The MSM Propaganda Game

I wouldn't be surprised to find out that they keep a tally of who writes the most and best misleading/slanted headlines to determine who gets the biggest bonus at the end of the year. Because the MSM knows there is power in headlines like this:

Israeli Jets Hit Militant Base in Lebanon

Oh, no, the world cries! Israel is blowing things up again! Until, of course, you read the very first paragraph and find out that...

Israeli jets blasted a Palestinian militant group's base a few miles outside the Lebanese capital Beirut on Wednesday, hours after rockets fired from Lebanon hit a northern Israeli border town. (Emphasis is mine...but you already guessed that, didn't you?)

I guess the fact that Israel was retaliating -- AGAIN -- wasn't important enough to include in the attention-grabbing headline. And, speaking of propaganda, why do think it is that the Israeli jets blasted, while the pro-Palestinian rockets only hit?

In their deepest strike into Lebanon in 18 months, the Israeli planes attacked a base of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, a small, Syrian-backed group that has been fighting the Jewish state for decades.

Ah, the art of propaganda in action...use words that can't be dismissed by definition, but which suggest connotative meaning, adding color and nuance "under the radar." Note that the Israelis strike and attack, while the small pro-Palestine group has been fighting...for decades.

You have to wade all the way through this story to the last two paragraphs to find out what the PFLP-GC is about. Oh, you get a few details about their leaders, their bases, etc. But it isn't until the very end that you get this salient info:

The PFLP-GC gained notoriety with a string of bloody incidents since it was formed in 1968: It has hijacked an Israeli airliner, machine-gunned another at Zurich's airport, and blown up a Tel Aviv-bound Swissair plane, killing all 47 aboard.

In one of its spectacular attacks on Israel, a PFLP-GC fighter on a hang-glider flew into northern Israel in 1987 and killed six soldiers before being shot dead.

Spectacular? That word is usually reserved, connotatively speaking, for something awesome, inspiring, and beautiful -- like fireworks on the 4th of July.

Not a comparison I'd care to draw when talking about a "string of bloody incidents," but then I'm not writing MSM propaganda.

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