News Media Up To Their Familiar Avoidance Techniques. Avoids Labeling Terrorists For What They Are.

ABC Refuses to Identify ISIS/ISIL as 'Terrorists' or Victims as 'Christian'

By Kristine Marsh | August 14, 2014 | 11:09  1017  49 Reddit1  1

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As liberal columnist Kirsten Powers recently noted, President Obama is notably reluctant to acknowledge that Iraqi Christians are facing lethal persecution at the hands of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant("ISIL"). Unfortunately, he’s not alone. ABC has been almost completely silent about the religious minorities that ISIL’s self-declared Islamic caliphate is intent on wiping out.

While CBS and NBC have spent time on nearly every broadcast of the morning and evening news shows detailing the immense persecution against Christians, Yazidis and other non-Muslim religious groups in Iraq, ABC has been absent. CBS and NBC mentioned the Yazidi religious sect 34 times while Christians were mentioned 23 times between the two networks in a two-week period. 

Yet ABC identified ISIL’s victims as “Christian” and “Yazidi” in only one Sunday evening news broadcast, Aug. 10. 

On ABC World News with Diane Sawyer August 13, correspondent Muhammad Lila simply called ISIL, “religious militants” who had trapped “thousands of starving refugees” on top of the mountain. Again on Good Morning America the next morning anchor Robin Roberts stated, “refugees are trapped by militant extremists,” while on- screen graphics referred to ISIL as “Iraqi extremists.”

The fact that the “militants” were terrorists was not mentioned at all. The fact that these “militants” were Islamic fundamentalists committed to wiping out an entire group of people because they were not Muslim was a fact not even hinted at. 

Meanwhile, on the Aug. 7 NBC “Nightly News,” anchor Brian Williams reported that ISIL “have been rooting out Iraqi Christians and other religious minorities, 40,000 of whom are said to be on the run and in great danger.” On Aug. 9, CBS News Foreign Correspondent Holly Williams told “CBS Evening News” viewers that ISIL “carried out public executions, targeting religious minorities, including Iraqi Christians.” 

Such reports don’t begin to convey the horror facing Christians in Northern Iraq, where men, women and children who refused to convert to Islam have been shot, stabbed and beheaded in large numbers (lovingly captured on film by proud jihadis), but at least they acknowledge a problem. The fact that the Vatican gave its blessing to U.S. air strikes against ISIL is a measure of the catastrophe.

NBC and CBS are far from exemplars. All the networks are reluctant to call Hamas terrorists, even though the U.S. State Department officially designated it a terrorist organization in 1997. They’ve downplayed the Islamic fundamentalism of the Boko Haram terrorists in Nigeria, and have been silent on the anti-Semitic nature of the Gaza protests across Europe.

Methodology: The Culture and Media Institute analyzed morning and evening news broadcasts on ABC, CBS and NBC from August 1 through August 14.

Another Lie--Obama Promised To Change Criteria For Drone Strikes. Guess What, It Hasn't ChangedQ!

Ron Paul On How Obama’s Drone Wars Undermine American Values

April 28, 2014 by Ron Paul 

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Earlier this month, CIA-operated drones killed as many as 55 people in Yemen in several separate strikes. Although it was claimed that those killed were “militants,” according to press reports at least three civilians were killed and at least five others wounded. That makes at least 92 U.S. drone attacks against Yemen during the Obama Administration, which have killed nearly 1,000 people including many civilians.

The latest strikes seem to contradict President Obama’s revised guidelines for targeted killings, which he announced last May. At the time he claimed that drones would only be used against those who posed a “continuing and imminent threat to the American people,” that there must be a “near certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured,” and that safeguards to prevent civilian casualties were at “the highest standard we can set.”

None of these criteria seem to have been met. In fact, the threshold in Yemen is considerably lower than the President claims. In 2012 President Obama approved “signature strikes” in Yemen, a criteria for attack that is not based on actual or suspected wrongdoing, but rather on a vague set of behaviors that are said to be shared by militants.

This means that the individuals killed in the most recent drone attacks were not necessarily terrorists or even terrorist suspects. They were not proven to have committed any crime, nor were they proven to have been members of al-Qaida or any terrorist organization. Yet they were nevertheless targeted for attack, and the sovereignty of Yemen was violated in the process.

Some may claim that we need to kill suspected terrorists overseas so that we can be safer at home. But do the drone attacks in places like Yemen really make us safer? Or are they actually counter-productive? One thing we do know is that one of the strongest recruiting tools for al-Qaida is the U.S. being over there using drones against people or occupying Muslim countries.

How can we get rid of all the people who may seek to do us harm if our drone and occupation policies continually create even more al-Qaida members? Are we not just creating an endless supply of tomorrow’s terrorists with our foolish policies today? What example does it set for the rest of the world if the U.S. acts as if it has the right to kill anyone, anywhere, based simply on that individual’s behavior?

We should keep all of this in mind when the US administration lectures world leaders about how they should act in the 21st century. Recently, the U.S. Administration admonished Russian president Vladimir Putin for his supposed interference in the affairs of Ukraine, saying that violating the sovereignty of another country is not the 21st century way of conducting international relations. I agree that sovereignty must be respected. But what about the U.S. doing the same thing in places like Yemen? What about the hundreds and even thousands killed by U.S. drones not because they were found guilty of a crime, but because they were exhibiting “behaviors” that led a CIA drone operator safely hidden in New Mexico or somewhere to pull the trigger and end their lives?

What about a President who regularly meets in secret with his advisors to determine who is to be placed on a “kill list” and who refuses to even discuss the criteria for placement on that list? Is this considered acceptable 21st century behavior?

The Obama Administration needs to rein in the CIA and its drone attacks overseas. They make a mockery of American values and they may well make us less safe.