of damage, specifically by breaking door knobs. The BBC accused the U.S. forces of firing off blanks, a sure sign it was all staged for the cameras. But now, NBC's Jim Avila has determined that the truth lies closer to the story initially conveyed by the U.S. military. Avila reported that hospital staff ?say the so-called blanks were actually flash-bang grenades....And the Americans had every reason to expect trouble. Hospital workers confirm the Iraqi military used the basement as a headquarters.? For details:
www.mediaresearch.org
And on the very night of the Reuters story, ABC advanced a potential reason for why initial Pentagon reports, picked up by the media, described Lynch as fighting back against Iraqis when she did not fight back and was injured from her truck crashing, not from being shot.
In a story tracked down by the MRC?s Brad Wilmouth, on Tuesday?s World News Tonight ABC reporter Jim Wooten highlighted the overlooked Sergeant Donald Walters, the man in Lynch?s group of trucks who really fought back and was killed in the process. Wooten explained that the Pentagon got its information about the capture from intercepted phone calls:
?Now an official report suggests they accurately described a different soldier. No one here at Ft. Bliss is talking, but it's pretty clear this is what happened: American translators misunderstood two very similar Arabic pronouns, confusing 'he' with 'she.' And the 'he,' as it turns out, was this man. Donald Walters, a 33 year-old sergeant and cook from Salem, Oregon, who was part of a supply convoy that drove by mistake into an enemy stronghold. Here, on the north side of An-Nasiriyah, his truck was disabled by heavy fire. The driver, a private, jumped into the next vehicle, but the Pentagon says Walters, all alone, killed several Iraqis before he was shot and stabbed to death. He was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star.?
Wooten added that a Fort Bliss General told Walters? mother that ?the phone intercepts and interviews with Iraqi prisoners convinced him that Sergeant Walters, her only son, was the soldier first thought to be Private Lynch. Autopsies of those killed show he was the only one who was stabbed. Still, the Army has said nothing publicly.?
