Tuesday, August 17, 2010

What's "With" All The Inverted Commas

Why the preponderence of "inverted commas" in this Agence France Presses "report"?

Afghan couple 'stoned to death' over love affair... The 23-year-old woman and 28-year-old man were killed because "they had an affair," said Mohammad Ayob, the governor of Imam Sahib district... Earlier this month, the Taliban publicly flogged and then killed a pregnant widow for alleged "adultery" in western Badghis province... In regions that have come under Taliban control as the war drags towards the end of its ninth year, rough justice is meted out in the same manner, and includes execution of people accused of "spying" for foreign forces.
Are AFP's "sub-editors" calling into doubt the "truthfulness" of their own "correspondents"?

Or do they simply feel urged to report on actual events by some kind of genetic memory of what it was like to once have been journalists but equally compelled by the dhimmitude of political correctness to infer uncertainty with regard to Islamic atrocities?

-- Nick