Sunday, February 16, 2003

CNN transcript is cut a bit short. On Friday the 14th of February CNN.com presented a "transcript" of Hans Blix's presentation to the U.N. Security Council concerning the progress of weapons inspections in Iraq. Comparison with other transcripts, notably that presented by the BBC , reveals that a substantial section of the presentation was omitted in the CNN version. The missing text includes descriptions of important instances of Iraqi government cooperation and presents a relatively favourable picture of inspectors' access to scientists. [kuro5hin.org] I compared the two transcripts myself and they are indeed different. This makes me wonder where exactly CNN got their copy--perhaps the US State Department? The US media often prints press releases the government gives them without making any attempt to verify them independently, so I wouldn't be surprised if that happened here. comment () trackback ()  10:58:46 PM     Last night I saw a cheezy B movie called Chaos Factor. The bad guy was a National Security Advisor who thought everyone from Asia was "morally inferior," and was trying to provoke a war with China because he believed they might become a threat. The hero was an American soldier who had uncovered evidence of atrocities the bad guy had commited during the Vietnam War. A year ago I would have thought the idea of such a character was absurd, but not any more. Thanks to the commentary from The Wall Street Journal and Samizdata, I realized that there were still people who would actually watch that movie and cheer for the genocidal villain. comment () trackback ()  4:21:44 PM

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