Posted by
Anticontrarian on Sunday, April 08, 2007 8:36:43 AM
Happy Easter!
Yahoo! News and CNN are among the doubtless many news organizations which have focused on one phrase from Pope Benedict’s Easter message:
"In the Middle East, besides some signs of hope in the dialogue between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, nothing positive comes from Iraq, torn apart by continual slaughter as the civil population flees."
The only difference is in the headlines; while CNN goes with Pope: 'Nothing positive' in Iraq, Yahoo! prefers Pope laments 'slaughter' in Iraq.
What I am left wondering is exactly what the pope said (in Italian?) The quoted passage doesn’t actually scan. It almost seems like a part in the middle has been left out and that two different sentences have been combined into one run-on.
Not that I’m suggesting anything nefarious. Translation glitches are common, especially under the pressure of looming deadlines. And it’s perfectly possible that the above really is a faithful though ungrammatical translation.
Still, I’d like to be sure of that before I zeroed in one that one comment of many as the MSM seems to have done. After all, this wouldn’t be the first time that the American media in particular has oversimplified the reservations of a pope regarding the Iraq War.
It will be interesting to see if another shoe drops and we find that the Middle East / Israel thought had its own ending and the Iraq thought had its own beginning.