Reuters and AP Terminology

I recently created a small Web site and have begun to follow the news more closely. As a consequence I was obliged to put up an Action Alert on the use of the term "Slav" and how I believe it represents "hate speech".

The biggest culprits (by far) in this regard are the Associated Press and Reuters – who seem to have a pro-Albanian bias. I have written to these organizations asking them not to refer to Macedonians as "the Slavs." (They don't refer to Serbs as "Serb Slavs" and so on.) These two organizations have never responded…

Many of the articles pumped out by AP and Reuters on the current Balkan crisis have authors who seem to have a Balkan background. I find it unlikely that these authors would refer to Macedonians as "the Slavs." This type of language is not normal terminology for the region. Therefore, I must conclude that the "absolute" use of the term "Slavs" by these two organizations must be a dictate from above.

I was wondering if [Nebojsa Malic could] shed some light on this type of reporting by Reuters and AP which seems…to aggrandize the so-called "human rights" endeavors of Albanian terrorists while virtually writing Macedonians out of existence…

~ Lubi Uzunovski

Nebojsa Malic replies:

Mr. Uzunovski is on to something here. I had mentioned before, without elaborating, that AP and Reuters stories routinely feature a common tagline, always inserted somewhere in the lower body of the story, which basically represents "editorial guidance". Purporting to present background information, this tagline actually offers the key to reading the story "properly". For example, all the stories about Kosovo before the 1999 bombing included "Albanians make up 90% of the province's population." Other prize-winners include: "since the 1999 NATO bombing to halt Serb repression of ethnic Albanians" and "100,000 Serbs fled Kosovo after revenge attacks for atrocities committed during the 1999 war".

The term "Slav" is supposed to erase the ethnic identity of Macedonians – more specifically, to deny their right to a nation-state, thus clearing the way for meeting UCK's demands.

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Ill-Fitting Titles?

In your main page there [was] a link with a title "Albania Fails to Reassure!" Then when you click at the link you find the news about an Italian corrupt businesswoman that had invested in Albania. I think the title does not fit at all.

Second: In your main page there [was] a link with a title "More Good News: Robin Cook is Out!" And then when you click you find the news for a "brilliant Cook"!

~ Ruben Avxhiu, New York

The Backtalk editor replies:

The Italian businesswoman was not merely an investor in Albania, but the organizer of "a conference designed to reassure foreign investors that Albania is an honest country." As for your second example, Antiwar.com frequently expresses our editorial viewpoint when entitling news links – whether or not the linked-to article expresses that viewpoint.

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Kirchwey Partisan

In his other wise fine article "Things You Can't Say in America", Alexander Cockburn writes about the editor of The Nation Freda Kirchwey and her ecstatic support for the mass murder of Japanese civilians with incendiary bombs and nukes. But he then points out in an epilogue, "To be fair to Kirchwey, by the time the Korean War came along, she was having second thoughts about the A-bomb, and attacking the destruction of Korea in a strong editorial in The Nation, published on March 10, 1951."

He doesn't speculate as to the cause of her change of heart, but I'm all too happy to. Could it simply be because as of 1951, the only US targets for A-bombs were communists, and the Korea War was fought against communists?

I suspect that if the US had taken sides against the mass murderer "Uncle Joe" Stalin in WWII rather than against the not quite yet but soon to be mass murderer Adolph Hitler, The Nation would have been screaming bloody murder at the actions of the US military for the duration of the war.

~ Peter Jon White, Acton, MA

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