Sunday, May 22, 2005

Niche Marketing

It has been slowly seeping into our awareness that sometimes the words and tone sent to us by Moslem speakers in English differ greatly from the same people when they speak in Arabic to their own home audiences. Arafat was quite the artist of sounding diplomatic to the West while firing up the Gaza street with "kill the Jew" rhetoric at home.

Sadly, such two-faced speaking is not restricted to terrorists. Via Instapundit, our own press does the same thing:

Via InstaPundit, we find overseas editions of Newsweek putting the American flag into a garbage can on its cover. (Glenn Reynolds wryly observes, "And yet they're complaining about Koran-in-the-toilet reports.")

That Newsweek's international editions make the domestic edition of Newsweek look as patriotic as National Review or Fox News is reminiscent of something that Fox's Roger Ailes once said about how CNNi differs from the version of CNN we watch (well, based on the ratings, don't watch) in the US.

With the internet, these disgusting news organizations that happen to be Americans will be unable to pretend they are American companies.

No wonder their journalists hate wearing an American flag during a time of war. Bad for foreign ratings, don't you know.