PressEthic

In his typically provocative, irreverant manner, Mark Steyn pokes fun at Reuters in a recent column:

Like most media outlets these days, the Reuters news agency has a column of short, quirky, amusing items, which it calls "Oddly Enough!" Oddly enough, Reuters's idea of quirky and amusing comes with quite a high body count. If you were looking for a light chuckle amid the doom and gloom on April 21 last year, for example, here's what the wags on the copy desk came up with:

"A Pakistani man accused of desecrating the Koran was shot dead Wednesday after being chased by an angry crowd."

Laugh? I was doubled over clutching my sides. And so was he. On Jan. 5, the lads opted for:

"An Iranian who beheaded his two sons after they witnessed him murder a woman was sentenced to hang Tuesday by a Tehran court."

Just another goofy Persian head case, eh? And here's a personal favourite from the Reuters "Oddly Enough!" files of Sept. 1, 2004:

"Three men were trampled to death in a rush to claim vouchers at the first IKEA furniture showroom in Saudi Arabia Wednesday."

Whatever you think about Mark Steyn the column raises an intriguing point: it's rather bizarre to report about such grisly events under the flippant header "Oddly Enough," and even stranger that stories perhaps important to understanding the threat Islamist totalitarianism poses to peace loving people everywhere is relegated to briefs presented as important only because they seem novel.

The Western world can afford neither to minimize the abhorrent acts perpetrated by those who ascribe to a barbaric interpretation of Islam, nor to treat non-Western death and destruction as though it's a quirky circus sideshow for our amusement.

Shame on Reuters.