Saturday, March 22, 2014

Herut Newspaper's Use of Quotation Marks

In many stories relating to Israel, certain terms are placed occasionally in quotations marks, as if to cast suspicion or doubt on their use or to scare.  It is done in connection with other stories, and recently also here, as we read:

A spokeswoman for the US State Department has acknowledged that the Kunming attack was an act of terrorism on Tuesday after China’s largest journalist association condemned Western media for “harbouring ulterior motives” when reporting last Saturday’s massacre that left 29 dead.

When asked to comment by a Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV reporter at a regular news briefing, Jen Psaki acknowledged that “the attack appeared to be an act of terrorism” because of a lack of “any other independent information”.  But she eventually gave in after being repeatedly asked to respond. “So we are calling this an act of terrorism,” she was quoted as saying.

Also on Tuesday, the government-backed All-China Journalists Association (ACJA), the country’s most authoritative journalist organisation, published a statement on its website stating “Some Western media ignored the most fundamental rule of journalism, displaying ambiguous attitudes and ulterior motives.”

The statement named television network CNN, and the Associated Press news agency, both US-based media organisations, claiming that in reports of the Kunming attack quotation marks were placed around words such as “terrorism” and “assailants” was used rather than “terrorists”... “Such practice shows ‘double standards’, violating the principle of objectivity in journalism and showing a lack of basic professional ethics,” the association said in its statement...

I, searching for some news items in the 1950s, found another use by the Herut newspaper in its July 26, 1956 issue:



The headline reads:

Rabbat Ammon: 
9 "Jordanians"
Wounded

Two points:

a) since the Herut Movement led by Menachem Begin never recognized the legitimacy of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, it being an imperialist creation on the territory of the Jewish National Home, its existence was in limbo for that newspaper;

and

b) the name of the capital of Jordan was always given as the original Biblical name.


A second item from February 15, 1960:



A Theft of Amatzia's Cattle Herd
Was Done by "Jordanians"

^

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