Pro-ITN Libel Suit Post (re: THE TEARS OF THE MIGHTY

Max Sawicky sawicky at epinet.org
Wed Mar 15 15:41:40 PST 2000


... LM's position, as noted in Carroll's post was that LM was punished because it "dared defend the victims of Ms. Marshall's lies." Describing these guards, many of whom have been indicted on war crimes, as "victims" pretty much tells me most of what anyone should need to know about LM's bias. . . .

Suppose there is bias. That does does not go to whether or not ITN faked a news report, only to LM's credibility. If I witness a hate crime against a Jew by a German and describe the latter in terms that slur his nationality, that doesn't say I didn't see the crime. Only whether you would believe me.


>>>>>>> LM complained that "the trial was dominated
by the testimony of a witness who claimed the Serbs beat people at this "concentration camp," as if that was irrelevant to the issue at hand.

LM was not doing some kind of FAIR report on poor reporting tactics; LM claimed that the report lied about this being a detention camp and, as Carroll's post emphasizes, LM to this day claims the report was lying when they claimed there was a detention camp. LM insists it was merely a "collection centre for refugees."
>>>>>>>

OK, the Serb witness was on point.


>>>>>>>>>
As Reuters reported yesterday:

"Among the strongest evidence in ITN's favour was the testimony of a Bosnian Moslem doctor who told of atrocities at a Serb-run camp at Trnopolji in northern Bosnia.

"They took wooden legs from tables and beat people with them," Dr Idriz Merdzanic told the court. "We heard the screams and the beatings. Then they would bring some of those they beat up to us to help them, to dress their wounds."

"He said some prisoners were taken away and never seen again."

As for LM, they did not spend their trial time just examining camera angles, but claiming that the camps in question were not prisons. So by LM's own testimony, this case was not about press coverage but about the truth of whether Muslim prisoners were imprisoned. And on that core truth, the jury ruled against LM. -- Nathan Newman
>>>>>>>>

If I've been paying sufficient close attention, none of the parties in question except the witness were at the other camp. What does that say about whether the camp ITN visited was or was not a detention camp, and whether ITN presented false information to the efffect that the camp visited was a detention camp?

mbs



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