PROPAGANDA WATCH

Sidney Morning Herald: LA Times Reporters Ordered
To Stop 'Romanticising' Iraqi Resistance

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) -- The Los Angeles Times has ordered its journalists to stop describing anti-American forces in Iraq as resistance fighters, saying the term romanticises them and evokes World War II-era heroism.

An email circulated this week asked staff to instead use the terms insurgents or guerillas.

An assistant managing editor, Melissa McCoy, said on Wednesday that the memo followed a discussion among top editors at the paper and was not sparked by reader complaints.

McCoy said she considered the term resistance fighters an accurate description of Iraqis battling US troops, but said it also evoked World War II - specifically the French Resistance or Jews who fought against Nazis in the Warsaw ghetto.