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I thought you might be interested in the article from the FAIR web site. The following article will be appended to your message: Fox: Civilian Casualties Not News Network news outlets have reported stories about civilian casualties in Afghanistan with caution, often noting that Taliban claims are nearly impossible to verify. But many outlets show no inclination to be equally careful when evaluating the Pentagon's line on casualties. CNN, for example, has ordered reporters to frame reports of civilian deaths with reminders that "the Pentagon has repeatedly stressed that it is trying to minimize" such casualties, and that "the Taliban regime continues to harbor terrorists who are connected to the September 11 attacks that claimed thousands of innocent lives in the U.S." (See FAIR Action Alert, 11/1/01.) The host of Fox News Channel's "Special Report with Brit Hume" (11/5/01) recently wondered why journalists should bother covering civilian deaths at all. "The question I have," said Hume, "is civilian casualties are historically, by definition, a part of war, really. Should they be as big news as they've been?" The idea that civilian casualties have been "big news" in the U.S. is questionable, but the Fox pundits more or less agreed with Hume. Mara Liasson from National Public Radio was direct: "No. Look, war is about killing people. Civilian casualties are unavoidable." Liasson added that she thought what was missing from television coverage was "a message from the U.S. government that says we are trying to minimize them, but the Taliban isn't, and is putting their tanks in mosques, and themselves among women and children." (Of course, anyone who has watched much TV news knows that this information is included in virtually every report.) To read the rest of the article, please click on the link below. http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1668 This article was published on Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting's Website (http://www.fair.org).

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