CNN has been airing this video of the alleged death of a young Palestinian boy, putatively at the hands of the Israelis, but several bloggers are convinced that the video is a fake:
The doctor's feeble effort at CPR certainly looks contrived, and there's not much evidence of wounds or damage to the rooftop consistent with a missile explosion. And why does the video stop before the boy is interred? I don't know if the film is a fraud or not, but it certainly is suspicious. It originated with Hamas, and there's no real evidence in it that the boy is actually dead or that, if he is, he was killed by Israeli fire. Nevertheless, an uncritical CNN swallows it hook, line, and sinker.
One might get the feeling that at CNN the working assumption is that if it makes Israel look bad it must be genuine.
James Lewis, in a strongly worded piece at The American Thinker, takes the media to task for what he calls their collusion with terrorism:
In fact, it is the media themselves who are criminally complicit in the internment of Gaza's civilians in the line of fire. They could stop the terrorists simply by headlining Hamas' responsibility for the plight of the Arabs of Gaza, over and over again. That's the real story --- if only they could headline the facts right in front of their eyes. But they don't.
Without the leftist media there is no payoff for terrorists. Shut off the oxygen of publicity and Hamas shrivels to a powerless gang of thugs.
Lewis is correct, but he goes a little too far, I think, when he accuses CNN and BBC of being just as guilty of the deaths of Palestinians as is Hamas. After all, Hamas deliberately kills its own people through brutal cynicism and malice whereas the media's complicity is due more to ideological blindness, naivete, and perhaps stupidity. Nevertheless, Lewis is right to hold them to account.
RLC