If it bleeds, it leads – especially if it makes the US or Israel look bad
Truth is unimportant to the left or the MSM because the leftist MSM serves a higher truth. This is the general approach, but it’s especially evident in coverage about Israel, which is presented in a way that is usually negative for that country.
I discovered the pattern long ago; it was part of my change story. I later discovered that lying for a “higher truth” was the template of the al Durah story, in which the French media which initially reported that Israelis had killed a young Palestinian boy had the raw footage that proved the killing was staged by Palestinians and the boy was almost certainly alive, but ignored that fact because they were so convinced that Israel was evil and Palestinians good. So a little detail like the truth or falsehood of that particular story didn’t matter.
Here’s an excellent discussion of how it played out in the Gaza war and how it’s playing out already in Iran and our press. Hint: it’s the same playbook as before.
Iran knows a report like this will fire up the Tucker Carlson woke right, and the left. They know that the MSM will report it uncritically, and that the little disclaimer won’t matter. They know that if Iran’s own ordinance fell short and hit a school full of children (or if they did it purposely; they certainly could not care less about killing their own people), it may never be known by the wider world:
On February 28th, 2026, Iranian state media reported that American strikes had hit an elementary school in Minab, a port city in Hormozgan Province. The school was named: Shajareh Tayyebeh. The casualties were implied: children. Within hours, Reuters had the story. So did the AP. So did the BBC. The phrase “could not independently verify” appeared in every version, tucked into the middle of the paragraph like a disclaimer on a cigarette packet. Present. Acknowledged. Functionally irrelevant.
The story ran anyway.
Here is what was publicly available before a single editor hit publish. The Shajareh Tayyebeh school sits adjacent to, or within the perimeter of, an IRGC Asef Brigade naval installation. This is not classified intelligence. Pre-conflict reports from open-source defense analysts had mapped the facility. It had been identified in war-gaming scenarios published by Middle Eastern security forums. A reporter with a laptop and fifteen minutes could have found it.
Nobody looked. Just like nobody looked at the at the blast crater in the Al-Ahli parking lot before running Hamas’s version.
The same local governor whose statement provided Western outlets with their casualty framing also referenced, in that very statement, American strikes on IRGC medical facilities in the area. That context did not make the international version of the story. The dead IRGC personnel mentioned in Farsi-language social media posts from apparent Minab residents did not make it either. What made the story was the word “school” and the implication of dead children, sourced entirely to the public relations apparatus of a regime that has spent four decades perfecting the art of strategic mourning.
We don’t know the facts for sure yet, but there’s every reason to doubt the Iranian report:
And yet this story has spread around the world.
— neo
Which is a group that I am increasingly convinced is very small.
The lefty media has spent the last year and a quarter running story after story after story headlining that ‘MAGA is splitting’ over this or that (Iran, Venezuela, race issues, immigration, etc.) Yet somehow the split never completes itself.
Remember the Trump/Musk falling out last year? It was going to tear MAGA apart. It was the beginning of the end for Trump. Yada yada yada.
Now here we are in 2026 and Trump and Musk are getting along again.
As I’ve grown older I’ve become ever more convinced of the wisdom of the late Rush Limbaugh’s characterization of the lefty media as ‘the daily soap opera’.
HC68:
The group is small in terms of percentage of the right. But it is nasty and it is motivated, and so many elections turn on razor-thin majorities as well as turnout these days, so it matters.
Like many others, I ignore our once-esteemed MSM. Freedom of the press should have a truthtelling clause but it does not. Eternal vigilance is the cost of freedom, as I’m too often reminded.
People and outlets need to be sued harder for defamation.
So everything’s a deal with Trump. Anyone else thinking that the Kurds involvement here means he’s promised them a Kurdistan?
Kurds having a country sounds fine to me.
So, the videos showing an Iranian missile falling back on this school may also be fake, if the school itself doesn’t exist. Very interesting.
“So everything’s a deal with Trump. Anyone else thinking that the Kurds involvement here means he’s promised them a Kurdistan?”
1) Well, it’s pretty damn smart and it is The Israeli’s not Trump who is leading the way on this. It is Israel that is pounding all IRGC, Police and other government forces adjacent to the Kurds in NW Iran on the Iraq border.
2) The Kurds are already armed and have access to arms unlike some shopkeepers in Tehran who are not organized and have limited access to weapons.
3) You fight with the army you have not the one that you want.
Yeah, the leftists I follow have been all over Trump killing 150 school girls.
A lot of work has been done by multiple open-source researchers. The conclusion: a tragic error due to the school location and some recent changes in the land use
https://x.com/GeoConfirmed/status/2029325062336106724
Listened to another Commentary podcast. Not much new. One interesting item. They report that Iran has depleted about 1/3 to 1/4 of its missile inventory, which doesn’t really explain the sharp drop in the number of missiles fired, so what does? Evidently the IDF has gotten very good at locking onto and destroying missile launchers, even the mobile ones, before they can be moved to safety. The Iranians are having to use their launchers much more judiciously than they were on day one.
https://babylonbee.com/news/to-save-time-iran-appoints-supreme-leader-who-is-already-dead
There is no way to fight a war so that only bad guys get killed. We’re all adults here and know that. But I repeat myself.
There’s still a small chance that it will not turn out to have been our weapons that killed the schoolgirls on the base, but regardless there will be other innocents killed by our weapons, and we should probably be ready for that when it happens.
No one should be shocked or surprised at any of this. As neo and others here have noted, it is not new: The Muslim cohorts, including but not limited to Palestinians, have been painting targets on their own non-combatant populations’ backs for decades. They do it by setting up military encampments in civilian neighborhoods, installing underground tunnels throughout civilian areas–near schools, shopping areas, recreational centers, hospitals (yes, obviously hospitals), and so on. It has all become indistinguishable from movie sets, complete with acting extras, scripts, and lights-camera-action crews.
