A talented writer and local activist called Mike Smith (that’s his real name and not a pseudonym as far as I know) runs a blog called Unquote. It’s a bit more of a ‘true’ blog than this one or the others linked here, that are rather specialist in their function. But it is very political, and Mike has a lot of style, so I’d recommend it. Today’s entry:
p>A recent CNN article ran under the scary headline, Iraq Confirms U.S. Has Removed Nuclear Material. The seemingly ominous first paragraph reads:
BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq’s interim government confirmed Thursday the United States has removed radioactive material from Iraq, saying ousted dictator Saddam Hussein could have used it to develop nuclear weapons.
Here’s the thing. Many people, due to a lack of time, literacy, or both, don’t read news articles in their entirety. If they go past the headline, it’s usually by a couple of paragraphs. Journalists take classes to learn how to write for just this kind of casual reader.
I mention this because it means a good number of people will probably miss the second-to-last paragraph:
But tons of nuclear materials remained there under the seal of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, until last year’s U.S.-led invasion of Iraq when it was left unguarded and looted by Iraqi civilians.
Got that? The uranium in Iraq was UN uranium, which had been guarded and accounted for, until the Americans invaded. Apparently there was no need for this piddling fact to weigh in a little closer to the top of the column. The open-endedness of the passage is interesting, as well – it seems to imply that the uranium was stolen during the looting. But what would looters want with magic rocks? If it was indeed stolen, why are there no details on how the US tracked the stuff down? If it wasn’t stolen, why is it such a concern? And either way, why is it suddenly news over a year later? Is this awful journalism or excellent propaganda?
Maybe both.
