Unbalanced?

Monday, 5th January 2009

I'm not sure what Adloyada objects to in the caption I used on a photograph last week. All I did was run two sentences which were boiled down from the copy provided with the agency picture:

Qassam rockets are launched from Hamas-controlled territory. Israel continues to reinforce its troops amid talk of an internationally-brokered ceasefire.

Adloyada argues that I was turning a blind eye to a "blatant war crime" committed by Hamas. All I can say is that the caption doesn't shy away from explaining who's responsible for firing the missile. "Are launched" sounds a bit stiff, I agree; I should have changed it to "being launched". My feeble excuse is that I wasn't blogging full-time last week, and was just keeping things ticking over.Otherwise I can only say that Adloyada is looking for bias where there isn't any. For what it's worth, I was among the first UK bloggers to pick up on the Mohammed Al-Dura controversy, which certainly didn't paint the Palestinians in the most flattering light. To the best of my knowledge, I was also the only newspaper reviewer to pan that dismal piece of agit-prop, "My Name is Rachel Corrie". One thing I did notice at the time was that the people who applauded me for giving the play a kicking fell mysteriously silent when I said that, whatever the work's flaws, the off-Broadway production shouldn't have been shelved for political reasons.