Topic: NewsBusters
An Aug. 22 NewsBusters post by Dan Riehl takes offense at the idea at the suggestion that the reason the kidnapping of two Fox News employees in Gaza has not gotten the press conservatives think it deserves is because Fox News is generally hostile to the rest of the news media.
Let us take this opportunity to remind Riehl that his fellow NewsBusters are lusting to see footage of ABC's Bob Woodruff getting blown up and NewsBusters readers have asserted that Woodruff deserved to get blown up.
While we don't like to see journalists kidnapped (being former journalists ourselves), right-wingers have generally been so hostile to journalists -- as illustrated above -- that we are perversely amused when they demand sympathy for a conservative-friendly journalist in trouble. Riehl's own blog, Riehl World View, is an example; while Riehl himself appears to have refrained from editorial comment on Woodruff's injuries, the first comment on a Riehl post about the incident reads, "Shame they are taking away the time and attention of the good doctors from the soldiers."
If the alleged lack of coverage of the Fox News kidnappings is based solely on ideology, that's wrong. But Riehl must certainly be aware that if the kidnapping victims worked for, say, CBS instead of Fox News, a significant number of people on his side of the political spectrum -- including commenters at blogs he posts to -- would be rooting for the kidnappers to serve up the Daniel Pearl treatment.
