OxBlog

Tuesday, March 25, 2003

# Posted 6:33 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

THE DUBIOUS PLURAL: "Undaunted By Losses, Allies Push On Towards Baghdad" -- five-column headline, The Independent.

If you have a copy of the Independent's print edition, you'll notice that above this headline, there are three smaller headlines, the first of which reads "British Soldier Killed in Action". Given that only one soldier was killed, shouldn't the main headline read "Undaunted by Loss, Allies Push on Towards Baghdad"?

Then again, I'm probably wrong on technical grounds. It is almost certain that some other soldier lost his life within the same 24-hour period as the first British combat fatality. But the juxtaposition of the two headlines is still absurd.

While Americans are used to thinking of The Guardian as the ancestral home of liberal media bias, that paper has been rather moderate since the war started while the Independent has become the Al-Jazeera of the West. Again, let us savor the moment.
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