18195: Walton: RE: 18182: White: Students: the latest victims of AP/Reuters di stortions (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: "Walton, Robert" <robert.walton3@us.army.mil>

Don't look for a retraction here-  Reuter's correctly quoted what a State
Department official had said.  The real problem child is that the State
Department had their "facts" wrong.

The media representatives who attend State Department and other government
briefings are not necessarily expert in the matters under discussion, they
simply report those matters and may ask questions of the government
spokesman when they seek more detail.  Reporters are not always famililiar
with the content under discussion.  The name, Renel Victor, would not be
familiar to them unless they were carribean area specialists. If so, it is
likely they would have caught the error and posed an appropriate question to
the State Department spokesman, or asked for a clarification.  That's how
the media work.

-----
18167<< WASHINGTON, Jan 30 (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department said...

...In the latest violence, a Haitian university student was killed on
Wednesday after being hit in the torso by a tear gas canister fired by
police as pro- and anti-government protests gripped the poor Caribbean
country.>>

Well after any responsible journalist would know that Renel Victor *was not*
a "student" and was claimed to be FL by his wife (one would think, at least
they would trot out that chimere myth again).  AP and Reuters are still
playing this "student" strategy. "It worked the first time, let's just bet
em to death with it."

Bob Walton