I stopped by the bar where I work yesterday, just to talk to one of my co-workers who had returned from vacation. This genuine desire to catch up with a good friend sentenced me to few minutes of what is quite inappropriately referred to as “news.” Peter Jennings (certainly the best of the lot, with his cute Canadian “abouts”) was covering the capture by the US military of Dr. Rihab Taha. Taha studied plant toxins in England and was in charge of various Iraqi biological weapons labs and programs, something she admitted freely in an interview with the BBC.

I generally get my news information from freaky right wing web sites like the Cato Institute, or from freaky left wing web sites like Z Magazine's site or Counterpunch. They have their agendas and it’s pretty easy to see them. This leaves me horrified at the blatant pamphleteering by ABC news, with a clear agenda but not nearly as honest about it as the nutty web sites I read. As Peter was reading the copy about the capture in Iraq, a picture of Taha was zoomed over most of the screen and in huge colored letters (where one might expect a name to identify the person captured) ABC decided to refer to her as "Dr. Germ."

Doesn’t that smack just a teensy bit of propaganda? When Enron exec Kenneth Lay was shown on ABC news was he listed as Mr. Malfeasance? Was O.J. Simpson regularly referred to as Mr. Murderer? The point of the graphic was to be sure as little critical thinking as possible happened. A citizen might run into Rihab Taha at the grocery store or at a dinner party. "Hey, Thad, this is my friend Rihab Taha, she’s studying Art History." Dr. Germ, however, is a rather different character. "Hey, Thad, this is my friend Dr. Germ, she’s studying molecular biology and ducking Interpol." Dr. Germ is a guilty criminal, probably someone James Bond would chase around the world, except that Hollywood writers would find a more interesting name.

I don’t know a damn thing about Taha. Maybe she is a horrible person, maybe she cooked up barrels of hemorrhagic fever that will be released in New York City tomorrow, maybe she thought she was a patriot (other countries in the region undoubtedly have powerful weapons of mass destruction), and maybe she felt she had no choice because of the horrific regime in charge of her country. In the court of world opinion, though, without trial or opportunity for defense she is now Dr. Germ. News programs are supposed to tell us about events that happened, not convince us to believe something. In fact, if anything, news ogranizations ought to be especially critical and suspicious of rhetorical excess from the powerful and the governmental. "ABC News" ought to be ashamed of itself for doing this, or at least have the decency to call itself a branch of the Information Ministry.