Medary.com

Chester leads off with a devestating expose of how Time magazine editorializes via word/phrase selection:

First, let's examine the overall tone of both sets of documents just through some of the descriptive phrases in each. In the TIME article, here are representative words, reflecting, and shaping, the overall tenor of the piece:

"elusive and inexhaustible enemy"
"success" is "elusive"
"inexhaustible enemy emboldened by the US presence"
"gradual . . . erosion" in public support
"millions of Iraqis will vote on a constitution that threatens to further split the country"
"beleaguered US mission in Iraq"
"unwinnable military fight"
"series of failures"
"hardened local fighters"
"politically compromised outcome"
"dangers, dilemmas, and frustrations that still haunt the US in Iraq"
"temporary tactical gains"
"doubts about whether anything resembling victory can still be achieved"
"powerless to do anything" about atrocities
"intelligence suggests insurgents are displaying their mettle"
"This enemy is not a rabble."
"fierce resistance"
"shaken US officer"
"troops . . . embittered"
"momentum lost"
"insurgents proving so resiliant"

Do you really even have to read the article to know what it says? When I was a child, my father told me that Life magazine was for people who don't like to read, and TIME for people who don't like to think. Seems an accurate characterization.

Meanwhile, Little Green Footballs takes the AP to task about the casually morphing Iraq into Vietnam in a photo caption:

An absolutely amazing example of naked, unrestrained bias, in a photograph from the Vietnam War dug up and republished today by with this jaw-dropping caption:

Two infantrymen sprint across the clearing in War Zone D where a U.S. battalion is trapped under automatic weapons fire from surrounding Viet Cong troops, 50 miles northeast of Saigon, Vietnam, in this June 18, 1967 black-and-white file photo. Bush administration officials bristle at the suggestion that the war in Iraq might look anything like the Vietnam war. Yet even as 2005’s anti-war protests recall memories of yesteryear’s demonstrations, President Bush’s own words eerily echo those of President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1967, a pivotal year in Vietnam. (AP Photo/Henri Huet, File)

“2005’s anti-war protests recall memories of yesteryear’s demonstrations?”

Funny, I remember a lot more than 30 people at “yesteryear’s demonstrations.”

(Hat tip: stuiec.)

UPDATE at 9/21/05 9:41:46 pm:

And this photo is accompanied by a mind-blowingly biased article: Bush’s Words on Iraq Echo LBJ in 1967.

They really do want us to lose in Iraq.

So, can somebody tell me why we should trust the major media's reporting? In Iraq, about Katrina, about Bush, about just about anything?