I will add that it all does, to a non-trivial extent, do away with a large part of the notion that any of these people are “innocents.”
@betsybounds:They do it by setting up military encampments in civilian neighborhoods.
This is not that situation, sorry, it was a school located on or adjacent to a base. You are aware that US military installations sometimes have K-12 schools on them, both in the US and overseas, right?
I will add that it all does, to a non-trivial extent, do away with a large part of the notion that any of these people are “innocents.”
That is certainly a take. I expected “we couldn’t possibly have done that” but not “they had it coming”.
Betsybounds surely knows that not every Iranian child is guilty as a mad mullah.
The responsibility for any and all innocent Iranian lives lost rests solely upon this regime and its supporters. They brought this response upon the heads of the Iranian people. As regrettable as all of the innocents maimed and killed are, stopping the mad Mullahs now was and is the responsible and sane action to take. Trump’s ordering these attacks will result in far less deaths than would surely have resulted had they acquired nuclear weapons. As it is as certain as the sun rising tomorrow that they would have used them.
Indeed, especially since we know that protecting the lives of innocents is given the absolutely highest priority by the Mullahs of Invention, just as it is by their pals in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria—well, make that “late pals” (to which one could add Venezuela)—Russia, China and most recently, Sudan…
“Iran’s New Proxy: Sudan”—
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/22320/sudan-iran-video
Yes, ABSOLUTELY!…Which is no doubt the reason why the Mullahs are SO hearted by the UN….
I thought that Shia Islam didn’t believe girls were to go to school?
SCOTTtheBADGER on March 4, 2026 at 9:52 pm:
“I thought that Shia Islam didn’t believe girls were to go to school?”
Kate or someone else might correct me on this, but I thought they did allow all children to get at least an elementary education, with a goal of achieving basic literacy and numeracy, and probably some level of indoctrination in their version of history and politics/law, etc.
Plus, as with almost all societies, marriages (arranged or via happenstance) usually occur among families/people at a similar socio-economic level. As elites, the IRGC would also want and need their children to be educated enough to take on the continuation of the IRGC going forward. Plus husbands probably prefer a wife who can manage schooling and educating the kids, medical appointments, basic shopping and household finance, etc.
Of course the Taliban are explicitly against girls being educated at any level, but they are against anyone being educated outside of the Islamic core ideology. Yet they are more than happy to use whatever modern weaponry and industrial capability that they can get their hands on.
So how long will it take for the usual suspects to cry “UNFAIR!!”?
“Laser weapons deployed in Operation Epic Fury, as Space Force stops Iran’s missiles in their tracks”—
https://nypost.com/2026/03/04/world-news/how-us-space-force-stops-irans-missiles-in-their-tracks/
***** REALITY CHECK ***** REALITY CHECK ***** REALITY CHECK *****
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WW2:
– Took almost a decade. People tracked progress with thumbtacks on maps in the living room, not video clips, memes, and posts.
– No whining reporters asked FDR or Eisenhower “is it done yet?”
– London and Dresden are just the best-remembered icons of widespread civilian suffering.
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A founding meme of this blog is the difficulty of changing one’s mind.
Several generations of Americans – including many of us – had our attitudes to war shaped as much by quisling media rescripting of Vietnam as by WW2 or Korea – pacifist attitudes mirrored and amplified in the academic and media echo chambers we grew up with.
I only really cleared out that intellectual junk when I moved to Israel – when I met and recognized an existential threat, and started engaging bien pensant Israelis who insisted on Panglossian progressive fantasy (in the face of their own combat experiences!).
It’s been a @$%^$% week, folks – an incredibly successful, surgically executed week.
Kindly buck up – and buckle up.
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Regarding the Kurds – bringing them in is another example of this administration’s 3D chess. It is definitely in America’s interest to keep Erdogan off balance.
Iran LIVE STREAM | Quake-Like Loud Detonation Near Isfahan Nuke Facility | Israel | Khamenei | Trump | Crux
https://commoncts.blogspot.com/2026/03/iran-live-stream-quake-like-loud.html
Niketas and om: Oh, for crying out loud.
I will add that, as a devout and dedicated Christian, I understand that NO ONE is “innocent.” It is true that a good many people are uninvolved in political/military combat–but that is not the same thing.
Bagdad Bob lives on, he will never die. Beware of religious overtones.
Posting this in the hopes that someone with more knowledge can interpret/explain this for me.
IRGC members in Lebanon will be arrested, deported, Lebanese information minister says
https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-888963
Does this matter? Seems like a good thing if they can actually do it, but I really have no idea. I’d prefer they just go ahead and deport them to the infernal regions.
By the way, great to hear from you Ben David. Keep posting. We worry.
For crying out loud, we can’t read your mind, only what you write.
Words mean things.
Mike Plaiss:
I think the majority of Lebanese don’t want the regime of Iran influencing their country anymore. They’d like Hezbollah (Iran proxy) to go, too. Perhaps the attack on Iran has emboldened the Lebanese to do a few things to make that more likely to happen.
I thought that Shia Islam didn’t believe girls were to go to school?
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Per the World Bank, Iran’s made a successful effort to improve the prevalence of literacy over the last 85 years. About 37% of the population over 15 was estimated to be literate in 1976. As of 2023, the figure was 89%, with >98% of those between 15.0 and 24.0 recorded as literate. Supposedly, only about 5% the population was literate in 1940.
TabletMag, Eyal Zisser “Israel’s Unfinished Business in Lebanon”: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/israel-unfinished-business-lebanon-hezbollah
Thanks
In fairness, it would have taken a genius on the level of Einstein to see through that.