KARL ROVE IS NOW A MEDIA CRITIC

”WASHINGTON (AP) — Presidential adviser Karl Rove said Saturday that journalists often criticize political professionals because they want to draw attention away from the “corrosive role” their own coverage plays in politics and government.

“Some decry the professional role of politics, they would like to see it disappear,” Rove told graduating students at the George Washington University Graduate School of Political Management. “Some argue political professionals are ruining American politics _ trapping candidates in daily competition for the news cycle instead of long-term strategic thinking in the best interest of the country.”

But Rove turned that criticism on journalists.
“It’s odd to me that most of these critics are journalists and columnists,” he said. “Perhaps they don’t like sharing the field of play. Perhaps they want to draw attention away from the corrosive role their coverage has played focusing attention on process and not substance.”

IRAQ STORY DOWNPLAYED IN ARAB WORLD

”CAIRO, Egypt - For Arab news media, the war between Israel and Hezbollah is a fresh chapter in a tale with strong emotional pull and well-defined enemies, and has pushed Iraq to the back of newscasts and off front pages.

“Iraqi news was not been ignored by the Arab satellite channels’ newscast, it still exists, but has decreased sharply in the last two weeks,” said Sameeha Dahroug, the former head of Egypt’s Nile satellite channel…

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/14095043/

MORE ON THE ARAB MEDIA SPECTRUM

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2006/07/28/publiceye/printable1845745.shtml

THE LANGUAGE THAT SANITIZES THE NEWS

Jonathan Cook critiques deceptive language in the news:

”When journalists use the word “apparently,” or another favorite “reportedly,” they are usually distancing themselves from an event or an interpretation in the supposed interests of balance. But
I think we should read the “apparently” contained in a statement from the head of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, relating to the killing this week of four unarmed UN monitors by the Israeli army in its other sense.

When Annan says that those four deaths were “apparently deliberate,” I take him to mean that the evidence shows that the killings were deliberate. And who can disagree with him? At least 10 phone calls
were made to Israeli commanders over a period of six hours warning that artillery and aerial bombardments were either dangerously close to or hitting the monitors’ building….

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/cook.php?articleid=9436