Tim Blair

Except they write in French- it's like they have a different word for everything!

Hey- just like Margo Kingston!

You mean "Margeaux Kingstonne"

Margauche Ville-de-roi?

Actually, pretty much the same thing happened in the US. Bernard Goldberg, who worked for CBS, did an editorial in a paper on how the media was biased in some cases. He was pretty much immediately demoted, and later had to leave CBS.
(He wrote a book about this, Bias. Which is funny, as he seems to be slightly left of center, but in CBS terms, if you're not far left, then you don't belong)

Holidaying with the girlfriend (who is French) in France at the moment and hqve seen much of this sort of bias in the magazines here. Example - Paris Match magazine (one of the most subscribed to in France) ran an article on the war in Iraq last week that juxtaposed a dodgy GWB interview with photos of returned US soldiers that had sadly lost limbs defending our freedom. 2 pages of interview with GWB, six pages of photos and words describing the "real" war in Iraq. If this wasn't enough, I opened Figaro magazine last night and was greeted with a story on the "real" French peacekeeping mission in the Ivory Coast.

No lost limbs - just smiling people, happy to see Frog soldiers and laughing politicians apparantly glad to be enjopying a visit from heavily armed paratroops.

French press biased? OUI!

Holidaying with the girlfriend (who is French) in France at the moment and hqve seen much of this sort of bias in the magazines here. Example - Paris Match magazine (one of the most subscribed to in France) ran an article on the war in Iraq last week that juxtaposed a dodgy GWB interview with photos of returned US soldiers that had sadly lost limbs defending our freedom. 2 pages of interview with GWB, six pages of photos and words describing the "real" war in Iraq. If this wasn't enough, I opened Figaro magazine last night and was greeted with a story on the "real" French peacekeeping mission in the Ivory Coast.

No lost limbs - just smiling people, happy to see Frog soldiers and laughing politicians apparantly glad to be enjopying a visit from heavily armed paratroops.

French press biased? OUI!

Good to see that this piece ran in the IHT. That paper was as guilty as the French media in the distortion of war news from Afghanistan and Iraq. I'll never forget IHT's story on how the Pentagon's battle plans in Afghanistan had gone awry -- this appeared the day before the Taliban fled Kabul. IHT coverage of Iraq was and remains inaccurate and absolutley disgraceful -- but, then, you'd expect that now that the NY Times owns the operation 100% -- and, by the way, it's headquartered in Paris, the bad one in France, not the good one in Texas.

When the facts do not support the theory, the old saying goes, the facts must be disposed of.

The problem, of course, is what happens when the facts won't stay disposed.

At what point does the divergence between what's being reported and what's actually happening become so large, that it affects the unwashed masses? How will they react?

We're seeing some of this in the Middle East, where constant reporting on how badly the war was going left the Arab masses utterly bewildered when not only did Baghdad fall w/o a fight, but Saddam fell w/o one, too. IF the US pulls it off in Iraq, how will France react? If the rest of the world DOESN'T line up behind France, and against us, how will the French (and the rest of Europe) react?

The article’s author John Vinocur is always worth reading. In particular, read “Chirac arrives at a crossroads” if you haven’t yet. Notable & still very relevant.

The only French 'paper worth reading.

Mr Hertoghe said that America won the war? Which "war" was he referring to? The last war that the U.S. won was WWII

Mr Hertoghe said that America won the war? Which "war" was he referring to? The last war that the U.S. won was WWII

Really, Roberto?

One wonders what the South Korean people might say to that?

Or the Grenadans and the Panamanians. (Doctor Weevil has some interesting commentary about the state of political freedom in both those places.)

Do you think the women of Afghanistan find themselves worse off?

And, if we think of the Cold War as a war (and there's much to that, one would think), then the folks in the former Soviet republics can, rightfully, chalk up a victory that belongs to the West as a whole, but a Western victory that was the result of American leadership and Anglospheric courage and dauntlessness.

Dean — Hillary does. In a recent speech, she said the Russian invasion of Afghanistan "...opened up opportunities for Afghan women."

Of course. Around the world,since 1945, millions of women have found new opportunities under Russian soldiers...