Biased Reporting on a Bad Guy: Mohammed bin Salman
November 24, 2017
Mohammed bin Salman, who seems to be running Saudi Arabia these days, is one of the bad guys. If he were a good guy, he wouldn’t have attacked his neighboring country, Yemen. He wouldn’t be committing war crimes there in conjunction with vital U.S. support. If he were a good guy, he’d respect not only the rights of females but also the rights of everyone else.
Based upon some cursory research, all that I have time for at the moment, I suggest that the dominant media in America are biased in their reporting about this political potentate. I searched Google using “Mohammed bin Salman 2016”. You can check me. I found headlines with terms like this: “…the prince trying to wean Saudi Arabia off oil”, “shatters decades of Royal tradition”, “plotting to try and take over as the country’s new king by the end of 2016”, “buys £452m yacht”, “Mohammed Bin Salman seems to have won a power struggle in the Kingdom”, “The 30-year-old prince who is changing the world”, “just pushed through a bold package of reforms”, “Prince Muhammad Bin Salman Three-Pronged Approach to Counter-Terrorism”, “Saudi deputy crown prince to visit the United States”, “Obama hosts Saudi Prince Salman at White House” and “Saudi Arabia Prince Mohammed Bin Salman To Visit Silicon Valley”.
The preceding articles mainly sell bin Salman as progressive, modern, bold, daring, and innovative. They paint him as a great guy with youthful energy. His age is almost always mentioned.
You would not know that he started a war against Yemen unless you searched on “saudi aggression on yemen 2016”. Then you’d find some headlines like these: “Airstrikes on Yemen funeral kill at least 140 people”, “U.N. experts warn Saudi-led coalition allies over war crimes in Yemen”, “Yemen conflict: The view from the Saudi side”, “US/Saudi Aggression in Yemen Celebrated by Co-Aggressor UAE”, “Why Saudi Arabia Is Continuing Its War In Yemen”, “Saudi-Led Coalition Says It Bombed Yemen Funeral Based on False …”, and “Why is Saudi Arabia bombing Yemen”.
Some of these war-oriented articles are justifying the Saudi aggression. One article explains that bombing the funeral procession can be blamed on false intelligence. The man’s name who is responsible for all this is not in these headlines.
Nowadays, the press is busy associating Yemen with Iran in order to justify Saudi aggression. However, it is reluctantly being forced to acknowledge the Saudi starvation strategy. The spread of cholera and the rising number of deaths is the attention-getter after 2 years.
Had the dominant press recognized and reported the Saudi aggression for what it was in 2015, the image of bin Salman would have been entirely different. Today he’s being celebrated in these media as a liberalizer, even a populist. He’s letting women drive cars! Think of that! He must be okay. He must be a good guy.
He’s not. Good guys do not kill with the left hand while distributing Thanksgiving turkeys with the right hand. That’s what neighborhood gangsters and Mafia do. Bin Salman is a gangster. He’s a bad guy.
ADDENDUM: 9 hours after this was written, an article in The Duran confirms the media bias.
From Lewrockwell.com, here.