“In the Soviet Union, there is no truth in Pravda and no news in Izvestia.” Readers of a certain age recognize that old joke, which played on the fact that the names of those two Soviet newspapers, when translated into English, meant “truth” and “news” respectively. Or, as the old exchange went: “How can you tell when a Soviet official is lying?” “When his lips move—or when you read Pravda.” Everyone understood that nothing in those party organs was believable.

The same is true for today’s leftist-controlled media, both at home and abroad. And today, I have two examples of the agendas that are pro-Islamic and, in the second case, deeply antisemitic. In each case, a misleading headline creates a powerful narrative image that his countered only if readers bother to scroll deep into the reports on the story.

Image created using AI.

Here is the headline from People magazine, a national publication: “Tenn. Man Charged with Raping Unconscious Woman In Front of Church — Just Before She Died”.

That the article leads with the phrase “Tenn. Man” in 20-point font in the headline will inevitably leave people thinking that the man charged with the crime, which involved raping a woman who had passed out from drugs, looked like one of these guys, all of whom are stereotypical “Tennessee Men”:

Image created using AI.

American Thinker readers, however, won’t be surprised to learn that, once you click on that link, none of those stereotypes matches the person arrested:

Mohamed Mohamed, 39, is charged with four counts of rape in relation to an alleged assault on an unconscious woman in front of the house of worship on Nolensville Pike in Nashville’s Woodbine neighborhood Thursday evening, according to a press release from the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department.

The crime was heinous:

The woman, who remains a Jane Doe, was seen on surveillance video apparently under the influence, walking unsteadily and setting herself down on the steps. Police say Mohamed then approached her, sat down beside her and began touching her as she drifted in and out of consciousness, attempting to swat him away to no avail.

Mohamed then allegedly lifted her off the steps, set her on the ground and “repeatedly sexually assaulted her,” police wrote in the press release.

This is what the alleged perpetrator actually looks like:

Metropolitan Nashville Police Department. Public domain.

We don’t have any information about Mohamed’s country of origin or immigration status. However, what we do have is People’s emphasis on Tennessee—which, given the paper’s national audience and salacious approach to news, was an unnecessary detail. The story would have had just as much impact if the headline had said “Man Charged with Raping Unconscious Woman In Front of Church — Just Before She Died.”

But that’s small-time dishonesty. For really big dishonesty, you need to go to media efforts to turn Hamas and its fellow travelers into victims, despite their openly stated and acted upon goal of slaughtering Jews and, eventually, Christians. At the same time, the Western media demonize while demonizing Israel, the only country in the history of the world that (stupidly) feeds its enemy.

In July, it was the New York Times making a martyred Madonna out of a Gazan woman holding her genetically ill child and implying that Israel was responsible for the child’s pathetic condition. This month, it’s the BBC which claims that an Italian hospital was unable to save the life of a “malnourished Gazan woman”—with the obvious implication that she’s the victim of the (fake) famine that Israel has alleged imposed on the enemy civilians it (stupidly) feeds:

Fair use for editorial purposes.

Note that, under the image, it states, “More than 180 Gazan children and adults have been brought to Italy since the start of Israel's war on Gaza.” It would be more accurate to say that those children and adults have been brought to Italy “since the start of Gaza’s war on Israel,” a war that began when 6,000 Gazans stormed Israel’s border and slaughtered over 1,200 civilians and kidnapped over 200 more, many of whom it also slaughtered.

It’s only if one reads beyond the headlines, which few do, that the BBC adds some important details:

Cogat, the Israeli military body in charge of aid, said on Sunday that she had suffered from leukaemia.

In a statement, it said Israel "facilitates the medical transfer of patients, with a focus on children, and encourages countries around the world to make such requests".

Normally, an unknown woman dying of leukemia is not newsworthy. The only reason for the BBC to report on this story was to have a big, bold headline implying that Israel starved the woman to death.

The BBC is an utterly foul institution that, like Pravda and Izvestia before it, is larded with lies that have the occasional dots of truth that are solely intended to “lend artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.” That quoted language is funny in Gilbert & Sullivan’s Mikado; it’s genocide promotion in the steaming pile of antisemitic garbage that is the BBC.

The only difference between the Western media and the old-time Soviet media outlets is that, in the Soviet Union, many (maybe most) of those journalists wrote under duress, knowing that even a whiff of the truth could land them in the gulags. Meanwhile, today’s so-called “journalists” are true believers who happily pump propaganda into credulous people’s minds.