Misleading Headlines and MSM Bias. Or, What Else is New?

This just pisses me off, but it is a tactic as old as the media themselves: Using misleading or false headlines to generate newspaper sales, TV news viewership, and more recently, "hits" at online news sources. This is an effective tactic because most people will not go past the headline, much the same as they don't go past the soundbite. The average anti-American, anarchist, socialist, tree-hugging, MoveOn.org-reading, pansy Leftist will take a headline like this and run with it as Gospel fact (well, maybe not Gospel, because most of them are Godless pagans, too; but you get the idea.) But if you critically read and deconstruct these articles, you will soon find it easy to sift through the bullshit.

Here's the latest I caught today on my "My Yahoo" homepage:

Steroids Headed for Troops in Iraq Seized

By VICTOR L. SIMPSON, Associated Press Writer Mon Aug 1, 4:09 PM ET

ROME - Italian police seized 215,000 doses of prohibited substances as they smashed a ring that supplied steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs to customers around the world, including American soldiers in Iraq, a police official said Monday.

OK, I'm expecting a story with specific names of soldiers and FPO's in Iraq - conclusive proof, a direct link to back-up such a definitive claim in the headline. I read further:

The U.S. military in Iraq had no immediate comment, but the popularity of steroid abuse has long been discussed as American troops and contractors in Iraq work out in gyms set up in bases and even in the mirrored halls of one of Saddam Hussein's former palaces.

Joe Donahue, program director for the Vietnam Vets of America Foundation, who spent 16 months in Iraq — often lifting weights in the Green Zone gyms — said steroids were on offer for those who wanted them.

Hmmmm....so far, not so good. An offer is not a direct link. The article continues:

"I had them offered to me by an Iraqi guy who sure as hell looked like he was using them," Donahue said. "There were guys I'm pretty sure were juicing, but not a lot of them."

He said a pair of Iraqi bodybuilders known casually as "the large brothers" sold steroids and other supplements in the Green Zone building where he worked. "I can say with no equivocation, I was offered steroids," Donahue told The Associated Press.

Still, so far all I know is that Mr. Donahue says he was offered steroids by Iraqis, and that he thinks that some troops may be using steroids. Are you starting to get the picture, beginning to see how to read between the lines?

Now we switch gears to the private sector:

Private security contractors told AP that steroid use also is a problem among their employees because the drugs are readily available in Iraq — as easy as buying a soda from the local stores, according to one contractor.

Now some facts:

The police investigation in Italy began after a post office in Trieste, in northeastern Italy, reported that U.S. postal authorities in Iraq returned hundreds of packets of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs because they were improperly addressed, according to Mario Bo, head of the Trieste police department's criminal division.

He said authorities arrested two Slovenians last month when they raided an apartment in Trieste. Sasco Tacs, 30, and a 20-year-old woman, Vesna Milosevic, were charged with trafficking in prohibited substances.

The drugs had been ordered over the Internet, and Italian officials presume some reached their destinations, police said, adding that steroids were also sent to customers in Europe, North America and Australia. They estimated the ring may have had as many as 1,000 customers around the world.

Now a brief description of what steroids are and what they can do:

Synthetic derivatives of testosterone, anabolic steroids are thought to enhance aggressiveness.

Steroids have serious side effects, encompassing both psychological disturbance and physical symptoms, such as the development of breasts in men, baldness and cancer, as well as major depression, mania and other mood problems.

Now this next part is deviantly brilliant:

Every war seems to have its drug of choice. German soldiers were said to have been given steroids during World War II to make them meaner. The stress of combat led to use of marijuana by some American soldiers fighting in Vietnam.

Do you see the line of implication the author is trying to draw? The undertone is that: Our troops are using steroids.>Steroids make you meaner.>The Germans used steroids for just that purpose.>Our troops are just like the Nazis!!! Furthermore, the author slips in that little factoid about Vietnam, the conflict the Left loves to compare Iraq to as an unwinnable situation.

Now we have something to exhonerate the troops in Afghanistan and isolate the problem solely to Iraq:

U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan submit to regular drug tests but are not routinely tested for steroid use, according to a report in the military newspaper Stars and Stripes.

In Afghanistan, U.S. Col. James Yonts said: "We do not issue steroids to soldiers for any reason, bodybuilding or whatever, other than for medical purposes. I'm not aware of any investigation or any problem of steroid use by soldiers in Afghanistan."

Inside one of Saddam Hussein's former palaces on the sprawling Tikrit base, a mirror-walled gym rivaling many in the West is routinely packed with heaving soldiers pumping iron on bench presses, arm curls and other equipment.

I love the language, too - "heaving soldiers, pumping iron." Oh, my! Guys sweating and breathing hard while they're lifting weights in a gym?!?!?! How dare they!!! Sorry, but this is nothing new. First, in the USMC if that equipment is available, it is provided by Morale, Welfare, and Recreation (MWR), a private organization. Second, this is only available in "green zones" and other fortified areas. Third, I'm willing to bet that most of the guys working out regularly are not the guys who are out fighting. They are generally the clerk types or those "in the rear with the gear." The guys out kicking ass are using whatever down time they have to rest before the next mission. Trust me on that. The time for working out a lot is back in the States or in Okinawa when you have a lot of time on your hands. Trust me on that, too.

Now we get to the part of the story, conveniently buried near the bottom, where we find out it is yet another story about nothing:

Some soldiers have questioned how some of their more rippling fellow soldiers could have built up such bulk while in a war zone, suggesting that steroid use may have been taking place. But they had no independent confirmation to back up their suspicions.

So, we have the headline that reads "Steroids Headed for Troops in Iraq Seized," and ends with "no independent confirmation to back up their suspicions." In the meantime, the author has maligned our troops as narcissistic, steroid-crazed baby killers with nothing more than a headline and a story loosely fit, via inuendo, around an anti-American agenda. Mission accomplished, just that easily.

Now here's the, "Aha!! This is how it could be happening" part, a sort of disclaimer:

Troops and some contractors receive mail at inexpensive domestic U.S. postal rates, allowing soldiers to order almost anything online. Packages mailed from home are one of the chief smuggling routes for alcohol, which the U.S. military prohibits its soldiers from drinking.

The story fizzles from there, and ends with absolutely nothing.

You can read the rest if you so desire.