A picture on the front page of CNN.com showed a young woman in a red dress being sprayed with teargas by Turkish police. It is a shocking image, and CNN refers to it as an “icon” and “symbol” of the Turkish protestors and the heavy-handed response by the police—indicting the brutality and lack of human decency of the current Islamist Turkish government.
Why then, when the same kinds of police brutality broke out in France during a mega-protest against a same-sex “marriage” law, did CNN and other large media outlets not publish similar pictures? In many ways the brutality in France was more shocking in that some of the victims gassed were pregnant mothers and small children. I know this because my first cousin and two of her girls were sprayed by police with teargas in Paris. They were still suffering the painful effects three days later.
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It is journalistic malpractice and blatant media bias when stories are intentionally manipulated or simply not covered. The Socialist French government is treated with kid gloves by the international media when they crack down on defenders of marriage. Turkey ’s conservative government is not so fortunate when it faces protestors. I have no problem with CNN using emotional pictures to tell the story from Turkey, but fair is fair. Responsible journalists should not allow ideology to color and censor their coverage in France.
This article originally appeared on HLI Worldwatch and is reprinted with permission.