Where Credit Is Due

Weekly Example of Media Bias   —   Posted on April 26, 2006

Last week we slammed Reuters for moral equivalency in an article comparing the threatened execution of an Afghan man for converting to Christianity to the publication in Denmark of cartoons making fun of the Prophet Muhammad. We thought we should acknowledge that Reuters issued a later version of the dispatch that was far less objectionable. Here’s how the original begins:

The strong Western response to a threatened death sentence for an Afghan convert to Christianity looks something like a mirror image of the Muslim reaction to the Prophet Mohammad caricatures printed in the European press.

There have been no riots or sackings of Afghan embassies, unlike the violence that marked the uproar in Muslim countries after the Danish cartoons were published, but the shock and mutual incomprehension expressed in both cases are similar.

And this is from the new and improved version:

Western political leaders and the media have reacted with mounting indignation to the news that a Kabul court threatened to impose the death sentence on an Afghan man who abandoned Islam and coverted [sic] to Christianity.

Two months ago, political and religious leaders in the Muslim world were rounding on Western European media and governments for printing and defending caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad that they considered blasphemous.

The cases are clearly different.

Good for Reuters for taking valid criticism to heart. [Emphasis added.]

For the complete posting, go to OpinionJournal.com.