Recording Amanpour’s Bias

CAMERA released yesterday an effective video that shows Christiane Amanpour’s 22 references to “God’s Jewish Warriors” — compared to only 5 references to “God’s Muslim Warriors” — in her respective one-hour “documentaries” on CNN last month.

There is a significant difference not only in the comparative number of references, but in the nature of them.

In the case of “God’s Jewish Warriors,” Amanpour says things such as “God’s Jewish warriors also opposed the peace deal [with Egypt]” or “In the years ahead, another prime minister would shake hands with another Arab leader.  And, this time, one of God’s Jewish warriors would resort to murder.”  Of course simply intoning the phrase “God’s Jewish Warriors” 22 times has an impact beyond the specific content.

In contrast, from the transcript of “God’s Muslim Warriors,” here is the text of all of Amanpour’s references to “Muslim warriors:”

1.  God’s Muslim warriors — they are much feared and little understood.

2.  The Soviets, worn down by the Mujahedeen — the Muslim warriors — eventually withdrew from Afghanistan.

3.  About the same time Sunni Muslim jihadists were taking on the Soviets, the Shiites, God’s warriors in another Muslim country, were about to give America its first taste of its Islamic fundamentalism.

4.  I grew up in this country [Iran], and as a reporter I come back, because it is here that 28 years ago God’s Muslim warriors rocked the world [by storming the U.S. embassy and holding American diplomats hostage for 444 days].

5.  Shiite believers, god’s warriors, raise the battle standards of their greatest hero, the martyr of all martyrs, Imam Hussein. Faith, they say, bears aloft this massive weight.

6.  The world assumed Iraq‘s professional army would score a quick victory.  But nobody reckoned with Ayatollah Khomeini’s holy warriors — waves of young boys who volunteered to become martyrs, clearing minefields by running across them. Nobody had ever seen anything like it.

More on CNN and Amanpour’s “documentary” here and here.