The Egyptian military dictatorship arrested four more Aljazeera journalists. They've been arresting Aljazeera personnel regularly since the July coup that overthrew the first and only elected president in Egypt's 5,000 year history (Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, now branded a "terrorist" organization by the regime, its leaders imprisoned, assets seized, supporters killed and imprisoned).
You'd think the BBC and NPR, if they were actually journalists and not propagandists, would consider this newsworthy. The New York Times did, running an article in today's paper. (And posted to the Times website yesterday.) (So obviously the BBC and NPR are aware of the arrests.) The ludicrous charges are the usual: the journalists "damaged national security" (every tinpot tyrant has adopted the U.S.' "national security threat" bullshit) by publishing "false information," they met with Muslim Brotherhood members (consorting with "terrorists," see?) and they possessed dangerous material that causes "incitement," namely protesters' protest plans.
One of the arrested, Australian Peter Greste, actually worked for the BBC last year, and won a Peabody Award for his reporting for them from Somalia. Not that the BBC ingrates care. BBC is just British government propaganda, cleverly disguised.
Real journalists would make a stink when other journalists are persecuted. Much of the Western media only climbs on its high horse when an enemy or adversarial regime imprisons or kills journalists. So for example, despite the fact that Colombia, Mexico and Honduras are hellholes for journalists, there's nary a word of it on the BBC. NPR blacks out the anti-journalism holocausts in Colombia and Honduras.
When your selectivity is that extreme, propagandist is the correct name for you.
