Sullivan posted this one. His point about exposure works, is well taken… it does. Thus, this article of his bears repeating.
“BAATHIST BROADCASTING CORPORATION: Worth watching what the BBC does on its website. It often dramatically alters copy after it’s posted – and not for legitimate reasons, like typos or minor amendments. In an earlier draft of this piece, for example, the following sentence appeared: “Syria is, of course, Israel’s enemy. The two countries are still in an official state of war, caused by Israel’s occupation and illegal annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights.” Now it reads:
Syria is, of course, Israel’s enemy. The two countries have been in a state of war since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. The Israelis have long charged that Damascus uses the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah as a proxy army to launch attacks along Israel’s border with Lebanon. And since the beginning of the Palestinian uprising, Israel has increasingly focused on the Palestinian opposition groups hosted by Syria. It accuses the exiled leaderships of planning attacks carried out by their military wings in the occupied territories, and accuses Syria (as well as Iran) of backing them.
An improvement, no? But still no mention of the 1967 or Yom Kippur wars. What you see in the first draft, I think, is what the BBC really believes: that the Jews are responsible for all the ills in the Middle East. But even they feel obliged to respond to public pressure. Which is good news, after all. If we can’t get rid of them, we can at least moderate their extremism. Keep sending me BBC lies and propaganda. Exposure works.”
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