Topic: WorldNetDaily
Aaron Klein couldn't work up any outrage in a July 27 WorldNetDaily article that Glenn Beck said the Norwegian political youth camp where dozens of students were shot and killed allegedly by Anders Behring Breivik "sounds a little like the Hitler Youth." No, it complained that 'Scores of major news media outlets published pictures of Glenn Beck in Israel while reporting on the radio host's seemingly unrelated controversial comments."
No, really. That's the complaint. Here it is again: "Some major media outlets reporting on the comments published images of Beck in Israel even though none of the reports mentioned the Jewish state."
WND even inadvertantly offers a clue to why this happened:
Beck visited Israel earlier this month to address the Knesset, the country's parliament. On Aug. 24, Beck is planning a rally in Israel called "Restoring Courage." The event is purportedly a follow up to Beck's massive "Restoring Honor" rally in Washington, D.C., last summer.
Surely someone as media-savvy as Klein knows that media outlets prefer to publish the most current photos it can get of someone they're writing about. Since Beck has most recently been hanging out in Israel, those are the most recent photos available.
Besides, it's not like WND hasn't done the same exact thing it's accusing others of doing in running non-contextual photos. For instance, any WND article that mentions Bill Ayers typically includes a 40-year-old mugshot of him, even if -- as is usually the case -- the article is not about what he did 40 years ago.
Further, Klein never explains why he considers the Beck photos so offensive. The headline of his article suggests that it's being done to "smear Israel," but that doesn't make sense. How does it "smear Israel" to include a photo of Beck in Israel with an article about Beck saying something stupid? And Klein doesn't reference this point in the article.
Then again, WND doesn't explain why it runs 40-year-old photos of Ayers instead of a more recent one.
So, there you have it: WND publishes an article that manages to be hypocritical and uninformative about its main point. An amazing piece of anti-journalism from the folks who want you to believe that they're the opposite of "anti-journalists."
