Well, they started it, but that doesn’t absolve the western media of their responsibility to look at the story critically, or to find out if there was any actual meat to the assertion.
After all, the original El-Arabiya story was pretty fucking light on details, and was full of the same sort of vague, weaselly language that characterized so many Western reports:
Nowhere is the text of these alleged two laws given, nor are we told where the laws currently stand in the legislative process, who proposed them, or what actual Egyptian politicians have to say about them.
Again, as in the Western media, the only concrete reference is to a single cleric, who by all accounts is something of a troublemaker, and to a “draft law” that, as far as the media is concerned, seems to have no actual author.
If journalists at large, internationally-renowned media outlets are going to report on issues like this, they should do some actual fucking legwork and not simply repeat vague and poorly-sourced stories. Their readers, who can be excused for believing these stories when they appear, have a right to expect better.
Edit:
Oh, bite my fucking nutsack. You’re usually not as fucking stupid as this.
As i’ve made very clear in all my posts, my main concern here is with the media that reported this steaming turd as if it were a verified, well-sourced story. And that goes for all of them, from El-Arabiya to the Daily Mail to the Huffington Post.
I’m wondering, based on no evidence whatsoever, if they* might have put it out there just to see how far it would get. As a propaganda point in the “The West hates Islam” campaign, this one was a beaut, intentional or no.
Did you know that algebra was invented by Muslims? That’s a true fact, you would look it up. Reason enough to wipe them out, way I figure it. Math. Not even once…
Well bully for you. My main concern is the snippy post by AK84:
He can take his bullshit meter and shove it up has ass for all I care. This story originated in the Muslim press, so maybe he should worry about their bullshit meters first. Ours clicked in pretty damn fast, thank-you-very-much!
Like that story about Obama stealing watermelon as a child. Nobody believed that, for a second! Well, maybe a few did. But everybody else knows there’s no watermelon in Kenya!
If by “ours” you mean people here, then i would agree, in part, although there were people on the first page of this thread who were lending credence to the story based not on its actual coherence, but on the fact that lots of media outlets were reporting it.
If you mean “our” media, i disagree. Yesterday, the CSM was about the only outlet questioning the story, and even the Daily Mail’s reversal still weaseled by saying that the story had not been rebutted. Well, my claim that America is going to pass a law banning candy has also not yet been rebutted.
I doubt it because if they had thought of it for such an exercise, it would have been rejected as too unbelievable. I can assure you if say there was a report that the Texas or Slovakian legislature was doing this, NOBODY would publish before getting even the slightest of confirmation.When I read it, it sounded like what it exactly is…bullshit. I was right and anyone in their right mind would have come to the same conclusion.
This is the article that started the whole thing, and that i quoted in post #81.
And as i noted, it is almost completely devoid of any concrete detail about any actual bill, law, legislation, political party, formal announcement, source, or anything at all that might support the claim that the Egyptian parliament is actually considering such a law.
We learn from the article that the National Council for Women has asked the parliament not to approve laws allowing a man to have sex with his wife’s corpse, but we never learn whether or not the politicians have even discussed this possibility, or how many of them are taking it at all seriously. There is no evidence or detail at all connecting the idea, on the one hand, and the legislative process, on the other.
We learn that the issue of having sex with a dead wife emerged over a year ago, when a single cleric, in a completely different country, “spoke about” it. But we learn nothing about what has happened in the year since that happened. Have politicians in Egypt talked about it? Has someone written a bill and placed it before the legislature? Has it been widely discussed in the Egyptian media, or among political commentators? Did the cleric who raised the issue receive support from other clerics, or from political figures within Egypt?
We then learn that the cleric’s view “found its way to Egypt one year on,” and that the view was criticized on an Egyptian television news show. We also learn that the news show anchor asked: “Could the panel that will draft the Egyptian constitution possibly discuss such issues?” But again, we aren’t told how the idea “found its way” to Egypt," we’re told nothing about whether anyone except a few cranks is actually talking about this, and we’re given no indication at all that “the panel that will draft the Egyptian constitution” is even considering it. I mean, it’s possible that the panel that will draft the Egyptian constitution will discuss making it constitutional for a mother to feed sand instead of food to her newborn infant, but until someone on the panel actually raises the issue, this sort of “could they…?” question is just bad journalism.
We then learn that:
These are important issues, and if the parliament is actually curbing women’s rights in Egypt then it’s an important story that needs to be covered. What it doesn’t need is the sort of sensationalizing bullshit that we got with the corpse-fucking angle.
Exactly. Can you cheat on your corpse wife? If someone else fucks your wife’s corpse, is she cheating on you? Can you then stone her for adultery? Can you get a quickie divorce from your corpse wife, maybe for some kind of tax benefit?